At a press conference outside the Executive Tower Monday, state Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Phoenix) led a throng of supporters announcing that Protect Arizona Freedom, the organization she helps lead, has filed suit to challenge over 100,000 signatures on the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative ballot petition.

The initiative, which is the brainchild of former University of California regent and anti-affirmative action activist Ward Connerly, was submitted for review by the Arizona Secretary of State on July 3 with over 323,000 signatures. 230,047 are required to make it to the ballot.

However, PAF is trying to drive that number down by 105,107 through its lawsuit, which alleges 13 categories of violations committed by petition circulators which invalidate those signatures. Among the most serious charges are instances where PAF accuses paid circulators of using "another individual's identification to try to prove residency," and cases where a circulator "misrepresented his or her residential address," as well as practices such as duplicating signatures on numerous petition sheets.

"We found there were a number of signature gatherers who would sit together and use each other's signatures over and over and over," said Sinema, who also claimed that some circulators were found to be "copying the same names and signatures on different petitions."

"When someone cheats and breaks the law to get themselves on the ballot, I think we as citizens have a duty to step up to the plate and call these people to account," she said.

However, Max McPhail, executive director of the Arizona Civil Rights Intitiative, sees another motivation in PAF's legal action.

"This issue is very popular with the people," McPhail told PolitickerAZ.com, saying support for ending affirmative action consistently polls "around 70 percent."

"The opposition knows that, and the only way they'll win is to keep it off the ballot," said McPhail. 

The lawsuit was technically filed by two college students, Kathleen Templin of Northern Arizona University and Michael Slugoki of the University of Arizona, does not deal with signatures that are invalidated by problems such as a signer giving a post office box instead of a physical address, non-registered voters and so forth. Rather, it focuses specifically on problems originating with the petition gatherers or notaries who were supposed to certify each petition sheet. Sinema claimed that the Secretary of State and Maricopa County Recorder will also end up throwing some of the signatures out.    

Sinema hammered Connerly for corrupting the ballot process as a whole. 

"It is clear here that the illegal and deceptive signature gathering tactics brought into Arizona by Ward Connerly have had a far-reaching impact on the ballot this year. This year we've seen the ballot process generally has been influenced by Mr. Connerly's tactics and by the influence of his Georgia-based firm, National Ballot Access." She pointed to similar challenges to other ballot initiatives that have been alleged, and of legal problems National Ballot Access has had in other states.

Yet McPhail believes any discrepancies are the result of isolated petition gatherers, rather than an endemic culture of fraud.

"We had a lot of people circulating petitions," said McPhail. "There might have been a few people who slipped through the cracks."

McPhail speculated there was as much as 90 percent overlap among initiatives looking for signers that were circulated by the same firms his initiative used. "If we're in trouble, then so are a lot of other initiatives," he said. 

Rep. Sinema said she wants to see the initiative process reformed, though was emphatic that she is a "big believer" in it. She said she and others who want to see reform, such as state Rep. Kirk Adams (R-Mesa), have been working to "guarantee this kind of illegal activity doesn't happen again," and expects a debate over initiative reform to be part of next session's agenda.