Questions arose recently regarding the Election Division’s decision to begin counting the ballots the Friday before Election Day. Organizers are concerned, due to allegations over the years, that the County “peeks” at early results prior to Election Day and uses that information as polling data. That data allows insiders to know how many more votes they need to get to win.
As a result, District stakeholders, candidates, and organizers of the recall urged the head of the Elections Division, Brad Nelson, to refrain from counting the ballots earlier than necessary and allow candidates to have observers at three proposed “polling places.”
Richard Hernandez, the recall organizer, expressed his concerns to the commissioners and asked seemingly simple questions of Elections Division head, Brad Nelson. “Pima County is proposing that on the Friday before that they take a sample ballot and they do a pre-count. I vehemently disagree with that. I am asking your support for the recall. That we go out to the County and say let’s count ballots.”
Hernandez noted that a mere 5000 are expected to be cast by the voters in the mid-size district.
“We need to come in Pima County and show them that we want to count all the ballots because you shared with me how capable you are… Every candidate can have their representative present and then we can all walk away knowing that they opened the envelopes, they verified them, everything is done at once. It’s done in two hours and we are done. “
Commissioners Mickey Duniho, a Ray Carroll appointee and William Beard, an Ally Miller appointee to the Commission were sympathetic to the speakers, and shared some of their concerns. Duniho asked Nelson if there was any reason logical reason why the Division would need to count the ballots early. “We are merely discussing this thing and trying to help these people,” said Duniho.
Commissioner Benny White, the Republican Party’s representative and County crony, ran interference for Nelson. He insisted that discussing the matter was problematic and implied that it was against Open Meeting laws. He insisted that Nelson could not respond to questions.
The Commission Chair agreed with Duniho, “I can’t see any reason why he can’t answer that question.”
After a brief discussion, White pounded his fist on the table and shouted, “I don’t yield the floor yet!”
“Brad (Nelson) has no authority to start making changes and doing things here there and yonder. That is determined by the election official. The election official can tell him to go one way or the other. If this body doesn’t like what the election official tells him or is not getting a response or doesn’t get an audience with the election official their recourse is to go to the courts and enjoin the Elections Department from doing anything other than what they want done,” snapped White.
“We don’t have jurisdiction here to make a recommendation… how to conduct this particular election,” said White. “The courts are empowered to direct people to do things.”
Commissioner Bill Beard stood up for the Sunnyside voters and challenged White, “If it is the will of this Board, we have the ability to direct the Board of Supervisors to not begin counting ballots until election day. That would be well within our scope of capabilities.”
The Chairman agreed with Beard.
White then argued that the Commissioners would have to call for an Emergency Meeting if they wanted to help the Sunnyside voters. He continued with his attempts to make the voters go to court.
Residents have spent tens of thousands of dollars in court fighting the County over the results of the RTA election and the county has spent somewhere two million dollars. They had hoped the Commission would make a recommendation to the Board of Supervisor and the matter would be peacefully resolved.
White doubled down and tried every trick in the book to prevent Nelson from answering the question as to why the ballots had to be counted before Election Day.
Commissioner Doniho said, “All we are doing right now is having a discussion… We’re not making any decisions, and all I am asking Brad to tell us if there is some reason for needing to start counting ballots early that I am not aware of. Because it sounds to me like doing 5000 ballots on election night is totally doable, so is there some other thing that I am not aware of that would prevent it.Now certainly after this discussion is over these people are free to go into court and have some judge rules against whoever they want, but right now I would think it would be a whole lot easier just to have a little conversation between us to get some kind of understanding between us, Brad, and the community as to what is going to happen and why it is going to happen.”
Nelson, who had earlier said he was uncomfortable answering questions was quick to offer an excuse. He said that the office would be busy with clerical and personnel tasks related to the Primary Election.
When asked again by Duniho if there was any reason to not count the ballots early, Nelson responded, “I would prefer not to.”
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Governing Board candidate, Mike Polak has been a target of campaign dirty tricks coming from the District superintendent’s office. Polak touched on that briefly but focused on the need for polling place observers.
“There is no reason why a superintendent should be involved with this type of an issue. He has no business doing this or making a comment. We need to keep this level. We need to make it fair for everybody. For all the candidates,” said Polak.
The Elections Division arranged to have one polling place inside a District-controlled school.
“We were told we couldn’t have observers in the drop off locations,” said Polak. “Well if you are going to give out a provisional ballot if you are going to give a replacement ballot it becomes a polling place at that point because they are filling out their ballots there, but we are told we can’t have observers there. That’s not correct we are allowed to have observers there and we are being told we cannot by Ricky Hernandez.”
Governing board candidate, Eric Giffin, told the Commissioners, “Since we have such a low number of ballots being cast I don’t see why we can’t remove all doubt and just do the count the last minute…” Giffin suggested that if they delayed the vote counting they could avoid people’s doubts about the election results.
Conservative local businessman and founder of Tus Vecinos en el Barrio, Nick Pierson told the commissioners that it was incumbent on them to make “sure the integrity of the elections is 100 percent.” He urged them to allow oversight to no avail.
As a result of the County’s apparent unwillingness to remedy the situation, candidates, residents, and organizers are now working with a Tucson attorney to fight for transparent and fair elections.