Case Closed?

When state Attorney General Terry Goddard arrived at a press
conference last week to announce the results of his office’s criminal
investigation into the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority election,
one of the first people he greeted was Jeff Rogers, chairman of the
Pima County Democratic Party.

The friendly banter between the two attorneys may have seemed
insignificant, but the brief moment may have unintentionally brought
the past three years of litigation and wrangling, led by the Democratic
Party, full-circle.

Or did it?

With a row of TV news cameras in the front, and a group of election
integrity activists in the back, Goddard said: “There was no flip.”

The investigation is over, he said. No fraud occurred during the
2006 RTA election.

As the press conference progressed, however, it grew obvious that
the election-integrity activists in attendance didn’t agree. They asked
Goddard if a forensic analysis of the ballots was done or would be
considered, and if he’d consider comparing precinct counts to the poll
tapes (election results printed at each precinct the end of election
night).

Goddard and his agents in attendance said no. The point of the
investigation and the ballot examination was to determine if the
ballots’ initial count was accurate.

Rogers says he’s satisfied with the investigation results, but
thinks the AG needs to go the extra mile to say the investigation is
complete.

“Why not?” Rogers asks. “Take a forensic look at the ballots; a
random sample is all it would take.”

In an e-mail to the Tucson Weekly, Pima County Democratic
Party attorney Bill Risner wrote that election-integrity activists
asked the AG’s office to allow them to look at the ballots under a
microscope to rule out the possibility that the ballots were fakes.

“The AG’s refusal to permit us to look at sample ballots under a
microscope is noteworthy. We wanted to resolve RTA questions. Pima
County owns a ballot-printing machine that uses a different process
than Runbeck Co. that printed the original ballots. Pima County had
possession of the ballots for a couple of years and a motive to cover
up any crime. We asked the AG to do a forensic analysis or permit us to
look at the ballots. The AG refused,” Risner wrote.

After almost three years of litigation, including a public-records
lawsuit win, Risner is ready to head back to court to get the answers
he needs—and some of those answers may come from the poll tapes.
Poll tapes from past elections have been considered public records, yet
Risner’s original request for the RTA poll tapes was denied.

Goddard confirmed the ballot boxes would be returning to Pima County
soon after the press conference. Meanwhile, Pima County Treasurer Beth
Ford told the Tucson Weekly in an e-mail that Risner will still
need a court order to retrieve the poll tapes from the ballot
boxes.

Risner explained in his e-mail why he wants the tapes: “The poll
tapes … give precinct by precinct details. The poll tapes are
particularly useful to understand why the original data was deleted. We
have a very bad system that requires us to understand it as best as we
can. If everyone agrees, as they do, that it is easy to cheat with our
system, then we need to know as much as we can about the system so the
cheaters won’t try.”

Goddard confirmed during his press conference that the current
elections system used by Pima County, and most of the rest of the
state, is susceptible to cheating. He added that some
questions—resulting from evidence gathered by Risner and
election-integrity activists—remain unanswered.

Goddard says his office can’t explain the Elections Division’s
purchase of a crop scanner, a tool proven effective in changing
election results. Nor can he explain the affidavit from a former Pima
County employee accusing another employee of admitting he fixed the RTA
election.

Nonetheless, the case is closed, although while answering questions
from election-integrity activists John Brakey and Jim March, Goddard
said he’s open to listening to their concerns.

While activists continue to voice those concerns, Rogers says it’s
worth looking at the good that has come from the tenacity of the
activists. Rogers says major changes in election protocols and security
have come as a result of their work and the public-records lawsuit suit
won by the Democratic Party last year. The lawsuit also forced the
county to provide all political parties with electronic election
database files going back to 1998.

Besides the changes to elections procedures, Rogers says interaction
with other political parties and elections staff has improved over the
last year.

“While we may not always agree on everything, this has forced us to
work together. There is a lot more cooperation than ever before,” he
says.

He agrees that the matter has occasionally pitted Democrat against
Democrat, particularly during last year’s Pima County Board of
Supervisors election, when supervisors Sharon Bronson and Ramon Valadez
were on the hot seat to explain why they didn’t support their own
party’s public-records request.

There are no hard feelings, according to Rogers.

“And in a way, I think this will eventually become a model for the
nation,” he says, referring to elections transparency, access to public
records and party monitoring of electronic elections.

But all of it has come with a big price tag.

According to legal invoices obtained by the Tucson Weekly through a Freedom of Information Act request, the cost to
taxpayers so far for private attorneys representing Pima County
Treasurer Beth Ford (DeConcini McDonald Yetwin and Lacy law firm) and
the Pima County Board of Supervisors (Gabroy Rollman and Bossé)
in litigation regarding the fate of the RTA ballots is now more than
$100,000. Pima County taxpayers have also paid out more than $250,000
in attorney’s fees to Risner from the public-records lawsuit, and more
than $13,000 in other legal costs.

This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2009.