Republican Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll forced three Democratic colleagues last week to do what their party and its lawyer couldn’t accomplish in a year of arguing and court challenges.

Supervisors Richard Elías, Sharon Bronson and Ramón Valadez voted to obey a court order to open county records to ensure ballots were counted accurately in 2006 and will be correct for this year’s primary and general elections.

Thanks to Carroll, we’ll either learn those elections were counted honestly, even if procedures were sloppy ... or that one or more rogue employees of the county’s Elections Division actually changed some vote results.

Remember that County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez handles voter registration and provides the ballots and polling places, but it’s the Elections Division – which reports to County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and the supervisors – that actually counts the votes.

The big question is why Elías, Bronson and Valadez didn’t immediately call for a complete and open investigation when critics suggested possible irregularities in three 2006 elections; for the 20-year regional transportation plan and both the county primary and general elections.

Most elected officials would fight to be first to call for a probe while stressing support for the sanctity of the ballot box. When the supervisors didn’t, a few wondered whether they might be covering up some wrong-doing.

It was a bad time to avoid questions about the integrity of vote counting. This is a presidential election year, the supervisors and most other county officials will be up for re-election themselves, and the county was considering a $700 million bond election.

But the three Democratic supervisors didn’t seem interested. They apparently listened to Huckelberry and then used his talking points when answering concerns from their constituents, especially fellow Democrats.

County supervisors aren’t elections or data processing experts, so presumably they didn’t play any significant role in procedures and processes for the Elections Division.

Huckelberry is busy with daily details of county government, not biennial elections, so he probably didn’t get very involved, either.

That indicates that no one at the top grasped the need for absolute ballot security from beginning to end of the process.

Statements in the party’s suit against the county indicate that at least one elections employee ran early ballot totals several days before an election and took files home, lest they be destroyed by fire.

Counting ballots before the polls close shows which propositions or candidates are winning or losing. Politicians can react quickly with robo-calls or mass e-mails if they have that knowledge.

Another problem is that it would be easier to alter data when you take it home than trying to do it at the office with others watching.

Again, we don’t know that anything wrong happened. But we do know something could have happened because the procedures were lousy.

Democrats and their attorney, Bill Risner, made those points before, during and after the trial. But even when a judge ordered the county to turn over the pertinent data to the plaintiffs’ experts, Huckelberry persuaded the Democratic board majority to appeal the ruling.

Carroll, backed by 60 or so concerned citizens (most of them Democrats), began using parliamentary tactics last Tuesday to force the board to drop the appeal. After a couple of hours of motions, citizen outbursts, testimony and several recesses, he succeeded.

Elias, with help from Carroll, Bronson and the Democrats’ computer consultants, moved to cancel the appeal. They ordered Huckelberry and the Elections Division to give the Democrats what they wanted.

Carroll, Bronson, Valadez and GOP Supervisor Ann Day (who had backed most of the earlier efforts of the Democratic supervisors) all voted yes. Openness, honesty, logic, transparency and democracy won, 5-0.

Congratulations to Elias, Bronson and Valadez.

(Finally!)