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Exclusive: 2024 Election Results Lawsuit Advances as Documents Requested
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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The lead plaintiff in a legal case questioning the accuracy of the 2024 election, has submitted 15 pages of document requests as part of the discovery process.
SMART Legislation, the action arm of nonpartisan watchdog group SMART Elections, also submitted a series of questions to the Rockland County Board of Elections in New York this week, according to court filings reviewed by Newsweek.
"The best way to reassure the public about the accuracy of the election results in Rockland County, New York, is to conduct a full, transparent, hand recount of the 2024 Presidential and Senate elections," Lulu Friesdat, the founder and executive director of SMART Legislation, said in a statement to Newsweek. "That is why we have requested it, and so far, the judge seems to agree."
A spokesperson for Rockland County told Newsweek it had filed a motion to dismiss, which includes a request for a stay of all discovery.
Voters at the polls inside Central United Methodist Church on November 5, 2024 in downtown Detroit, Michigan.
Voters at the polls inside Central United Methodist Church on November 5, 2024 in downtown Detroit, Context
SMART Legislation filed the lawsuit over claims of voting discrepancies in Rockland County, New York. At the heart of alleged discrepancies are voting machines, which have often been the target of claims of irregularities, including when President Donald Trump made unverified claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Judge Rachel Tanguay of the New York Supreme Court ruled in May that the allegations were serious enough for discovery to proceed. In an order filed earlier this month, Tanguay said all discovery—where the involved parties exchange information and evidence relevant to the case—must be completed within about seven months.
The complaint said that more voters had sworn in legal affidavits that they voted for independent U.S. Senate candidate Diane Sare, who is also a plaintiff, than the Board of Elections counted and certified. The complaint also cited numerous statistical anomalies in the election results, including that in multiple districts where hundreds of voters chose the Democratic candidate Kirsten Gillibrand for Senate, none voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president.
The lawsuit could renew debate about the 2024 election, though it won't change the outcome for any election that has been certified, including the Senate and presidential races.
What To Know
The plaintiffs are seeking evidence about how the 2024 election was conducted due to the irregularities detailed in the initial complaint, according to SMART Legislation's press release.
Documents requested include information about voting machines; voter rolls; software; software updates; hardware, including forensic-grade copies of hard drives; diagrams of all equipment, including network and Wi-Fi components; and flash drives that carry election results.
The Board of Elections has been asked to provide documents concerning "any actual or alleged irregularities, errors, problems, or misalignment of election results or voter rolls" in the 2020 or 2024 general elections, according to documents.
The document requests also cover security protocols, such as rules for password creation and chain of custody procedures; lists of workers; financial interactions, such as vendor contracts; and communications with voting machine manufacturers including Elections Systems & Software and testing lab Pro V&V.
SMART Elections reported in February that a software update to some ES&S systems were not sufficiently tested. Jack Cobb, the director of the federally accredited testing lab Pro V&V, previously told Newsweek that the changes were not "of any significance."
But SMART Legislation said a technical adviser who was consulted disagreed with the testing lab's classification of the updates as minimal, saying it "is a major change and should require closer inspection as to what the changes are."
SMART Legislation also asked the Board of Elections to answer questions about modem, Wi-Fi or cellular connections to Rockland County's election systems and to confirm if it has ever used either Starlink satellites' Direct to Cell service or a program known as BallotProof.
They also asked if any individual or organization had made any type of complaint or expressed concern about possible inaccuracies in election results from January 1, 2020 to the present.
What People Are Saying
Lulu Friesdat, the founder and executive director of SMART Legislation, said in a statement provided to Newsweek: "One of our main concerns at this point is whether the chain of custody of the ballots and the equipment has been robust enough for the public to have confidence in the paper ballots. That is the reason for many of our discovery requests."
County Attorney Thomas Humbach said in a statement to Newsweek: "We believe that this claim has no merit, and that the petitioners do not qualify for a recount as a matter of law."
What's Next
The lawsuit is seeking a full, hand recount of ballots cast in the presidential and U.S. Senate races in Rockland County.
The Rockland County Board of Elections will have to response to discovery requests and the questions, and plaintiffs will seek to conduct depositions.
The next hearing is scheduled for September 22, and the case is expected to go to trial early next year.
