Presidential Candidate Rocky De La Fuente joined plaintiff Richard Hernandez, a Tucson School District Chairman and election integrity advocate, in the lawsuit aimed at preventing Pima County from destroying the ballot images in newer ES&S voting machines.

During the primary election cycle, De La Fuente discovered many instances when people were thrown off the voter roles, forced to vote on provisional ballots and unable to vote at all due to the drastically reduced polling locations. After seeing this happen during his presidential primary campaign in the Democratic Party, De La Fuente has stated that he will make election integrity a key issue as he runs for a senate seat in Florida.

Activists in Florida are equally concerned about the predicament of ballot images as 75% of the state will use the same machines in the general election.

While hand counted paper ballots are the best way to discourage cheating in elections, true graphical scans of the ballots can be an alternate means for verifying elections, especially when they are cross referenced with the actual ballot.

Newer models of the ES&S voting machines acquired last fall by Pima County have an added capability of generating ballot images which are created while the machine counts the physical ballots.

According to Pima County Elections Director Brad Nelson, there is not enough space to save the images during the election, so they delete them after each time they count a batch of ballots.

Arizonans close to this issue doubt Pima County Elections lack the basic computer acumen to manage image files. Some have suggested they drive Mr. Nelson over to the nearest electronics store to buy him a terabyte hard drive. Instead, they’re filing a lawsuit to protect the ballot images, which are actually used by the machines to tabulate the election results.  That makes them part of the chain of custody.

Hernandez and De La Fuente filed suit today with the help of John Brakey of AUDIT AZ.

Here is the complaint(pdf).

AUDIT AZ needs to recover $4,500.00 in legal fees. Your donations could help. Due to the generosity of those who saw the first notice, we have received over $300.00 in donations to bring the cost below $4,200.00.

Please consider a donation to AUDIT AZ. Help them cover their legal costs.

Democratic Presidential Candidate “Rocky” De La Fuente Acknowledges Primary Election Fraud

Richard Hernandez Encourages Election Integrity Commission “Don’t Be Bullied, Don’t Be Threatened”