Picture Perfect? Photo Image Scanners, your 2024 Ballot & Your Matsu Borough Assembly
Contributed by Rocky, Richard Stoffel
A picture is worth a thousand words or one, ten, fifty, a hundred or a thousand votes. Fasten your seatbelts as this true report and accompanying photo’s will blow your ballot integrity and the Matsu Borough Hand Count Only – No Machines Ordinance right out of the ‘Land of the Free’ leaving your ballot and your voice in the Matsu Borough government dumpster. Hereafter, in this article, Mataunska - Susitna Borough is referred to as MSB.
Now picture this! It’s mid-October 2024. You are at the MSB Election Ballot Training Session for Hand Count Only-No Machines in MSB Building Palmer. You are excited to actually see and count the ballots by hand instead of watching votes disappear into a tabulating abyss. MSB Clerk Lonnie McKetchnie and IT staff are training the last group of about twenty-five pre-approved Election Worker Trainee’s before the upcoming November 2024 election. Team Leader Trainees are given a black pelican box measuring about 24” wide x 20” deep x 14” high.
Upon instruction, the pelican box is opened revealing a ‘machine’. It's a Canon ImageFormula DR M260 Scanner that captures images to transfer. Another ‘machine’, a computer device is nestled in the bottom of the pelican box. A Team Leader Trainee speaks up telling MSB Clerk McKetchnie, ‘There is a computer in here with an antenna’. MSB Clerk McKetchnie responds that it doesn’t have a computer. Then the MSB IT staff chimes in and says, ‘Yes, it has a modem’. It's actually a type of Stick PC high speed connectivity computer.
WHAT?? Whiplashes may be occurring at this point among some of the trainee’s as they are looking around at each other in shock. The MSB Election Hand Count Only-No Machines ordinance and codes adopted into law on 10/4/2022 remains unchanged and are still, even today as you read this article, in effect. Check them out yourself by accessing the link and instructions below.
So, the MSB Election Ballot Training Session began with ‘Machine’ training. The Canon scanners with
CaptureOnTouch provides options of where to send your scans to such as the Cloud, Email, Folders, Flash Drive etc. The scanners appear to only operate when ‘connected’ to WiFi via a computer. The Election Trainees are taught how to turn on the devices and use the ‘Machines’ to scan the ballots. As to where the scanned ballots are being sent once scanned, that information is not included in the training. The MSB Clerk refers to Canon image scanners as ‘Paper Counters’.
Per the training, all the ballots are first run through the Canon scanners in batches of 25. Once all the ballots have been fed through the machine, then the actual human Hand Count of ballots will begin. The Machine Scanned Ballots Plus Hand Count training is complete. Apparently, the Hand Count Only-No Machines training has been hijacked by machines.
The Trained Team Leaders are instructed to pack their Canon scanners and Stick computers back into the pelican box and take it to their home sweet home. Yes, you read that right. Welcome to MSB Election Integrity 101 and keep in mind that the election is still two and a half weeks away. On election night, the ballot scanning/counting Team Leaders are to go to their assigned ballot counting location, bring their pelican box and set up the machines. There are 40 precincts in the MSB, each having an assigned pelican box with machines.
If you were an Election Ballot Scanning Team Leader entrusted with a top-of-the-line MSB government ballot scanning computer to store in your home until election day, you surely would take pictures for insurance’s sake. As you are probably already thinking, the integrity of your MSB ballot is anything but picture perfect. In browsing the ballot counting history of your MSB Assembly, Mayor, Clerk, Manager and Attorney from 6/2022 to present, deliberations come to light. The deep bowels of the MSB 20232024 Budget are groaning under a unanimous MSB Assembly vote on 5/9/2023. In addition to using the budget to subvert the Hand Count Only-No Machines ordinance and law by funding prohibited ballot processing machines, it appears the MSB Assembly violated 9 codes in the Hand Count Only-No Machines ordinance and violated the trust and will of the MSB people. What would happen if citizens, businesses or organizations violated MSB ordinances like this?
Resource Navigation:
1. Assembly Legislation Ordinance
https://matsugov.us/ → Assembly → Current Assembly Legislation → Legislation Tab → In search row select 2022 and ordinance → Select ‘Search Legislation’ → Select ‘OR 22-119’ → See on left margin ‘Attachments’, see numbers 1. OR 22-119 & 2. IM 22-215 →Select #2 and start at end of page 2-4 for the meat of the No Machines ordinance codes/law