The following is a transcript of Arizona State Senator Jack Harper's talk at the January 10 meeting of the District 11 Republican Club regarding his investigation into the November 2004 election recount discrepancies in LD 20. The transcript has been slightly edited for readability. No sentence of Senator Harper’s remarks has been substantively altered or omitted.

I'm here to talk about something much bigger than me tonight, I'm here to talk about the integrity of elections, I'm here to talk about how election integrity was lost in this county and in the public's eye and encourage us to get that back.

As you know nearly 500 new votes showed up in that primary election in 2004. The biggest problem, one of the greatest concerns was that when Mr. Orlich... and this is bigger than Orlich or McComish, I like them both, this is about the integrity of elections, it's not about Andy Thomas, it's not about me, we need to find out where the nearly 500 new votes showed up. When Mr. Orlich challenged the result of the recount in court, a subpoena was issued to (inaudible) that she works for the contractor who operates the voting machines. Well, she didn't personally sign for it, someone at the elections department did, and then handed it to her. And so then, the person that works for the county attorney's office before Andy took office, told that person they didn't have to show up for court. And from what I understand from the court record, the recorder's office actually misled the judge into believing that the judge should be able to find her at her desk when the truth was, she was at home that day. So this is what really leads to the confusion about whether it was a machine malfunction or whether there was a greater problem that somebody might be more embarassed that it would come out.

I chair a committee called Government Accountability and Reform and if something goes wrong in government I should investigate. There is a like committee in the house. Now, if an election can be overturned with nearly 500 new votes turning up, it's cause for concern in government and I definitely think that the state legislature should be involved. We need to find out exactly what went wrong so we can draft legislation to create safeguards, so that it does not happen again. Now, many people say "Oh, you should just go from here, don't look back." Well how can you draft legislation to create safeguards if you don't even know what your vulnerabilities are. So it's been my quest, to find out what happened in that election and why nearly 500 new votes showed up. Now, the county attorney to his credit, did look into the things that his office, his employee, did wrong in advising, that the contractor, that she, didn't have to show up in court. And I believe that person was counseled on that and no longer works for the county attorney's office.

But now the county attorney, of course, is also mandated to be the legal representation for the recorder's office, and the treasurer's office, so the county attorney cannot operate as a prosecutor investigating the recorders office. That's a conflict of interest. He could have hired outside counsel for the recorder and him served served as a prosecutor or he could have served as the counsel for the recorder's office and set up an independent prosecutor. But he did neither, he just did his investigation of what went wrong in his office. And I understand that, we all understand that.

A month after he reported that he could find no criminal wrongdoing I became alarmed at some of the, when I became aware of some of the circumstances around that election I decided that I would do an investigation in my Government Accountability and Reform committee. Well, when I turned in a public records request looking into the election the establishment came unglued. I mean, I received pressure from a member of the House of Representatives to drop the investigation. And later on I was the victim of outright character assassination by two newspaper editor writers and among all, unbelievably, even my friend Andy Thomas.

So I'll kind of back track of what happened since the summer. Well, I learned that reporters were having trouble getting public records requests looking into what caused the new votes, who had access to the ballots after the election, before the recount. And as I started looking into the public records I'm finding that the recorder's office wanted to do a manual handcount of the ballots and handle the ballots even though it's not called for or allowed in state law. And the Secretary of State to her credit, she's a great lady, said that is not called for and she told them to stop that procedure.

When the recount happened, of course you know that the county recorder's office did not produce this witness that could have explained what happened she could have said if there was a machine failure that caused the new votes. Well not only did this draw the attention of myself it also drew the attention of state Sen. John Hupenthal. He chairs the Senate judiciary committee and election matters always go through the judiciary committee. This is too hot topic for him of course because this is his very district where this problem happened. He represents legislative district 20. And also, it may have been a conflict of interest and so he didn't go forward with an investigation but he is certainly encouraging me to.

Now, the Senate President, when he heard that I was conducting the investigation, knew this might be divisive between the Senate and the House, didn't want to get involved, wanted to stay on the sidelines. He gave me three stipulations before I went forward with my investigation. He said, one, I needed to provide him with the documented credentials of an independent auditor that would inspect the machines and possibly the ballots. I needed to also say what this person's maximum fee would be and provide him with that documentation. The second stipulation was that the Senate would not pay for this independent auditor. He said I'd have to go out and find outside funding. Well, I told him that a media outlet may be interested in paying for Dr. Jones's travel and time. (I already had an idea who would do the audit). The Senate President never asked me who the media outlet was but it became very embarrassing to the Senate later on that it was the New Times that offered to pay for Dr. Jones travel and time. There is no agreement with the New Times, they unconditionally said that they would pay for Dr. Jones's travel and time to come do this.

Well, the Senate president had a third stipulation that I didn't agree to and he understands. He wanted me to have a private meeting with himself the recorder Helen Purcel and her election's director Karen Osborne in his office to discuss the situation and possible remedies, and I said that I thought that would look like a backroom deal and I couldn't do it and he understood that.

So I met the two stipulations that the Senate President set for me to meet and then I issued subpoenas. The first subpoena was to the treasurer's office who was the custodian of the ballots and I asked for him to make the ballots available to Dr. Jones on the 20th of December so that we could run them through the machines after he tested the machines.

The other subpoena was to the recorders office. I asked for access to the voting machines that were used in legislative district 20's race, the software, the personnel who operate the machines. And I also asked for 15 different copies of every possible ballot that could have been cast in that Republican primary election. And so there were about 80 different ballots because of all the different precincts that had different precinct committeemen. So they gave me 1200 ballots and I mailed those to Dr. Jones at the University of Iowa, he marked those up so he could run his tests when he got here. Dr. Jones is the foremost expert in the country on computer tabulating machines, he is the right person for this audit.

So, Dr. Jones is coming in on the night of the 19th, I had reissued my subpoenas. One, I asked for additional information from the recorder's office, their machines have the capability to create a computer image of every ballot that goes through the machine. Now, they told me on the 20th, actually they faxed me on the 19th but I didn't see (the fax) they told me on the 20th that software was never actually loaded on the machine so they couldn't produce a computer image of the ballots that had been run.

The treasurer's office... I restated my subpoena to make it very clear that the treasurer's office would, that they would retain custody of the ballots and we would move them over to the computer tabulation room of Maricopa county elections and there Dr. Jones would inspect them and run them through the machines. And I said that I would be there on the morning of the 20th at 9:00 to help move the ballots.

Well, I showed up on the 20th at 9:00, now, I should back track. Now for three weeks the county attorney had promised me that they would not oppose a court order to get the ballots. They said the legislative subpoena would not be sufficient they felt that statutes required a court order. I and many legal scholars, constitutional scholars, believe that legislative subpoena is broad, we have not put the same stipulations on ourselves that we have on the judiciary branch either. It does not require burden of proof, it does not require probable cause. So I outlined this in a letter to the treasurer on the 19th and said I would be there on the 20th to help move the ballots. When I arrived there on the 20th I didn't bring a copy of the recipient or anything I just brought my camcorder and a two wheeled handtruck. (I had been feeling that certain segments of this investigation were going to be historically significant.)

At that time the deputy treasurer, he's an innocent in this, I won't give his name, he came out and handed me a letter of response and said "GET OUT". Well I was there with two recorders from the Capital Times newspaper. This is a very respectable newspaper. So, we started gathering our stuff, I had a camcorder set up, and not on, and so I'm trying to grab that and get out the door and they yelled at us to get out again. So, we got out as fast as we could. We got out in the lobby, I set up the camcorder and tried to to film the segment, talk about what had happened in there and the reporters had conducted some interviews of the situation also. This later got reported by the newspaper, wasn't even said by Andy Thomas, reported by newspaper, that somehow I barged into the treasurer's office waving a hand scrawled court order and I demanded the ballots. And even Andy Thomas, with all the things that he has said that were incorrect, he didn't even say that. That was just a newspaper opinion writer that said that.

So, anyway it became very obvious that they were not going to move the ballots without a court order. I called the presiding judge for the day and I said that they had promised that they would not oppose a court order, but they said that they would have to have one, and I asked if we could get an emergency court order. I called the court administrator who talked to the presiding judge. The presiding judge said if I filled out a motion, I signed it and had treasurer sign onto it that they would just grant an emergency court order. I said great, I think I can get by without an attorney on that.

So, I hand drafted a motion and I tried to call the treasurer who is the custodian of the ballots and asked him if he would sign onto the motion. At this point he wasn't answering his cell phone anymore. I called his legal counsel, Bruce White, who had promised me they would not oppose a court order, I even saved one of his voice mails saying that, and I said "Hey, the judge just said if I fill out of motion, I sign it, it treasurer signs it, that she'll give us an emergency court order". He said well, we said we would not oppose a court order, we did not say we would sign onto a motion asking for a court order, that's a different thing. I said, legally yes, politically no. I said, if you keep us from getting a court order as you've been promising, the Press is going to be all over this. And that later got characterized I believe as making a threatening phone call. Saying the Press is going to be all over this I don't think is that threatening.

Well, I became very nervous I had a friend go out and get an attorney. It was Orlich, Orlich has been helping me on this right from the beginning. Orlich is very knowledgeable on what's going on. Anyway, we managed to go out and get another attorney and we filed a motion traditionally and the attorney took the motion up to the presiding judge's office. The presiding judge said she had to make sure the county attorney's office was not going to oppose the court order. At five minutes to five to find, we found out they were going to oppose the court order after they promised for weeks they would not. The county attorney gave me his personal assurance that they would not. He told State Sen. Karen Johnson that he would not. I had two correspondences from the treasurer saying he would not oppose a court order and the voice mail from Bruce White. It's not clear whether they intended to do this all along or whether they just went back on their word at the last-minute but it certainly felt like a double cross and it was just one more hurdle that we had been trying to get over to get to the truth of what happened in that election.

But that wasn't the worst thing that happened. Shortly after five o'clock the county attorney's office, I think specifically the county attorney, faxed a letter to the Senate President calling my behavior strangely bizarre and asking that I be removed from my chairmanship. Well, I can't say this is definitely the county attorney's motivation but he definitely has a vested interest in having me removed from my chairmanship because that would end the investigation. The only reason I have the statutory authority to issue subpoenas is because I am a legislative chairman. And so I felt like he decided to make this personal and public in an effort to have me removed from the chairmanship.

It's very unfortunate that some of the things that he said in the letter to the Senate President, a couple of things, were out right lies. Some things were a mischaracterization, and some things could have been lost in translation from bad information from the treasurer's office or other county employees. But, this is not really about myself or the county attorney, this is really about the integrity of elections. It's my hope that that we can just keep out of the distractions and get back to finding out the truth of what happened in legislative district 20.

Now, the elections director, Karen Osborne, has given a couple of things that she thinks it can be, the problem. One, she thinks that the machine used in the recount could have been more sensitive and picked up more votes and two, she said that people are actually dumb enough to use glitter pens and eyeliner pencils to fill out their absentee ballots. Now, I'd like to see a show of hands of who believes that overwhelmingly or almost unanimously only Republicans are dumb enough to fill out their early ballots with glitter pens and eyeliner pencils. Is there anybody in this room who believes this?

Well, from what I understand almost every one of the new votes showed up from a stack of ballots that were cast by Republicans in that election and only about two were cast by the Independents and party not determined. Now, that in itself does not prove fraud but statistically it's very hard to believe. There are some other things that were said to me that did not deter me from doing this investigation, they gave me greater resolve to finding the truth. And there are things that might have been done criminally afterwards and that I can't disclose at this time.

I want to assure you folks that the accusation that started my character assassination was that somehow that I gave exclusive rights to Dr. Jones report to the New Times in exchange for them paying for it. That is absolutely untrue. The Senate president confirmed with Dr. Jones on Thursday, January 5th that he has no intention of giving his final report to the New Times first. He is going to make sure the Senate and everybody in the Press gets it at the same time and I'm hoping that's tomorrow. As I've said all along I did not cut a deal with the New Times to give them exclusive rights. The New Times from what I understand, they faxed a letter which I gave the Senate President, they unconditionally agreed to pay for Dr. Jones travel and time . I did not have an agreement with the New Times and it is very false for someone to make that accusation in the Press and for the Press then to add to that.

In short I just want to say that it's time for the Republican Party to unify and for us all to stand for the integrity of elections. It's not about Orlich and McComish, it's not about Andy Thomas and I. It's about something bigger than all us. It's about free and fair elections and that is the key our Liberty. Thank you very much.