TW's new political blog, ScrambleWatch, continues to bring you the latest in local politics, including an update on early ballots in Pima County, Q&As with the candidates and this out-of-this-world entry in Stephen Colbert's Make McCain Exciting Green Screen Challenge.

Coming soon to ScrambleWatch: A Not Quite LiveBlog of the fiery Bronson/Branch-Gilby debate at the Nucleus Club!

Sorry, folks: The Legislative District 27 Clean Elections debate between Democrats Phil Lopes, Olivia Cajero-Bedford and John Kromko originally scheduled for this evening has been postponed until Tuesday, July 22. The Skinny apologizes for leading you astray.

But there is a debate between Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson and her Democratic opponent, Donna Branch-Gilby at the Pima County Democratic Party's Nucleus Club get-together at 5:30 tonight at the Viscount Suite Hotel, 4855 E. Broadway. The event will also feature Supervisor Ramon Valadez and his opponent in the Democratic primary, Robert Robuck.

The downside: It's a private get-together, so it will cost you $20 unless you can find a member of the Nucleus Club to invite you as a guest.

For more upcoming political events, visit our ScrambleWatch political calendar!

Here are a few events that were received too late for inclusion in our July 10 print issue. We recommend calling event organizers for last-minute changes in time, price, or other details.

• Saturday, July 12 from 10 a.m. to whenever

  The Mint

  3540 E. Grant Road

  881-9169

  Free Classic Car Show. Enjoy classic cars, free food and drink specials. Donate canned goods to the Community Food Bank.

• Tuesday, July 15 and Wednesday, July 16 at 7 p.m.

  Randolph Arts Center Auditorium

  200 S. Alvernon Way

  791-4196

  Theater Auditions. El Rio Theatre Project will be holding auditions for Hamlet. Bring a two-minute classic monologue or be prepared to cold read from the script. The production will run for 11 performances at the end of September into October. A stipend will be offered.

• Wednesday, July 16 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m.

  Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce

  465 W. St. Mary's Road

  733-1112 ext. 108

  Business Lecture. HSL HR Services and Support presents a lecture on preparing and conducting effective performance evaluations. Reservations required. $49 per person, $39 each additional person in the same company.

• Wednesday, July 16 from 7 to 8 p.m.

  MindWorks Studio

  4340 N. Campbell Ave., Suite 107

  762-7642

  Balance Your Brain. Discover how you can manage your own nervous system, your mood, energy and balance with an intro to biofeedback/neurofeedback. Seating is limited to 20 people. Free. Call for reservations.

After spending much of yesterday talking to lawyers, we think we have a better understanding of the fight to preserve the ballots from the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority election, which Pima County Treasurer Beth Ford has said she is ready to destroy.

We’ll get to the part about how secrets may or may not have been spilled at the Boondocks Lounge in a second, but here’s a bit of background for those who came in late: In May 2006, Pima County voters approved a half-cent sales tax to fund an estimated $2.1 billion in transportation projects over two decades.

Attorney Bill Risner, who has successfully sued Pima County to gain access to electronic databases related to ballot tabulation, suggested last year that the RTA election might have been flipped—that county election officials rigged the computers to show the RTA propositions passed even though voters actually rejected it.

Since then, we’ve had an investigation by Attorney General Terry Goddard (which critics have dismissed as a “sham”) and lots of legal jousting by Risner and the Pima County Attorney’s Office, which reached a climax when the Pima County Board of Supervisors agreed to give up an appeal of the case and turned over the databases to Risner. Or, more accurately, offered to turn them over to Risner, who has been too busy to pick them since winning the case.

You’re probably wondering: Why not just recount the ballots? Because state law prohibits the county from doing a recount without a judge’s order.

We’re almost to the part about the Boondocks, so stay with us.

But before we get to that: Jim March, the tech guy with the election integrity crew, says he’s been working on developing a program that might (or might not) detect any signs of fraud in the RTA database he got from the county back in January. He said yesterday that he hoped to have some results by November.

March made his comments at Risner’s press conference, where the scrappy attorney alerted the public that Pima County Treasurer Beth Ford was planning to destroy the ballots from the RTA election.

As we reported earlier, Ford sent letters to the various political parties informing them that she would be destroying the ballots from the RTA election if no one raised an object by Friday, July 11.

State law requires ballots to be sealed in a vault under the control of the county treasurer and destroyed six months after an election. The RTA ballots are still around because they were evidence in the lawsuit that Risner had filed against that county that has been more or less resolved.

Ford maintains she has no position on whether the ballots should be destroyed.

“It’s fine with me if we keep them,” she says. “It’s fine with me if we destroy them.”

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry says he wants to keep the ballots to prove the RTA election wasn’t flipped.

Huckelberry and Ford—an elected official who does not answer to Huckelberry—met with lawyers from the Pima County Attorney’s Office last month to discuss the legal options regarding the ballots. Ford says she was concerned she might be in violation of state law if she didn’t destroy the ballots, while Huckelberry wanted to preserve them.

“My instructions to the county attorney were to go to court if necessary to prevent those ballots from being destroyed,” Huckelberry says.

The separate positions, according to Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall and her chief deputy, Amelia Craig Cramer, set up a conflict between the two county departments.

The attorneys asked both Huckelberry and Ford to waive any conflict so they could devise a legal strategy to ask a judge to preserve the ballots.

Huckelberry agreed to the waiver, but Ford refused.

“I’m not real comfortable with the county attorney’s representation of my interest in the first place because if they were looking out for my interests when this case first went to court, they would have addressed it at that point,” Ford told us yesterday. “I wouldn’t even be in this position.”

Here’s where it starts to cost you money: Both Ford and Huckelberry will now have to hire outside counsel to settle the question of destroying the ballots in court. The Democratic Party, the Green Party and the Libertarian Party are expected to ask the court to preserve the ballots.

Risner had a second Big Reveal at the press conference: He produced a affidavit signed by Zbigniew Osmolski, a former county employee who claims that he had a “candid conversation” with Elections Division computer programmer Bryan Crane, who confided to him “that he ‘fixed’ the RTA, or Regional Transportation Authority election on the instruction of his bosses.”

This conversation, according to the affadavit, took place at the Boondocks Lounge, 3306 N. First Ave., while the two stepped outside for a smoke.

The Tucson Citizen’s Gary Duffy reports that Crane denies making a confession to Osmolski in the shadows of the Boondock’s giant wine bottle.

Risner said that Osmolski was more interested in talking to Attorney General Terry Goddard than to the press; we haven’t yet vetted his credibility.

Risner hopes the affidavit is enough evidence of potential criminal wrong-doing that Goddard will come down to Tucson and order the ballots to be counted again, which would either prove that the election was rigged or remove the cloud hanging over it.

Huckelberry says he’d like to run the ballots again, too.

“We could have saved $250,000, $300,000 in attorney’s fees and all the aggravation we’ve gone through over the last two years if we would have been just allowed to recount the ballots,” he says.

... to bring you this week's issue, online and ready for its loving readers! Feel free to comment on its contents here.

Pima County Treasurer Beth Ford says she sent notice to the political parties last month that she would be destroying the 2006 RTA ballots unless she heard an objection by Friday, July 11.

Ford says she has held off on following the state law that requires the destruction of ballots six months after an election because the ballots were considered evidence in a lawsuit filed by the Pima County Democratic Party regarding whether electronic databases were public record.

"Now I'm stuck in a position where, 'What do I do with the ballots?'" Ford says. "Now I'm violating state law because I didn't destroy them. So I'm stuck in catch-22."

Ford said that after consulting with the County Attorney's Office, she sent notice to the political parties on June 27 that she planned to destroy the RTA ballots, which are now in storage. She gave the political parties until Friday, July 11, to raise an objection.

"If I receive an objection, then I can go to the courts so the courts can tell me what I'm supposed to do," Ford says.

Ford says she did not speak to County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry about destroying the ballots.

Ford says she has no position on whether the ballots should be destroyed.

"It's fine with me if we keep them," she says. "It's fine with me if we destroy them."

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry says he's unaware of any plans to destroy the ballots from the 2006 RTA election, as alleged by attorney Bill Risner in a press release yesterday.

"I have said, 'Do not destroy them under any circumstances,'" Huckelberry says. "My instructions to the county attorney were to go to court if necessary to prevent those ballots from being destroyed."

Huckelberry says he'll be sending out a memo today to request that the County Attorney's Office prevent County Treasurer Beth Ford to not destroy the ballots.

Huckelberry says he'd be delighted to recount the ballots but the law prevents the county from doing so.

"We could have saved $250,000, $300,000 in attorney's fees and all the aggravation we've gone through over the last two years we would have been just allowed to recount the ballots," says Huckelberry, who points out that under state law, the ballots should have been destroyed already, had it not been for the county's decision to hang onto them. "It demonstrates how archaic election law in Arizona is."

Huckelberry quotes Charles Dickens: "The law is an ass."

Attorney Bill Risner and his election-integrity gang say Pima County Treasurer Beth Ford is getting ready to get destroy the ballots from Pima County's 2006 RTA election.

They also say they've got a former county employee who will testify under oath that a member of the Pima County Elections Division was worried that he'd be busted for being part of a scheme to flip the RTA election.

Risner and Co. will hold a press conference to call for a new investigation by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at downtown's Valdez Main Library.

Here are a few holiday events that were received too late for inclusion in our Juy 3 print issue.

45th Annual Camden/Palo Verde 4th of July Parade

Corner of 1500 block of North Palo Verde Boulevard and Camden Street

8:30 a.m. parade registration; 9 a.m. parade begins

Since the early 1960s, Tucsonans have enjoyed this non-mechanized parade. Prizes and a pinata party follow. Free. Call 881-5018 for info.

July 4th Explosion

Executive Inn and Suites

333 West Drachman

Noon to 2 a.m.

Event includes live music from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. with Still Crusin, a barbecue ($7.99 adults and $4.99 for children 13 and younger), drink specials and fireworks at 9 p.m. Lounge and pool will be open. Room specials will be offered. Call 393-3000 for info.

Let Freedom Sing

Tucson Convention Center Music Hall

260 S. Church Ave.

Doors open at 3:15 p.m.; concert starts at 4 p.m.

This USO-type show includes patriotic music from the Arts Express orchestra and chorus, appearances by invited congressional reps and city/county political leaders, and a salute to the 355th Fighter Wing and officer Erik Hite. Tickets are $12, free for children 10 and younger. Discounts offered for seniors, active military and students. Call 319-0400 or visit www.arts-express.org for tickets and info.

Who says summers in Tucson are slow? We have:

-- A whole new issue of the Weekly that's online! Feel free to comment on its contents here.

-- TAMMIES finalists! Head on over to TAMMIES.com to vote for your faves.

-- A YouTube Ask a Mexican!