Election Observer Arrested in Arizona

Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet at 1:45 PM on September 7, 2008.

According to the Election Defense Alliance blog, John Brakey, one of the country's leading election activists known for bring secretive electronic voting into public view, was arrested while observing problems in local elections this week in Pima County, Arizona.

The arrest begs the question of whether the same response will be forthcoming against election observers this November. That scenario is hardly moot after the police used excessive force in St. Paul in response to protests and other First Amendment activities at the Republican National Convention.

The EDA blog report said Brakey was arrested while officially observing the vote colunt.

From the EDA blog:

While monitoring a handcount of ballots from the September 3rd Arizona primary, in his capacity as an official election observer for the Democratic and Libertarian parties, EDA Investigations Co-Coordinator John Brakey was arrested and ejected from the Pima County election headquarters on orders of Pima County Elections Director Brad Nelson.

Brakey had noticed that several of the incoming bags containing ballots from the precincts had unsecured or missing seals. The seal failures appeared to be the result of pollworkers not knowing how to properly lock them.

Brakey then wondered whether the serial numbers on the bag seals matched the serial numbers recorded by the precinct pollworkers when they sealed the ballots. One question led to another, and Brakey ended up in handcuffs.

Watch the television news video of the incident from KGUN TV, Pima AZ.


Seal serial numbers are supposed to be recorded on yellow report sheets, called "End of Day Certification Reports." The certification sheets are supposed to be signed by all precinct pollworkers and included with the ballots inside the delivery bags. The bags are supposed to remain sealed until opened for counting at county election headquarters.

In one bag, instead of the signed official certification sheets, there was instead a slip of white paper with what Brakey said were "two illegible, scrawled signatures." Brakey watched Election Manager Brad Nelson read the slip, say he recognized who the two pollworkers were, and approve acceptance of that bag of ballots for counting.

Brakey found it rather remarkable that Nelson would be so familiar with the county's 3000 pollworkers that he could identify two of them by illegible scrawls on a slip of paper.

Brakey then began checking other incoming ballot bags. In the first 7 successive ballot bags he checked, the required yellow certification reports were missing. This included bags with open seals, as well as bags with seals intact.

As Brakey was speaking to members of the counting panels alerting them to his discoveries, Election Director Nelson came up to him and told him to leave.

Brakey replied that he was appointed to be an election observer and he intended to stay on the job until closing time at 1:00 a.m. Nelson told him to leave immediately or he would be arrested. Brakey refused. At that point a deputy sheriff present placed Brakey under arrest for trespassing, handcuffed him, and removed him from the building.

Once outside, Brakey requested his legally allowed phone call, and placed it to his attorney, Bill Risner. Word of Brakey's arrest immediately went out to the network of election integrity activists Brakey has built with the grassroots group AUDIT-AZ.

Shortly thereafter the county elections building was swarming with television news crews.

Tagged as: voting, election theft, aizona, john brakey

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and author of Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting (AlterNet Books, 2008).