Serious Counting Irregularities at Bernalillo County

THE FOLLOWING WAS WRITTEN BY TERRY RILEY.  ALSO CONTRIBUTING TO THIS POST IS ANNE KASS AND CARTER BUNDY OF WHAT THEY HAVE EXPERIENCED AT THE ELECTION COUNTING WAREHOUSE:

(please note this is posted by mary ellen, not as pretty and organized as what the webmaster would put up but we have got to keep the info going, people are working hard down at the warehouse and we should hear what is going on)

FROM TERRY RILEY:

I worked on Monday opening absentee ballots at the Bernalillo County election warehouse.  I worked on Wednesday counting absentee ballots.  After about two hours of work our table of four noticed that we had a tally sheet that had two votes for each ballot position and only one ballot had been counted. 

On Wednesday morning the tally packs consisted of groups of ballots that had already been tallied, tally sheets and ballots that had not been counted yet.  Our procedure was to spread out a tally packet into a stack of already counted ballots, the tally sheets and the ballots to be counted.  The pre-counted ballots had a sticky-note with the number of ballots counted, the date they were counted and signatures of the ballot reader and the tally marker.  We checked to see that the number of ballots equaled what the sticky-note indicated.  We then added a tally of the ballots that had not yet been counted.

We were on our fourth packet and we noticed that there was only one ballot yet there were two vote tallies on the tally sheet.  We then rechecked the packets that we had already processed and found that every one of them had votes marked and not enough ballots to support them.

We called the presiding judge and asked what to do.  She had a difficult time understanding the problem.  After we managed to explain it she tried to explain it to all of the workers.  She finally allowed me to explain the problem and we decided to recount all tally packs.

I am concerned that we did not recount all of the tally packs, I feel that the process went too quickly.  I spoke with a friend of mine Wednesday evening after he finished working at the warehouse and he said that he had found two packs with the same problem.  I do not trust that everything has been done correctly.

I am terribly concerned that so many, it looked like all, tally packs had extra votes marked.  I believe that in order to have confidence in the tally we need to recount the absentee manually counted ballots.  I believe that this should be treated as election fraud.  In the event this is election fraud I then have to ask for the central tabulators to be audited.  If someone could have been so bold to have marked tally sheets how can we believe that they didn’t also manipulate the tabulators.  As a computer technician I can tell you that they can be manipulated.  I would like to ask for an audit of a percentage of the ballots run through the central tabulator to confirm the accuracy of the tabulator.  I witnessed the certification process of the tabulators prior to the election and have absolutely no confidence that the machines accurately counted the ballots that were inserted for the certification. 

The certification process consists of running a stack of pre-marked ballots, provided by the machine manufacturer, through both machines and seeing if they totals match between both machines.  On the second try they did.  My concern is that the sample was only 100 ballots and that the test was created by the manufacturer.  Anybody can design a test that their machine can pass.  An audit of 2% of the ballots that were run through the tabulator should answer the question of the accuracy of the count. 

A complete manual count of all of the ballots would be very time consuming and expensive. The process in the warehouse area was poorly managed.  Many times there were four people at each table.  One to read the ballot, one to confirm that the reader had not misspoken or misread a vote, one to mark the tally sheet and one to watch to see that the marker makes the correct one mark in the correct space for each vote.  Many tables had only three people, that compromises accuracy.  For a time I was asked to work with only two people.  There was no way to check either of us.  That should have never happened.

We need to take the time pressure off of the count and allow the process to take as long as it needs to take.  There need to be more people working in the warehouse for the count and nobody should be allowed to work more than eight hours in a 24 hour period.  This should hold for all people who work there, from county clerk staff to challengers and observers.  I noticed several people who were there as challengers who looked absolutely dead.  There is no excuse for making anybody work that long and without sleep.

Terry Riley      United Voters of New Mexico      899-6275       Terryactivist@aol.com

THE FOLLOWING IS WRITTEN BY ANNE KASS:

Terry,

I recognize that your opinion is that something worse than sloppiness has occurred with the absentee ballots, and that you are also preparing a report of what you saw and your views about it.  My observations and opinions are offered to you as well.

My recollections and opinions:

On Saturday or Sunday, before the hand counting started, Jan told me and Corley Anderson, another Dem. challenger, that the hand counting would be done by teams of four.  One party reading, the opposite party marking, each being watched by someone from the party opposite to theirs.  She also said that the reader and marker would swap jobs regularly and frequently.  She asked us to find 16 Democrats who were alert and good with numbers and precision work because she planned to work 8 tables.  We called for 16 Democrats, who arrived Sunday afternoon because Jan said she was about to begin the counting.  Instead they were put to work opening envelopes because Jan would not listen to us when we told her there were 500 ballots ready to be hand counted.   She insisted there were only a hundred or so, and that she wouldn't start the hand counting because until she had enough ballots, "it wasn't worth it."  We tried to tell her that we thought it would take at least 2 minutes per ballot, and at that 500 ballots would take 16 hours for one table of four to count  and we tried to extrapolate to the 5,000 ballots we anticipated would need hand counting.  She insisted that there would be a very few ballots for hand counting.   (As of Tuesday afternoon, when the 16 to 20 tables of hand counters were more than half through with the first 1,900 ballots, she was still in a state of denial, claiming that hand counting was almost done.   I tried to tell her that there were another 2,000 ballots that needed hand counting stored in a group of black boxes near the counting machines.  She told me I was mistaken, but she did not look in the boxes--until Jim showed up at 7 p.m. Tuesday night, and called her attention to the 2,000 ballots in the black boxes.)

As 5 p.m. Sunday neared, I asked Jan if she was going to start the hand counting that day.  She said no.  I said it was going to be difficult to get another 16 Democrats to make sure the teams of four plan could be implemented.  At that point Jan said that she was not going to use teams of four, indeed she insisted that she had never said any such thing and had never used teams of four.  Rather, she would use pairs of two and the partisan challengers would serve as the honesty/accuracy check, even though we were only allowed 6 challengers (12 total) on the floor, and one of them from each party had to watch the machine counting.  I understand that on Wednesday, the day after the election, and after numerous errors were found, the hand counting was being done in teams of four.  If nothing else, the hand-counted ballots were counted with no consistency in process, knowledge, standards...no consistency whatsoever.

On Tuesday when the counting actually started, by time I arrived at 2 in the afternoon, Jan had increased the number of tables from 8 to 16 or 20, in pairs of 2, and she had instructed the challengers that they were not allowed to "hover" over the workers.   That is to say, there was NO meaningful honesty/accuracy check, from the very beginning.

Later on Tuesday, when the envelope openers had nothing to do, she decided to put a third person at each of the counting tables, supposedly to watch for honesty/accuracy.  There, obviously, could not be party balance with three people at a table, the "independents" being few and far between.

When Jim took over Tuesday night and people started to walk out, or stumble out half asleep, he determined that three at the counting tables were unnecessary and not required by the rules and so even the 3rd person honesty/accuracy check disappeared.

In addition, on Tuesday morning, when Susan Conway was in charge of the process, they (the Dems. Repubs. and Precinct Officials) arrived as some agreements about how to interpret voter intent, including: 

If a voter filled in both ovals in any given race, that was an over-vote and would not be counted: UNLESS

If a voter filled in both ovals in any given race, but then put a check-mark through one, it was a mistake, as opposed to a "real" over-vote, and the check-marked oval would be counted as the voter's intent.

If a voter filled in both ovals but then put an X through one oval, it was a mistake, not an over-vote, and the oval without the X through it would be counted as the voter's intent.

   

They also agreed that because so many of the ballots had filled-in ovals for the "straight party" vote, but then proceeded to fill-in all the ovals under it, that the voters had been confused into thinking the ballot called for them to state their party registration rather than that they were voting a straight ticket.  I'm not clear how exactly that played out in the various specific situations that it came into play.  (My own thinking is that the straight-party-oval should have controlled, with only the votes for any opposite party-candidates to the contrary being counted as outside the straight ticket vote, although it is obviously a murky area.)

   

These agreements led to at least two ballots that I saw personally, and was told there were more, where the voter filled-in the straight-party ticket oval for the Democratic Party, then filled-in the oval for Jeff Bingaman, then wrote in Jeff Bingaman's name on the write-in line and filled in the "write-in" oval, (That is, the voter's intent to vote for Jeff Bingaman was without question.)  Those votes were disallowed because two ovals had been filled in without either one of them being either checked or Xed out.  It was considered a "real" over-vote.

On Monday  Jan, the presiding precinct judge, and Jim, her next in line (both Republicans) agreed that on election day they would share the day with 7 to 7 shifts.  Therefore, during the day, there were only three of the four required judges present, Jan, Republican and Claudia and Cecelia, Democrats.  Tuesday night, Jim arrived at about 7.  Jan left sometime after 8 and both Claudia and Cecelia left at 8 or 9.  Jan had pulled a Republican worker named Bruce off the tables and sworn him in as a judge.  He was a good enough guy, but he had told me on Sunday when he first arrived that he'd never been involved in the absentee process before.  How he could be considered "qualified" to be a precinct judge, I don't know.

Later that night Chris Papalio, a Dem. challenger, realized there were only two judges, and they were both Republican.  It was about 10 at night, people were tired, and there was chaos as people left and took a break and "new" workers arrived, many of them looking tired as well.  We asked Jim to close the precinct for the day (as the law allows him to do) but he refused to consider it.  We pointed out the two Republican judge problem, hoping that would force him to close the precinct.  Jim wandered around the room, found a "new" worker who had Democrat on his label, asked him if he wanted to be a judge, and then swore him in.  The man's name was Mark.  He talked to me when he had arrived a few minutes earlier, to determine if he would be a challenger or worker.  He told me he'd been at a precinct since 6 that morning and was tired.  When Chris asked him how he would interpret the standards to determine voter intent, Mark said he hadn't a clue.   Chris told Jim that Mark was not qualified to be a judge.   Corley Anderson, another Democratic challenger, agreed to serve as judge, and Jim then swore-in Corley Anderson.  At that point there were three judges, two Republican and one Democrat, with two of the four never having been trained to be a precinct judge.  Additionally, there were the inconsistencies that were an unavoidable consequence of Jan and Jim breaking the day into two shifts.  I think the law calls for four judges, two from each party.

At midnight Tuesday, with a new batch of workers, many of whom appeared to have come directly from a campaign party, judging by their attire, Jim pushed forward with the counting, and he apparently continued with counting through the night. 

It is my opinion that there were basically no fail-safe checks on the hand-counting process, from the beginning.  Indeed, the process, with too few people who were minimally trained and who were required to work too long hours, with too few supervisors, also inadequately trained, was practically designed to fail.  No one should have the slightest confidence in the accuracy of the hand counted ballot results. 

I also think that it would be appropriate to compel the County to do a complete re-count of the hand-tallied ballots, at the County's expense, under close supervision, with accuracy checks in place with teams of four or with a double counting by two pairs of two.  No counter should be allowed to work longer than 8 hours at a time, and with the standards about how to interpret "voter intent" to be arrived at by officials with due deliberation, not by partisan challengers, on the spot, ad hoc.  Making the County do and pay for such a recount may impress upon the County that accuracy is far, far more important than speed, and that in fact, speed decreases accuracy, and in the end, with a recount, the speed is lost as well.

Let me also note, just to make this report complete, that Patsy won the early vote 52/48.  Patsy, I think, won the election-day-in-person-vote by a narrow margin.  When it came to the absentee vote the margin was 55/45 in favor of Heather. 

It has long been claimed that more Reps vote absentee than Dems, but this year Dems requested a similar number of AB ballots.   At one point the numbers I had were: 23,577 to Democrats while Republicans requested 24,371 for a total of  47,948.  That's a 51/49 ratio.   I have a recollection that someone said that in the end there were almost 56,000 ABs requested, and roughly 51,000 returned, so I'm assuming that people were exercising their right to request ABs as long as the law allows.  I don't have the final ratio of Dems to Reps, but in any case, the AB ballots requested were not, as they had been in the past, overwhelmingly Republican.  So that explanation doesn't persuade me that the 55/45 split is of no concern.   The polls showed Patsy ahead.  The early votes showed Patsy ahead, in line with the polls.  The election-day vote was closer, but I think Patsy won it.  It is this puzzle about the absentee voting ratio that I think needs to be investigated, in addition to a complete re-count of the hand-tallied ballots.

Anne Kass

THIS LAST WRITE UP IS BY CARTER BUNDY:

To whom it may concern:

On Wednesday morning, November 8, I went to count Bernalillo County absentee ballots at the warehouse at 1551 Mercantile, Suite C, in Albuquerque.  I was sworn in quickly, and sat at a table with a Democratic ballot reader (Andrew V.) and a Republican tallyer (Robert Cushing, a Wilson staffer from Washington, D.C.).  Initially my job was to watch that the name being called was correct AND that the correct tally was made.  An obvious flaw of this system is that it is impossible to always watch the person tallying, so it is very easy for that person to change votes if s/he wants.  I don't believe Robert ever did that, and I did my best to keep track of total votes for Wilson and Madrid in my head, but it certainly is possible in a three-person system.

After doing just over one precinct with just the three of us, a fourth person (Steve, a Republican), joined us.  He watched the ballots being read by Andrew the Democrat, and I watched Robert Cushing tally--and also watched the pen and tally sheet exclusively.  This system was very fair, and very efficient.  I don't believe there was any election fraud committed by anyone at my table.  However, all of us had serious concerns about the packets which were being given to us.

Each packet has four tally sheets (to cover all of the elections on the ballot, including federal races, statewide races, local races, bond issues, retention votes, and constitutional amendments) and, we were told, ALL of the absentee ballots from that precinct which weren't counted by machine.  Several of the packets given to us already had tally marks on them.  Some of them had some ballots in front of the tally sheets with others in the back, while some had all of the ballots together either in front or back of the tally sheets.

The most troubling part was that there was no discernable rhyme or reason for the tallies.  In one packet, there were 19 tally marks for Governor (14 for Dendahl, 5 for Richardson, or something very close to that) and 19 ballots.  However, since we weren't sure if the tallies which were already on the tally sheets were meant to reflect those 19 ballots or others, our table (Dems and Republicans) did a brief audit of just the Governor's race.  The 19 ballots in fact had 11 Richardson, 5 Dendahl, and 3 no votes.  I'm pretty sure it was precinct 500, but we also did 502, 504, and 505, and it could have been one of those.  The judges told us to simply cross out the previous tallies and re-do the packet, and eventually got up and, in a very confusing way, tried to instruct all the tables to do that with any packets that came to them previously tallied.  In fact, one presiding judge, a Republican named Jan, did such a poor job of explaining the new policy that she asked Terry Riley to explain it (he did a much better job, but it was still confusing to some tables).

Other packets had more tally marks for some races than there were ballots.  One of ours (I believe it was one of the four precincts listed above) had nine tallies in some races, but there were only six ballots.  We asked the judges if some completed ballots had been put somewhere else, and they didn't have an answer (nor did they have any other explanation for the discrepancies).

All four of us--Democrats and Republicans--were left shocked at the sloppiness of the entire process.  A little after noon, one of the judges, an older gentleman wearing a blue shirt, told us to finish our packet that we working on because they had to stop the current process and start over.  We didn't push as to exactly what he meant, but it seems that there were so many problems and questionable packets given to the morning workers that had been worked on during the late hours of election night that none of the tally sheets from that period could be considered reliable.

I don't know if they re-started the process in a more disciplined way, but I would have extreme doubts as to the accuracy of any tally sheets compiled during election night or Wednesday morning.  Further, having been the observer with three people and with four people, I would make a strong case that no tally sheets done by two or three people should be considered reliable.  Only a four or more person tally process can be considered reliable, because it is only with that many people that you can have one person watch the ballot reader all the time and one person to watch the tallyer all the time.

While I am not accusing any particular person of fraud, the disconnect between the tally sheets and ballots in a few packets I saw were so obvious that I have no doubt that some election fraud occurred on election night, when there were apparently many three-person tables.

I am prepared to put any of the above into affidavit form and to swear and/or testify to any of the above.

Sincerely,
Carter Bundy
3:55 p.m., Thursday, November 9, 2006