Tim Sippel, ordinary citizen, who made a public records request, appeared before Judge Janelle Wipper (left), the judge and sole juror in Washington County Elections vs Tim Sippel trial, September 20th and 21st. Little was found on the internet as to content of character or history regarding Wipper.
Court watchers noticed Judge Wipper's frown, furrowed brow, turned down mouth, Wipper's seeming negative non-verbals to the issue "of the public's interest" in the topic of Election Integrity, which specifically this trial was convened to review. The Clear Ballot contract did not claim a "trade secret" exemption to prevent the record being released. In fact, no one from Clear Ballot appeared at the trial to claim such a trade secret or even a desire for Tim Sippel to not get its SQL file.
Court watchers noticed Judge Wipper was so impatient that when attorney Stephen Joncus (on the left with Janice Dysinger) was addressing the law question in this case, Wipper interrupted Joncus presenting his evidence in his closing statement. Wipper told Joncus to stop explaining his evidentiary slides in detail, instead for Joncus to just "summarize".
Since Wipper is both judge and jury in this case this was like, for example, in a jury trial with twelve jurors, for a juror to stand up, interrupt an attorney giving a closing statement to tell the attorney, "Hurry up!" In a jury trial, the juror would be dismissed, and probably a motion for mistrial would be made.
Washington County D.A. affirmed the records in question were in the public interest, they were public records, and they must be released to Tim Sippel.
But then Secretary of State Shemia Fagan jumped in to intervene, and advised in a filed court document, giving testimony that her statewide election system was "vulnerable" to being attacked. Shemia's admission of her vote tabulating machines vulnerability is a pivotal moment in Oregon history and maybe the nation's history?
Shemia Fagan's response to ordinary citizen, Tim Sipple, doing his civic duty, the Secretary of State now has over 200 other ordinary citizens who have made records requests at numerous county election offices across the state.
Mistrust is high in Oregon related to the conduct of elections by the Secretary of State. The trial before Judge Wipper is, indeed, in the public interest, by the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, the Oregon Constitution and Oregon law. Government records are public records.
Sippel, an ordinary citizen, with computer software and programming expertise testified, he for the first time became interested in Oregon elections with the seemingly surprised loss of Knute Buehler in the 2018 governor's race as Buehler seemed predicted to win.
Tim Sippel on the left a soft spoken down to earth regular citizen, regular guy, your usual techie kind of guy who loves all things computers and databases (pictured here with Dr. Douglas Frank, expert witness for the case). Tim started his journey to begin understanding the Oregon election process by volunteering and worked the 2020 elections in Washington County.
Tim Sippel testified he toured and talked to county elections officials including Washington County's expert witness, Mickie Kawai, the county's 30 year elections supervisor. Mr. Sippel self-educated on the elections system directly by participating in the process.
What sent Tim as he said on the witness stand "...down the Rabbit Hole..." was when state Elections Director Steve Trout was fired in November 2020 for writing a transition report to in-coming Secretary of State Shemia Fagan highlighting grave long-standing problems with elections in Oregon.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/9/stephen-trout-oregon-elections-director-fired-afte/
From the article: "Oregon’s elections director (Stephen Trout) was abruptly fired in a text message by the secretary of state after he pointed out serious issues with the state’s aging and vulnerable technology for running elections."Instead of looking and addressing Oregon's Election Director's concerns Trout was fired.
From the article:
Stephen Trout exposed concerns about legislative functioning and oversight as well:
"He also said federal money had been misspent and that $11.7 million from the federal government must be returned by Dec. 31 because the Legislature did not authorize to “spend a penny” of the funds.
This happened even as the Oregon Centralized Voter Registration system is so old that Microsoft no longer supports the Windows Server 2008 system that it operates on."
Some of Trout's concerns had been put to Multnomah County Elections officials July 19, 2021 including Dan Forester (who attended the trial) who replaced Mickie Kawai in June 2022. Highlighted concerns included:
"Steve Trout wrote: “Many of these projects have been talked about and/or worked on for years but never finished. Most of the projects that have been completed in the past couple of years have had to be undone because there were changes made that resulted in breaking other things.
Elections Division staff has a lack of confidence in IT services and is frustrated that whenever a project is undertaken it often makes things worse.”
Director of Multnomah County Elections Tim Scott was asked at a July 19, 2021 meeting with a concerned citizen the names of IT staff who serviced Multnomah County Elections? He refused to give names citing confidentiality. Turns out one of them was Dan Forester.
At the trial on September 21, 2022 at the Washington County Courthouse, Forester refused to engage in answering questions Truth in the Pacific Northwest had about the adjudication process in Multnomah County, he walked away.
From the article on Dan Forester moving from Multnomah County Elections to Washington County Elections:
"Forester brings eight years of experience working at the Multnomah County Elections Division across several work areas. His most recent experience has been as a project manager where he led multiple efforts including managing the elections division calendar and ensuring ballot tabulation accuracy – from design and testing to scanning and adjudication.
Forester also served as an election system specialist, managing customer service inquiries, data entry and overseeing signature verification staff accuracy as well as the voter registration and election management database. In his first role at Multnomah County Elections Division as a mail ballot specialist, Forester managed the production of mail ballot envelope packets, all matters pertaining to the U.S. Postal Service, and archiving."
https://www.co.washington.or.us/AssessmentTaxation/Elections/News/new-elections-division-manager.cfm
Forester did not testify at the trial as an expert witness and would not entertain engagement with citizens wanting questions answered.As well as court watchers watching Judge Janelle Wipper in action during the trial they also watched the county and state's attorneys in action.
When expert witness Mark Cook for Tim Sippel went on the witness stand county's attorney Mr. Bush tried to make a big deal out of the witness not having a degree in social science or political science or any other degree. At break a court watcher asked Mr. Bush if he knew that neither Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg have college degrees. Mr. Bush kept walking, waving off the question with his hand.
Mark Cook like Bill Gates when Gates was in in junior high school going at night to the University of Washington to use their new computers to learn and write code, Mark Cook started learning to code at age ten. Mark is an IT security guy with his own company Wiz Ware Technologies, Inc.
Those who worked in state government may remember the first "Bulletin Boards" in the computer systems coming out of Microsoft in the 1990s and may remember this little guy who was alternately loved and hated when he popped up to ask what you were doing and did you need help:
Mark Cook was on the Microsoft development team and produced those features. He was fifteen years young. Like Bill Gates he was dialed into computers and coding young.
Cook testified security risks to Clear Ballot can be found in Clear Ballot's own manuals and not with Tim Sippel's or Janice Dysinger's public records request.
Thus the public record Secretary of State Shemia Fagan is trying to stop from being released was already released to Janice Dysinger, seen here with Mark Cook. The cat was already out of the bag.
In Mark Cook's two days in Washington County with his skill set as security expert, on the witness stand, he was able to tell Washington County their whole wireless system is vulnerable and a security risk that they need to address.
Thus by the time final expert witness for Tim Sippel took the stand the county and state attorneys went flying off the cliff like two lemmings by making their case (as though these two attorneys were THE experts), that Nobel nominated, Ph.D in Physics, computer, math, statistician, elections expert Dr. Frank was not an expert because Dr. Frank did not have a degree in either social science or political science.
For some reason Judge Janelle Wipper went along with what some court watchers saw as an absurd decision, she denied the jury (meaning Wipper herself) the opportunity to hear expert Dr. Frank's testimony.
What court watchers witnessed was the clash of two cultures.
The unelected and often failed unelected state administrative managers who head up government agencies and the real world of We the People, who by the Creator and the U.S. and Oregon Constitution we're given the right of self-government, collided in Washington County Elections vs Tim Sippel.
Government was created to preserve and secure those rights.
Over time Oregon took a wrong turn ending up with government employees seeing themselves as dictators over we the People.
Some who have studied history see the big modern turn happened in 1970 after a decade of assassinations in the United State of America starting with the 1963 murder of President John F. Kennedy.
The public interest is, indeed, high now especially after the over two year shutdown by Governor Kate Brown in violation of the Oregon Emergency Law since March 8, 2020.
The unintended consequences of what Kate did resulted in Oregonians meeting in person, self-educating, supporting each other, and getting their kids out of the compulsory government public school indoctrination system first started 192 years ago. Oregon was the first state to sign onto the NEA (National Education Association) socialism plan.
Oregonians have now stepped up to monitor government.
Thus the first day of trial, the court had to open up a second courtroom for court watchers. The second day they had to make the second courtroom larger.
There is public interest and that public interest will not be going away.
Portland media? Nowhere to be seen either day at the courthouse.
Attorneys from both sides have a due date of Friday September 23, 2022 to get their supporting documents to Judge Wipper.
After that she will make her decision as sole juror and judge.
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September 23, 2022
