As the board dawdled over releasing election records, a gathered crowd grew unruly.

β€œWe want our voices heard,” members of the angry 60-person group chanted.

The government was not doing enough, from their point of view, to prove that the results of an election were not fraudulent.

It was the Pima County Board of Supervisors in January 2008, and the election in question was the 2006 Pima County vote over a half-cent sales tax to fund a new transportation plan and establish a Regional Transportation Authority. It passed by 60% to 40%, a surprisingly big margin.

More than a year after the election, doubts had grown over whether the election was legitimate. Attorney Bill Risner spearheaded an effort to search for evidence of irregularities or fraud, and the Pima County Democratic Party signed onto a lawsuit seeking records.

Among other things, they sought a hand count of the election, handled by the attorney general’s office. That count, facilitated by the attorney general but carried out by the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, found the original count was correct. But that did not prove anything, as far as Risner and allies were concerned.

Risner and I spoke Tuesday, and he aired his suspicion that the attorney general’s staff β€œcame down, got all the ballots, put them in a separate storage room, where it appears the ballot boxes were stuffed.” In other words, the fraud that started in Pima County was perpetuated by then-Attorney General Terry Goddard, in Risner’s view.

Twelve years later, it’s Arizona Republicans who are going down the rabbit hole of election-fraud suspicions. True-believing Trump supporters keep changing their demands, but their underlying conviction remains the same: Trump was cheated out of winning Arizona, and probably the presidency. The only problem is finding the evidence.

Trump loyalists have filed lawsuits, held hearings and, on Monday, offered up alternative slates of electors to the ones who actually cast Arizona’s Electoral College votes. Nothing convincing has emerged to suggest Trump actually was cheated in Arizona, but the dead-enders deeply believe it was so.

So they insist on new measures that will prove their conviction correct.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Monday at which they expressed worries about election integrity that ranged from realistic to ridiculous. At the end, the result was predictable: More investigation must be done to prove the conspiracy that they believe is true. The new demand: an audit of election hardware and software.

β€œWe hold an audit and we see what the outcome is,” said the committee chairman, Sen Eddie Farnsworth. β€œAnd then we can put this to rest.”

Maricopa County should probably do it, provided that a truly independent and competent auditor can be found. But if the audit shows nothing wrong, you can count on the dead-enders maintaining their conviction that Trump was cheated and changing their demands once again.

There is only one right answer, to the election fraud believers.

This became particularly clear Monday afternoon when 22 state legislators and eight legislators-elect signed a letter to the United States Congress. Signatories β€” including Southern Arizona Reps. Mark Finchem and Bret Roberts, as well as Sen. David Gowan β€” claimed that election fraud had occurred, corrupting the vote.

Their conclusion was not that Arizona’s electoral votes should not be counted unless their suspicions were investigated. No, instead, they said the Trump electors should be counted.

That, of course, gives away their game: It isn’t really about finding the answers to questions about the election β€” it’s just about finding a way to give Trump Arizona’s electoral votes.

When Pima County voters cast ballots in the May 2006 RTA election, Risner was already an outspoken opponent of the ballot issue. After the election, he made common cause with John Brakey, an election-integrity activist, and others in challenging the results.

The Democrats joined for a time, but then dropped the suit. Later, the Libertarian Party picked up the baton and became Risner’s clients.

Brakey, who is involved in election-integrity challenges around the country, is also convinced the attorney general’s office came up with bogus results.

β€œThat hand count was a fraud. It really was,” Brakey said Tuesday.

Goddard, who was attorney general then, expressed astonishment that those who doubted the election got the hand count they want and still disbelieve the results.

β€œTo have them now saying it was fraud, when they didn’t at the time, I find pretty extraordinary,” he said.

Tom Ryan, who worked with Risner and Brakey and later served on the county’s Election Integrity Commission, shared their suspicions but not their conclusions. He noted, for example, that the voter databases that the crowd was demanding in January 2008 later showed strange, potentially suspicious things, like precinct data uploaded more than once.

β€œI don’t think we ever saw enough evidence to indicate that someone was trying to manipulate it,” he told me Tuesday. β€œI thought the outcome as reported was correct.”

But he noted that, from his experience, the relative lack of evidence of fraud is unlikely to convince anybody who believes it occurred.

β€œIt’s really hard to convince people who are convinced otherwise,” he said.

Now, all three of those men β€” Risner, Brakey and Ryan β€” share one proposal that they think could improve confidence in state elections: Make the scanned images of each ballot a public record, so that they can be counted by whoever wants to. Right now, that’s against state law, and it’s something Trump loyalists are also pursuing.

But the truth be told, I don’t see much hope that audits or transparent ballots will ever convince anyone who deeply believes in a different outcome.

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Contact opinion columnist Tim Steller at: tsteller@tucson.com or 807-7789. On Twitter: @senyorreporter.