Steve Aufrecht’s Interview with Guadalupe Marroquin, Former Anchorage Election Chief
by Linda Kellen Biegel
Steve Aufrecht’s blog “What Do I Know” is an often in-depth look at issues dealing with politics, cooking, travel and snippets from everyday life. Yesterday, Steve came up with quite the “get” — he’s the first one who was able to publish an interview with Guadalupe “Lupe” Marroquin, former Deputy Clerk in Charge of Elections for the Municipality.
(One of the first things an independent investigator should “investigate” is why the Muni Clerk’s Office never hired a replacement after Lupe left. Instead, the “additional duties” were given to Deputy Clerk Jaqueline Duke, even though there is a funded position just sitting there, waiting. But, I digress…)
You can find the entire post HERE but I wanted to point out a few things that that set my hair on fire. Some we’ve already heard, but it means more coming from the person who used to do the job:
— There should have been a lot more ballots sent out to the polling places. Lupe said when she used to do it, she’d look back three to six years and figured the highest turnout then add some more ballots for each polling place.
— While the folks that came to register and then vote or who weren’t Anchorage residents because of Minnery’s email, while problematic in their own right, were not the reason the polling places ran out of ballots.
There is much more attached to each of those issues on the blog post and in the video interview.
However, the items that sent me over the waterfall were here:
— There used to be two boards that monitored the elections.
> The Accuvote Testing Board which is made up of people working at the polls who test ballots to see if the machine counts them right.
> The Data Processing Review Board – this board has been eliminated. They used to test the machines before and after the election. They also sealed the cards into place to prevent tampering. Now one of the issues is that the seal was broken on a number of the ballot boxes. I did ask if there were ever any problems when they tested the boxes and she said no. Maybe that’s why the Board was eliminated. But it seems that this is so fundamental to democracy that it’s worth it to test.
Ms. Marroquin was quite concerned that the Data Processing Board was gone in light of the broken seals.
I also found her description of the different kinds of programming involved in the machines extremely interesting.
I hope all of you get a chance to listen to the interview. The information is riveting and makes you realize that a full-scale investigation and hand recount of the election are the VERY LEAST that needs to be done!
Steve and Lupe (as she is affectionately known to her fan base, of which I am one) have rendered a great service through this article. And Mudflats (as always), thank you for amplifying it beyond Steve’s excellent blog. We now need to reach others. The MSM remains sadly incurious about the details of this failed election. Perhaps if we all do our part by sending this article to the media, someone may read it.
Thank you, again.
~e
Yes, what happened to Steve McDonald’s assertion on election night that if half of what the news reporters had heard was true, we were “in for a wild ride”?? Things are a little quiet from the news front…sadly.
One of the wonderful things developing in education is the availability free online university classes. There are several organizations providing these; Udacity.com, Coursera.org offers classes from Stanford, Princeton, U of Michigan and U of Penn.
This is one we should all take:
Securing Digital Democracy
J. Alex Halderman
In this course, you’ll learn what every citizen should know about the security risks–and future potential — of electronic voting and Internet voting.
https://www.coursera.org/course/digitaldemocracy
ARGHHH.. “how IT” can be corrupted… Also posted on Steve’s blog.
Thank you, Steve! Thank you Linda! It looks like the information on how to run the election properly was either not properly passed on to the people running it this last election, or that they really had no understanding of the importance of each step. This interview should be broadcast on all the local news programs so that the general public can better understand what the correct procedure is and how is can be corrupted either by ignorance or by intent.
Friday, April 20, 2012 10:09:24 AM AKDT
The list of registered voters–at each polling place where people sign the register before they vote–is not a reliable count of the number of voters at a particular precinct. This happens because people move out of state but are never removed from the list. People die and sometimes they are removed. It would be more accurate if the voters’ lists were updated to reflect how many voters actually are in a district and actually vote on a regular basis. Then maybe the number of ballots printed would be more accurate. The way it is now way more ballots are usually printed than are needed. I know this city’s administration said in the beginning (3 yrs ago) that the goal was to cut expenses and the elections part-time clerk said as much to election workers when some asked for more supplies. So it seems like the expenses this time were in the number of ballots printed and they misjudged?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002587560
The useless Democrats assisted the hideous Republicans in converting our elections to Diebold Elections (TM). Both parties just love the corporate cash.
Until we have public financing of elections, we won’t have democracy.
Amen Anonymous…. !
Your sign is great. It needs to be posted all over out here in Bush Alaska. “No Vote, No Future” is one of the main reason’s why there are hundreds of people living in destitution in the villages. Their leaders keep knowledge to themselves so they can keep their control.
The only time I see those leaders call for voters is when they have a bigger fish cronie they want elected – like the Lisa M. write in. Most people out here don’t understand that their voice is in their vote.