Principal chief candidate Bill John Baker says testimony given during a Cherokee Supreme Court hearing today has proven that vaults holding the votes were breached between Sunday after the election and Monday morning.
“We just found that the vault has been breached twice since they said that they’ve locked it up and the envelopes have been taken out,” Baker said to reporters during a recess in the hearing today. “We’re going to go back in and see what the justices think about them saying they hadn’t breached the vault and the vault being breached twice.”
The Supreme Court hearing was to determine whether ballots were safely maintained and that the chain of custody wasn’t breached during the tabulation. In the hearing are four Supreme Court justices; both chief candidates; Attorney for the Election Commission Lloyd Cole of Stilwell, Election Commission chair Roger Johnson, Smith attorney Dean Luthey and Baker attorney Kalyn free; and seven members of the media.
Luthey said the hearing is “a statutory requirement. The Supreme Court is hearing testimony on the integrity of the ballots. So far, no testimony has been given that says that the transfer cases or ballot boxes were compromised.” Terry Rainey, the president of the company that the Cherokee Election Commission used to tabulate the votes, testified in the recount hearing that he did enter the vaults twice on Monday morning, once to pick up mailed-in absentee results and the second time to collect early in-person absentee results. The results of the elections were stored in envelopes in the vault.
Baker is convinced those breaches are the reason the results switched from Baker being declared the unofficial winner on Sunday and current Chief Chad Smith being declared winner on Monday morning.
“Folks, I don’t know what was in the envelopes, all I know was that the election was stole with those envelopes,” he said.
When asked if he believed the election was stolen, he said, “I do. They said they were going to breakfast and come back and certify the numbers that they gave us and put on the door. That’s all they were doing, going to rest a little bit and certify them. Now they come back Monday and they’ve let somebody in the vault. They’ve gone back and gotten information out of the vault that was supposed to be under lock and key and preserved for a recount, and they got those things, and now they’ve certified somebody else.”
Baker says that the Election Commission has videotape of the vault being breached, but they are experiencing technical glitches.
Full Article: Vaults breached twice, Cherokee chief recount still not under way | Tulsa World.