Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VoteTrustUSA.org
Last month The BRAD BLOG reported on an important lawsuit underway in New Mexico. We can now report that a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) has been filed and that plaintiffs have been added to the suit.
Today, attorneys for Patricia Rosas Lopategui, et al. and against Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, et al. filed a temporary restraining order asking District Judge Eugenio Mathis for an emergency order blocking the Secretary of State from spending millions of dollars on Sequoia AVC Edge touch screen voting machines for use in Bernalillo, Dona Ana, Santa Fe and 11 other counties. According to their press release VoterAction, the group who is providing support to the attorneys and the plaintiffs in this case, says:
The plaintiffs allege that the machines are not accessible by disabled voters and violate a state law requirement for voter verifiable paper trail printers, necessary for meaningful audits and recounts. Plaintiffs also submitted substantial evidence that the Sequoia touchscreen voting systems are inaccurate and unreliable, having lost thousands of votes and switched countless others in recent elections.
As a part of their case, plaintiffs submitted the affidavit of Noel Runyan, an expert on the design of disabled access devices. Mr. Runyan, who is blind, gave this harsh assessment:
In my opinion, the Sequoia AVC Edge DRE does not satisfy the disability access requirements of HAVA, as incorporated into New Mexico law. This opinion is based on (1) the Edge’s complete lack of any accommodation for persons with severe physical dexterity impairments who are unable to use touchscreens or keypads; (2) the gross inadequacy of the Edge’s audio assist feature for persons who are blind or low vision; and (3) the Edge’s failure to accommodate elderly voters who have developed severe visual impairments with age but are unfamiliar with and unable to cope with audio-only access technology because they have had normal vision most of their lives. In short, it is my opinion that a large portion of disabled citizens who attempt to cast their votes on Sequoia AVC Edge voting machines will be unable to do so.
The work done by these attorneys has already begun to reap benefits outside of the state of New Mexico as attorneys in other states have begun asking for advice and assistance. VoterAction has a copy of the filing and all attached exhibits posted on their website.
John, a TRO (temporary restraining order) is a mini-injunction, which requires a reasonable showing … which means they think they have a good case.
I think it can only help to improve the bad situation in our nation at this time. The bad situation about election quality.
No paper trail, no openness of electronic voting machines, and a lot of that, means we need these kinds of actions.
Glad to see it.
Have they tested for a fact yet the Sequoia AVC to see if it suffers the same .abo hacking exploit as Diebold?
Several experts including Washburn were saying it does or may…..its about time to test all the Sequoia products and find out, it wouldn’t surprise me if Sequoia & Diebold share source code.
Doug
Does "TRO" invoke "discovery" ?
Bless you, Mr. Runyan.
MMIXX: No, a TRO does not normally trigger a discovery process. When you go into court with a TRO you are asking the court to make an immediate decision based on the evidence in your Complaint, legal memos, affidavits and exhibits which you have just filed. So you have to have enough evidence at that point in time to let the judge rule in your favor (you must prove that you are likely to win the case on the merits [claim of fraud or violation of state law, or whatever] and that there will be irreparable harm if the TRO is not granted [disenfranchising voters seems to meet that test – an affidavit from an expert showing that the machines are not counting votes or flipping votes should do that]).
However, that being said, if a TRO is granted after the evidentiary hearing, the court will set a time for further proceedings in anticipation of a trial. At that point you can start making discovery requests for documents and witness depositions.
This is just generally how the procedure works. I am an Oregon attorney, not a New Mexico attorney. Each state has little variations on procedure, but are usually quite similar.
This is a very encouraging turn of events.
And the ridiculous state of Nevada has these machines all over the state with printers on them except in the City of Las Vegas where they don’t have printers and you can’t do a recount on them. Wonderful.
The Governor and AG of the State served as the NV Bush Campaign’s co-chairs in the last election just after they forced all counties to buy those new Sequoias with printers after SOS Dean Heller said they were the greatest! After the Presidential election, he was pictured on the Sequoia website spouted the merits of the machines. Stupid repukes. Bush barely beat Kerry in Nevada.
Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller was one of the panelists at the Nov. 7, 2004 Common Cause hearing in D.C. He was proud as a peacock about the forward-looking steps Nevada had taken (in contrast to those other naughty states that hadn’t). to guarantee transparency.
A very personable guy, Heller. Likable. He made me feel Nevada was light years ahead of the curve, and that if Ohio and Florida had followed his state’s example Kerry would have won (actually, Gore would have been running for re-election).
It now appears Heller was acting as a shill for the G.O.P. They do have them all over, don’t they?
From Kim Zetter..
"Hursti conducted the same test for the California secretary of state’s office Tuesday. The office did not return several calls for comment." Did this take place?
I heard John Kerry on the Ed Schultz Show, actually talking about the vulnerability of the Diebold machines, in regard to the Leon County hack. Maybe Mark Crispin Miller got through to him.
Finally, isn’t it a law that the memory cards from the presidential election have to be held for 22 months? Someone with a law degree should be getting real busy right about now. It’s important to note that the "hackability" of these machine’s was "built in." In other words, designed to be hacked. Frankly
Ursula S. #7 – Actually Clark County NV (Las Vegas) does have the printers on their machines. Last July Ex-VP of Sequoia, Alfie Charles, told the Washington state Voting System Certification Panel, during testimony pursuant to state certification of their AVC Edge II w/vvpat printer, that proof of their success was an audit carried out in every county in Nevada in Nov. 2004.
My associate and I were ready for this statement. She had already spoken with elections officials across the state and with a member of the Secretary of State’s office. She learned that only Clark County did the state mandated hand recount. No other county did the audit, ignoring state law. In fact, most of those counties actually asked Sequoia personnel to conduct the vote counting for them because the machines were too new and they did not understand them completely. You can read about the Nevada audit on VotersUnite.Org
We hit Charles with this information and he shut-up and made no attempt to defend his lie.
It’s funny how powerful the truth is sometime.
What the heck does Carson Daly and MTV’s "T.R.O." have to do with e-vote fraud and election theft? 😉
Click here to ask Barbara Boxer to lead the fight for fair elections!
Thankz SANDY D.
First Diebold ,now Sequoia …what a month ,evidentiary hearing should be interesting .
John:
I suspect that has more to do with Paul Lehto’s lawsuit than anything else. Washington was originally going to have the machines, especially in Snomohish County, but after it was all filed in court the decision was made that the machines are not verifiable and no one can see how they count votes.
So pursuant to that, the entire state has pretty much dropped them for mail-in ballots.
Full discovery process of Lehto’s lawsuit for resolution
Further since it was remanded, they have gotten access to the machines. What I hope is that this takes full discovery process, EVERY memory card is checked just like with Diebold, and EVERY audit log is checked to see where votes were purged or deleted.
It is VITAL that in Washington, and wherever they are, that this fraud and miscount is examined to permanently bar unverified machines.
This is like throwing trojan horses into the ring of a war here. You don’t give your car keys out to every crook on Main Street, and that means you don’t give out Sequoia machines to anyone.
Doug E.
Doug E. #12 – Not quite right. SnoCo still has Sequoia Edge DREs and will continue to use them, for now, because the county council does not want to go Vote-By-Mail. That will probably change after the first of the year when the Dems have the majority on the council.
There are many counties in WA that will use Sequoia Edge II DREs for disabled access voting. That is if the state certifies it for that use and I am prepared to go back and battle that with them again. I won last time and can win again.
The problem with SnoCo’s machines, besides the obvious fact that they are DREs, is that they are the older version of the Edge and they cannot be upgraded with the vvpat printer at this time. That’s a problem for the county.
John: Actually the County City Council, Snohomish County in Seattle officially changed to absentee-ballots the other day. (Though they voted to not go with vote by mail for now)
This was just very recently that the Council changed, after the new elections:
3-2 Majority for City Council after Somers is elected
Most of the area is already voting by absentee ballots in Snohomish County now, and they are presently crafting to make the changes permanent by January.
Doug E.