A spokesman for Secretary of State Jan Brewer was asked Nov. 1 if the state took any specific action regarding shortcomings in the Pima County elections system cited in a September attorney general’s report.
“Nope,” answered Kevin Tyne, deputy secretary of state.
“We have very strong security features …the proof is in the pudding in that we have not had any problems. The audits [of all elections] have come back 100 percent all of the time,” he said.
While Attorney General Terry Goddard’s investigation found security flaws in Pima County’s Global Election Management System (GEMS), they were not serious enough to recommend throwing out the results of the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority election, Goddard said. GEMS is the brand name of the technical equipment and software manufactured by Diebold that Pima and a dozen counties use for elections.
Pima County voters approved a 20-year transportation plan, funded by a half-cent sales tax.
 “During testing, it was discovered that the GEMS software exhibits fundamental security flaws that made definitive validation of data impossible due to the ease of data and log manipulation from outside the GEMS software itself,” Goddard said.
Democrats allege there were improprieties in ballot security that suggested the final results could have been “flipped” to show the measures passing when they failed. A lawsuit in the matter is pending in Pima County Superior Court.
“We did not find any evidence that the computer technician at the center of this case manipulated this election,” Goddard said.
The AG hired an elections analyst consultant, iBeta of Aurora, Colo., to check for signs of ballot tampering. The company found none, but it recommended an overhaul of the county Elections Division’s security policies.
Goddard said the consultant found that elections systems in 12 other counties in the state use equipment and software open to tampering.
“We’re alerting all counties to be aware of this,” Goddard said at the time.
Tyne said his office was aware that the AG hired an outside consultant in the Pima County matter.
“If you allow someone unfettered access to a system like GEMS… then you certainly could have problems… but that’s why we work with the counties to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Tyne said.
A high-ranking elected state official connected to the Pima County investigation told Arizona Capitol Times he was “scared to death” of the possibilities for fraud with GEMS. The official spoke on conditions of anonymity.