On Monday, August 13, at 2:30 p.m., Pima County Superior Court Judge Kyle Bryson will hear the matter of whether Pima County’s alleged voter fraud in the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election on May 16, 2006 will be argued in the Court. At the time of the election, questions arose regarding the election results almost immediately.
They persist in this lawsuit in Arizona Superior Court. At stake on Monday is whether Pima County voters’ votes will count.
The stated goal of a lawsuit filed in Arizona Superior Court by Tucson attorney Bill Risner on behalf of the Libertarian Party is “to protect the “purity of elections” in the future, starting with the 2012 elections. According to attorney Bill Risner, the lawsuit is based on two facts; “At the present time it is easy to cheat using our election computers and impossible to challenge a rigged election.”
The lawsuit alleges that “Pima County, through the direction and control of its county administrator C.H. “Chuck” Huckleberry, has systematically subverted critical controls required to protect the purity of elections. The elimination of those controls has permitted county management to take advantage of the ability to cheat presented by defects in our computerized election system.”
The central allegation in the suit is that “county management fraudulently rigged the Regional Transportation Authority election.”
The Pima County Democratic Party had previously taken on the issue. It was through the Discovery process in that effort, that the current suit bases its allegations. In papers filed with the court, lawyers claim that from “three other lawsuits involving the Pima County Democratic Party and Pima County,” a path was provided “for future discovery that must be followed in this lawsuit.”
The Libertarian Party argues that “The ease of cheating when matched with the impossibility of challenging any specific election requires court intervention in order to protect the purity of elections and ensure that we will have free elections.” They cite three Arizona Constitution sections as the basis of their claim, including Arizona Constitution Art. 2 § 21, which requires all elections to be “free and equal.”
Plaintiffs say that the most important legal and factual building block of this lawsuit is the agreed upon fact that it is very easy to cheat with our election computer software. In the suit, it is alleged that “the ease of cheating may be counterintuitive, especially among those least familiar with computers, but it is a fact. The ease of cheating may be a surprise even to those who are familiar with computers but whose familiarity was derived from securely developed programs. Our election computer system has quite simply been built to cheat and, at least for that goal, it has succeeded.”
Both conservative and liberal activists hold that the goal of the lawsuit is to make elections a transparent process by removing Pima County’s ability to cheat undetected. They have fought for over six years of litigation for the courts to decide they indeed have jurisdiction to ensure clean elections.
They allege that in order to ‘preserve the critically flawed nature of Pima County’s elections system, Administrator Chuck Huckleberry continues to resist a forensic exam of the ballots now residing at Iron Mountain’s storage facility. Huckleberry is now willing to contradict past statements of how he would be vindicated by the scrutiny he pretends to welcome as justice looms on the distant horizon. Justice, unfortunately, is still a vague unobtainable outcome lost in the gears of Pima County’s political machine.”
One Republican activist has been encouraging the public to attend the hearing, “Election integrity is not a right or left issues it should concern all of us.”
The hearing will be held in Judge Kyle Bryson’s Courtroom, Fifth Floor, Pima Superior Court, 110 W. Congress, Tucson.
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