SIO484: Lawsuit Alleges Voting Irregularities in 2024. Is There Any There There?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:00 Thomas: Arguments listeners, it's Thomas. Sure why I did it that way. That was weird. It's Thomas here. Wanted to let you know that I'm a much needed, I could say week, but I'll be honest. I kind of think I still want to do a rapid response Friday. There's too much going on. That's the problem. Too much going on a little trip, on my trip, getting a slight amount of time off. Hopefully maybe can unwind for approximately three and a half minutes and then hopefully But I to jump on to tell you that and also to post something that is up on Serious Inquiries Only, but I can post it for you here if you're not a subscriber over there because it's very relevant, I promise. It is expert Dr. Jenessa Seymour, the perfect expert, as you'll hear me explain again, break down the claims of election irregularities in 2024. Yeah, this is it's definitely nowhere near the magnitude of 2020 and the claims made there. But there's a sizable a sizeable chunk of people who are open to this theory that has been put forth in a lawsuit that is that has overcome a motion to dismiss, which I think lends it some credibility in people's minds. And it turns out the claims are from an area, like a physical area, geographical area in New York, that is exactly where Jenessa has experience. And Jenessa, again, not only is PhD, she also pivoted and became a lawyer recently and work in voting rights. She's great. She's been on here and there. You probably remember her, but she's fantastic. And I thought this is a great thing for opening arguments listeners to hear. You want to hear the part two, head over to the serious inquiries only feed. It'll be up tomorrow at some point. You could go to that Patreon if you want it to get right away. This is part one, which is kind of the legal stuff anyway. So it's talking about that and talking about in general the claims and kind of how we should should be thinking about them off the bat. So hope you enjoy this. Be back with regularly scheduled OA. It'll be Friday, let's be honest, if I can make myself not work, it'll maybe not be Friday but there's also not really that much work like I want to know about the events happening from Matt like I just want to do that anyway like Like I would be listening to a podcast of that anyway, like if I wasn't in it. So we'll see. Thank you so much for listening and for supporting and allowing me a day or two here. Really appreciate it. And I you enjoy this episode of Serious Inquiries Only.

0:02:33 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 484. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and got a pretty important deep dive for you today. Today. It's actually two parts. The 2024 election rigged? I'm going to go ahead and say no, but a lawsuit has gone forward that alleges secretly altered vote machines stole the election from Kamala Harris. And look, if something is a random Facebook comment or somewhere, I am not going to take it very seriously, but I actually saw this get quite a bit of steam to the point point where I'm actually looking at reddit .com slash law, which is a pretty, usually I think a pretty buttoned down legal subreddit. I'm wrong about that, but this story, and I'll read the post for you. A new lawsuit asserted that election discrepancies in Rockland County, New York occurred during the 2024 cycle, possibly costing votes for now former vice president Kamala Harris. The this post has, I mean, I know they kind of mask the points or whatever, but 71 ,000, I guess, net upvotes, which that's a lot. Quite a lot, when I look at the top comments, and these are, you know, upvoted thousands of times, 5 .4 thousand, like, net, I Guess. They're not necessarily going all in for this theory or anything, but they're they, very open to it. To the effect of, well maybe there's a problem with the computers, the voting computers, if that turns out to be true, big constitutional crisis, you scroll down to the next upvoted comment, 1 .3k quote the son of Elon, they will never know when discussing things related to the election. Yeah. I mean, Elon Musk's comments, I I, get certainly grounds for alarm. So is there anything thing to this? Well, fortunately, I've got one of the best experts you could have, somebody who works in voting rights and someone who not that has experience with this exact location, knows things about this particular place, which you're going to find is actually important to knowing what went on here. So Dr. Jenessa Seymour, who I'm sure you've come to know and love as much as I do, has got the breakdown for us, a two -part breakdown. Part one here, we're going going to tackle what's going on legally and general stuff about the story. Then part two, we're going to dig into some of these numbers and going on there. Have them out back to back for you because that is the chunk method. Right. If you want to support shows like this, and I hope you do, because it's very important to get real true facts out there, actual skeptical expertise going on, um, rare and rare these days. If you want to support the show, patreon the way to do it. Thank you so much to those absolute saints who support the shows, any and all of them. To those, even if you can't support financially, or even if he can, please get the word out. Please share the show when you can. Makes a huge difference. It's a crowded landscape out there these days. Much the only way to break through is if people like it, people share it. So if you like it. Please share it all right after this break. We'll get into whether or not the election was still on.

0:05:26 Thomas: I'm once again joined by Dr. Jenessa Seymour. How are you doing today?

0:05:29 Jenessa: Pretty good, hanging in there.

0:05:31 Thomas: Yeah. There's so much news that we're not going to talk about. It's always in the backdrop. It is like, I wish I could have time to check out 45 terrible SCOTUS decisions, but we're not doing that today. Today, we're talking about Blue Anon. No, not really. Well, kind of. Yeah.

0:05:50 Jenessa: Kind of.

0:05:51 Thomas: It's the voting stuff that won't die. Now, I have seen this float around and I'm so glad that, you know, we have you so I can be like, hey, what the hell is this nonsense? Maybe it isn't nonsense. Like, what is this? What's going on? I know like we've already done a big debunk on voting. Just have to say before we even get started. I do not understand personally why anyone thinks they need an explanation for why Trump won in 2024.

0:06:15 Thomas: It's like, look around. I don't understand it. Like at this point, look in 2016, I at least get the feeling like, huh, this can't be right. But like 2024, like knew what we were doing. People walked right into it. And there's nothing just prima facie or whatever would tell me like, no, there's some irregularities. There's some like all the places that seemed like they were going to go the way they would go when the of the election seemed to be Latino votes was a huge part of it. And it would be weird to me if somehow fraud was just messing with Latino votes. So I don't know. It seems already explained, if not over explained. And yet we still see viral stories about, oh, no. The voting machines or the whatever. And is one that I And not only that, I think I saw it to float the top of Reddit one day and it's just like, all right, what's going on here?

0:07:04 Jenessa: I gotta agree like you was um hard to believe in the sense of uh my heart but um when we saw how close 2020 was obviously it wasn't in the popular vote but when we Saw how close it was after everything that had happened and in the middle of covid and with all of the ease of voting in covid because you could vote on mail so easily and it was still close I

0:07:25 Thomas: Kidding. In retrospect, it was a miracle Biden won, actually. Totally agree. I mean, it's a great point. Like I think absent COVID, I don't think he would have won absent, you know, a number of things. And it's like, it's shocking, but I think people, your average person, I don't, I think is good at looking at the minutia, the details of how these elections broke out. And they just look at that binary, you know, that buyer, maybe they look at the popular vote total maybe. And that it felt felt like a comfortable Biden victory. But no, it wasn't in the electoral college, at least.

0:08:01 Jenessa: By state it wasn't and like look at the end of the day I'm never gonna understand how people are looking at this and being like yeah love it great like the numbers are not purely explained by sociopaths There's something going on and I'm never going to get it. So gut instinct, not going to get us there on this, possibly.

0:08:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That was something I said. We I think had this exact conversation with the last one of these. So wait. Yeah. This first question was briefly remind us of the previous thing you debunked. And this not the same stuff, right? There's different claims, different, you going to say people behind it. I don't know who's, you know, it's not that one guy who wrote that long.

0:08:42 Jenessa: No, no. So the last one we did was all about a claim that voter suppression explained these results. And just reiterate, voter suppression, terrible, all too common, could very well explain things. But the to calculate it and to say we know with mathematical certainty was beyond ridiculous. It was full of mistakes. And the things that are serious voter suppression were largely ignored, which I found also very concerning. So there was a lot of legal inaccuracy, mathematical inaccuracy. One is much more like flirting with a denial. Is, you know, in the legal documents, they're not going to get specific on how this could have happened but oh

0:09:37 Thomas: We've got legal documents, though. This is... Okay. So this is more than just some asshole's blog who writes like he's a genius but actually gets everything wrong. Okay.

0:09:39 Jenessa: No we have a lawsuit um yeah um to be fair anyone can file a lawsuit um so you can be some asshole um

0:09:50 Thomas: Fair. Still put it at a step above a blog or whatever, a personal website. It requires a filing fee, requires some, you know, a little a little harder than just typing up a website.

0:10:03 Jenessa: So where we got here This is Rockland County, New York. So luckily, I live in downstate New York, I am an attorney, I work in voting rights, this is like, I would have been reading this regardless. We have is a claim that there are some discrepancies in the results that are hard to explain, and we need a full manual hand recount of the paper ballots for the whole state.

0:10:32 Thomas: I sure remember stuff like that in 2020 being claimed.

0:10:36 Jenessa: Does sound very familiar, doesn't it?

0:10:37 Thomas: Yeah. Do we need some cyber ninjas to do it? Is that what we're thinking?

0:10:42 Jenessa: Yeah. You know, when you dig in and look at what was going on on social media, you're going to hear more kind of flirting with the allegation of like, it's the machines, it' s hacking, it'' s, you the stuff that is really exhausting. Um,

0:10:59 Thomas: Think what's funny about both these, the QAnon and the Blue Anon, I guess, that's not really an accurate way, but election denial in 2020 and election denial in 2024 is that for each of those instances, the other side was in control of the government at the time. So it's like somehow Trump rigged the election for Biden in 2020 and then Biden did him a favor. He's like, all right, oh, you won. I'm going to rig it for Trump against and maybe, you know, he's bitter about not being in the race, so he rigged it for Trump in 2024. very gentlemanly. Sportsmanship.

0:11:29 Jenessa: Fundamentally it never really adds up because among the many, many security protections we have, we have a really distributed system in the US where individual counties run their elections. The states all run their elections differently. They're using different equipment. And sounds like chaos, but it's actually very protective. Level of coordinated conspiracy you would need, you know, it's just, you you know, what's that quote? It's like, um, two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.

0:12:05 Thomas: Oh, yeah. That's classic.

0:12:07 Jenessa: Just don't buy that a secret on this level, it's not happening, right? It''s just not gonna work.

0:12:08 Thomas: I know. It is. It's the old conspiracy theory, too. It' s like people who think we faked the moon landing have never worked in group projects or whatever. Like, it' s just so impossible.

0:12:20 Jenessa: Yeah, way you could get from, huh, these numbers look funny, to how anyone could have done anything to cause this is very difficult and if the proposal is just well the machine is just bad um answer is just never going to really add up here so um think it makes sense to start with uh is the central claim so we're looking at rockland county new york it's downstate it's It's pretty close to New York City. It's just west of Westchester County, which might be a little more familiar to people. And an organization, the plaintiff here is Smart Legislation. There were a couple of other plaintiffs, but they've all dropped off by now. And we're left with that plaintiff. And it's an organization that has historically in New York for the past couple of years opposed multiple voting machines, legislation to authorize new voting machines. Well known for doing that. And this was largely unsurprising to people in our community to see this come up.

0:13:29 Jenessa: Yeah. When we looked at how this lawsuit sounds weird and then looked at the plaintiff, I had one person ask me about this lawsuit. And when I said, well, it's smart legislation, they said to me, say no more. We didn't need to even get into it. It. So kind of unsurprising what's going on here. They have alleged there's a case. I think it's been dropped by now. Maybe it hasn't. Alleging like bribery of poll workers in New York City that things that are pretty

0:13:28 Thomas: Lawsuit. Suit yeah imagine trying

0:13:59 Jenessa: Out there.

0:14:00 Thomas: To win an election that a national election by the way that way it's one thing you know I'd be more like open to you know I'm open to anything with evidence but I'd be more open to the possibility if it was like small town election with you know it's got one voting machine you know and like sure sure but would trying undertake a project to affect a national election? By the way in New York why would you even bother like you're gonna go to of the swing states.

0:14:24 Jenessa: Know. And and that's actually going to be a critical component of this. So one part of the argument, why does this look so funny? Um, we saw in Rockland County was, this thing, the drop -off rate. There's a pretty reasonably large contingent of people like to show up to vote precisely every four years they vote for president and they don't mark the rest of their ballot um have a lot of feelings about that if you're one of those people I would love

0:14:51 Thomas: It's almost the opposite of what you should do. Like might be the polar opposite of What You Should Do.

0:14:55 Jenessa: Precisely absolutely I mean your village mayor controls sidewalks parks roads policing utilities there's so many things going on that they are impacting your every single day and if I had to pick one for you to vote on it would be your local politicians absolutely get educated on them get to know that they're available you can just bump into that guy I know the mayor of the village I grew up in like and that's not because I like went out of my way to be political he just lives like five houses down from me and I walk by and wave like

0:15:34 Thomas: Plus when you say village, I get an image. Is that a New York thing or something? Because that feels like you're in old timey times or something.

0:15:41 Jenessa: Know it sounds I grew up in the village of wappingers falls falls.

0:15:43 Thomas: You know the chieftain of the village? Yeah.

0:15:46 Jenessa: It sounds like Bedford Falls, like I live in the middle of nowhere, but I actually grew up in a pretty urban, suburban type area, but it sounds very old timey. Like getting to know your county legislators, your town, your city, they're available in a way that I know a lot of people who like write to their federal senator and they're like, they never got back to me. And I'm like who you think you are they're not gonna answer you my dude like they're so busy it's not like a personal thing it's it's normal they're how could they possibly right

0:16:08 Thomas: Man. Yeah or they do, it'll be a form letter like it'll be something they already have to a million times with a bunch of different people very uh concerned thank you for bringing up these issues they're very important to me and especially of the good people of the state of ohio you know it's just crap yeah

0:16:24 Jenessa: It's impossible right yeah you know what can you do but like you talk to your local person. And like, they're also often less savvy and they'll just tell you stuff.

0:16:41 Thomas: You're talking about bob yeah let's go it's like that oh that great simpsons the australia the austrailia simpsions is maybe my favorite episode of all time he's like mr prime minister And he's like right over there, you know, they keep going up the chain of command. It's like that.

0:16:53 Jenessa: It's yeah. Yeah. So it is truly like the worst possible voting strategy, but a lot of people do it by a lot. I mean, the statewide in New York was about 9 % of voters did that.

0:17:10 Thomas: Is too many.

0:17:10 Jenessa: It's too many for sure. It's not like a ton, right? What saw in Rockland County, both in 2020 and in 2024, for Biden and for Trump, it was actually 25 % about. It was pretty high. Harris, it when you take all 307 precincts it looks like from the data analysis by a person I do not trust after looking at this um looks Like it's about negative nine percent so more people voted for our yeah it looks yes

0:17:43 Thomas: Sorry. What? What is the percent you're saying? So you said the overall, let me just make sure we're throwing a lot of numbers and places around. Are you looking at, where do we start? We Do start with a state in New York or in a specific county? Where did you start?

0:17:55 Jenessa: So the whole state of new york it was about nine percent would vote for, yeah.

0:17:57 Thomas: All state. Of people who just dropped off their ballot with the president and nothing else.

0:18:04 Jenessa: Or in this case, we're primarily focused on the president, but not the senator.

0:18:09 Thomas: Okay. OK, so regardless, it could be some lower ones, but whatever president, but no senator. Gotcha.

0:18:13 Jenessa: Yup. And then in Rockland County, we were seeing for Biden 2020, Trump 2020, Trump 2024, it actually looked like more like about 25%. So this county is just doing it more. For

0:18:26 Thomas: OK, So, so whole, I still wasn't sure then if you said, I thought you said for Trump. So I wasn't Sure if you meant 25 % of them are for Trump or that's where I lost you.

0:18:36 Jenessa: If we look at people who voted for trump in 2020 about 25 percent did not vote for the republican senator in 2020

0:18:43 Thomas: So the rate who did that was higher than like your base rate. Yeah, that's, I would expect that actually.

0:18:49 Jenessa: Percent was the statewide average right some counties will be higher some will be lower um

0:18:53 Thomas: Well, I also would expect it for Trump specifically because he, he motivated a bunch of angry men that don't care that much except to ruin our lives every four years. So I haven't checked this, but my would be that the rate would be higher for Trump than it was for Kamala. But who knows? There's also forces on the left for people to do that as well.

0:19:13 Jenessa: So I think we're getting some pretty selective data reporting here because I would have loved to see comparisons over multiple years. And I'm

0:19:21 Thomas: So you're not giving us the actual stats yet. You're still giving us The Claims based on whoever this is.

0:19:25 Jenessa: Are the claims.

0:19:26 Thomas: Okay, gotcha.

0:19:27 Jenessa: We're going to get into it. I'm so done with people comparing things to the election year 2020 for the love of God. It's the weirdest election. That aside for Harris. So we we actually got a negative number. So there were a bunch of people. Yes.

0:19:33 Thomas: It's just, yeah. Negative number. How does one get a negative number?

0:19:47 Jenessa: We look at people who voted for Kirsten Gillibrand, the Democratic senator was running and how many voted for her, but not Harris. Okay. So this is the way it's portrayed. And they say, very strange. Why is it so different for her compared to Trump? Why is it so difficult for her? Why isn't it so okay, going to tell you in advance this whole thing is nonsense, but let's start with step one.

0:19:58 Thomas: Does seem odd. Sure. Figured. Okay.

0:20:16 Jenessa: Okay, step

0:20:16 Thomas: One, are those actually the real numbers?

0:20:19 Jenessa: Okay, so there are 307 precincts and you would have to calculate this by precinct and I want to do that because um I'm not the lawyer for this case and I'm not doing their work for them the person who put this together um don't trust them they're an astrophysicist from alabama so

0:20:43 Thomas: Who I normally use to do election analysis.

0:20:46 Jenessa: Like socio -political it's actually like really spot on here um he gives a quote, these data would require extreme sociological political causes for their explanation and would benefit from further assurances as to their fidelity. Something you would know if you lived in downstate New York and not Alabama is that we do in fact have extreme sociological and political differences in Rockland County.

0:21:04 Thomas: What

0:21:16 Jenessa: Yorkers don't even need need me to explain, we have a significant Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish population in that county.

0:21:25 Jenessa: And I'm talking like there is groups who are very insular, very isolated, living on private properties that are expansive, their own private schools, very, very voting as a block. If the The rabbi says, I'm voting for this person. We're all voting for this person, so yeah, maybe not the chillest thing.

0:21:25 Thomas: Those okay cool sounds awesome they also have their own diseases that used to be eradicated that you know or they have their on things that they're not vaccinating for that's probably that's probably also really cool that might yeah might be some overlap there and views is.

0:22:02 Jenessa: Community when New York was having the whole, what do we do? We got to get people vaccinated. If you're going to private school, we're missing our number one enforcement, which is if your kid goes to public school, they have to get vaccinated, um there's there's a lot going on in this community and primarily for our purposes today they vote as a block so not super shocked to see a weird voting pattern here um one thing that gets brought up is oh this was really bothering me they pull out of 307 precincts one of them, Gillibrand, got votes and, oh my god, Harris got zero votes.

0:22:41 Jenessa: How can this be? Well, first of all, I've seen this spread on social media that it was the whole county, which would be shocking. It's not. It is one precinct where the total number of recorded votes is 572. So less to believe that an outlier could occur. And we do have Gillibrand got 331 votes and Harris did get zero. So a gap.

0:22:57 Thomas: It's pretty small. Yeah definitely kind of weird and so that's the claim that I've at least kind of seen I think people would be familiar with where it's like how could it be that in this whatever I thought it was a you know county but it goes to show how how much I didn't look into it but like how inaccurate the coverage and the the are about it. But how could it be that Gillibrand or Gilliband, I never remember which, got a bunch of votes and Kamala Harris got literally zero? Impossible. And my first thought was like, what would that do though? Is it really, we place, one whatever, you're saying it's a precinct. So someone allegedly could have stolen 200 votes or something, like if that's what you expected. Like, I don't know

0:23:12 Jenessa: Weird. Yup, yup. Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:23:51 Thomas: What that's going to do.

0:23:51 Jenessa: And also, how would you steal like the vote? They're not on separate ballots. You know, it's one piece of paper.

0:23:57 Thomas: It's one, that's true. Like it's only not counting the and they didn't even vote or did they vote for trump or I guess we don't know we just know okay

0:24:05 Jenessa: So there are in that same precinct, 552 voted for Trump, while 82 voted for the Republican senator. So we do have a significant drop off in the opposite direction there. It's a weird county.

0:24:18 Thomas: It I guess so well you said county I thought it was precinct

0:24:22 Jenessa: Sorry, it's a weird precinct out of 307 precincts in the one county.

0:24:26 Thomas: Yeah you found an outlier is what you'd probably call it a statistical anomaly anomaly yeah

0:24:33 Jenessa: Did. In fact, they brought up another precinct where out of 991 votes, Gillibrand got 909, Harris got two, whereas Trump got 986 and the Republican senator got 42. too. Feels weird. Okay. Just was like, let me just look at some of the other precincts. And like, again, there's 307. I'm not doing all of this. But here's the very first one. Clarkstown District won 492 total votes. Harris got 226. Gillibrand got 225. Trump got 263. The Republican senator got 238. All right, it's a slightly different gap. If we go over to Clarkstown 6, 327 votes, Harris got 208, Gillibrand got 207, Trump got 107, and the Republican got 99. Like, it's not

0:24:49 Thomas: Seems pretty

0:25:24 Jenessa: Barely different at all. Trend I kind of picked up was in a district that went for Trump, we saw the usual drop -off. They voted for Trump and not the Republican senator by a a decent margin, and we got the negative Harris drop -off, where Harris got less votes than Gillibrand. A district that went for Harris, we saw Harris get about the same or a little more than Gilliband, and also Trump about the samer a little bit more than the Republican. So

0:25:24 Thomas: Run -of -the -mill hmm yeah

0:25:57 Jenessa: Those precincts are very different from one another in their behavior. Behavior. Thing to keep in mind is Gillibrand is a New Yorker and she knows these groups vote as a block. So she goes down and courts the vote of like three people in that district so she can get all 1 ,000 people in two precincts that neighbor each other, right? Is not going to do that. Why would she? And we have, you might be familiar, there's a bit of a conflict going on in the Middle East that might be influencing the Hasidic and Orthodox vote at the moment. So just all not very surprising if you happen to know, yeah, there's a big socio -political thing going on, which is exactly what this supposed expert says we would need to explain these results. Yeah. You're right. It needed to be weird. And it's a weird place to live.

0:26:45 Thomas: So you're right sort of oh

0:27:04 Jenessa: This presumption. I've seen this multiple times when they're talking about this on social media, a presumption that necessarily if we see Gillibrand get more votes than Harris, each of those, that gap represents a Democrat who did not vote for Harris and voted for Gilliband, didn't vote for president at all. Is a wild assumption. You can't do that precisely because for example if you voted for trump and gillibrand I don't know who you are I don't know what's happening to you but you exist yeah

0:27:27 Thomas: Right we don't know that it's one ballot yeah yeah there are people like that oh

0:27:41 Jenessa: So you're a vote for trump and not the republican senator you contribute to a plus trump drop -off and you're a vote not for harris for gillibrand you contribute TO A NEGATIVE HARRIS DROP -OFF Yeah, you're one person, but you are two in this count. So you can't look at this as one person one vote in here. These are individuals. You can't assume a vote for the Republican senator. That person's a Republican.

0:27:53 Thomas: You're like double dipping there oh man mm

0:28:10 Jenessa: Like, you know, there's a probably statistically, but not all of them. Them. You've got people who voted for Trump and then didn't vote for a senator. You got people who voted för Trump and Gillibrand, Trump and the Republican senator, Trump, and a third party, Trump ,and then overvoted for senator and voided that part of their ballot. All these different things that come into it. And the way I have seen it talked about is just, well, clearly, Uh, literally, the posts I've seen is, oh, you really believe that this many Democrats voted for Gillibrand and not Harris. And like, you just can't know that's actually what drove the gap.

0:28:10 Thomas: -hmm right right mm -hm yeah good point taking

0:28:51 Jenessa: Already missing something. The lead plaintiff, if you go to look this up, you're going to see Sayre, S -A -R -E, versus Rockland County Board of Elections. Is a perennial candidate for Senate of the LaRouche party.

0:29:09 Thomas: Don't know what that is.

0:29:10 Jenessa: If you ever want to go down a rabbit hole, short version, they used to be a very far left party, and I think they're now a very far right party. Really get anywhere. They're not very well known. I know if if they're nationwide or if they might just be like a thing in New York. I don't know what's going on.

0:29:28 Thomas: Well, they can endorse Fetterman. I'm sure he could become a part of that party.

0:29:34 Jenessa: Oh, God. The flip party. Yeah. So Sayre, perennial candidate. I occasionally see her on my bullet and chuckle. So she is alleging that she saw her vote totals in Rockland County and was very upset. It was far too low. It was 29 000 and some change and somehow we knew that was inappropriate and uh in certain precincts it was like oh my god it's zero what are we gonna do um so she just walked around her neighborhood and asked people did you vote for me and they said yes yeah so to be fair we do have our affidavits of people who swear up and down they voted for her they haven't properly verified It's a technicality, but one thing Rockland is coming back with is they didn't do the right verification process, which is the under penalty of perjury, yada yada.

0:30:05 Thomas: Very scientific. She's holding a gun and she's like hey. OK.

0:30:32 Thomas: Right. I I guess in fairness. So you're saying if this is a place where she got literal zero votes, I suppose it's not like crazy to be like, well, I definitely know this person or two and they're willing to swear they they vote for me. That's okay. That is something. You

0:30:48 Jenessa: Sure. So we have precisely two example districts for this lawsuit. 39, there were 507 total votes. She has sworn affidavits that seven people voted during election day and one voted early for her. What the county recorded was three on election day, and two on early So that's only five. Out of what they're saying now, that means it's a minimum nine. I know about eight, one of which was early voting, and you recorded two on early voting. So there's one person I haven't even talked to yet. Um right um 62 had 406 total voters the uh who have sworn they voted for her one on election day three voting early whereas the board of elections has recorded none on election Day two voting early and one absentee um put that as a minimum of five but literally Literally, if the Election Day person misremembered and they dropped off their absentee

0:31:26 Thomas: Just doubled your voter base in that demographic. Yeah,

0:31:53 Jenessa: On Election Day, yeah, this is all just, you know, when you consider how many people, being completely honest, have just misremumbered who they voted for, that 62 also has one overvote for Senate. It so that could be the person like we don't know um we would have to to be fair do some discovery um basically yeah we've got well I think I should have gotten

0:31:53 Thomas: That seems pretty likely. Discovery, turn over the four ballots you are talking about.

0:32:25 Jenessa: Yeah I think I should've gotten nine votes and I got five and this was I literally saw this portrayed as almost 50 percent of ballots like all right come on this this person has run for senate like four billion times this of this is surprising third party candidates don't win you have to be alleging which I happen to know this organization has that there have been repeated manipulation of election results for years and this is all made up and nonsense sense.

0:32:59 Thomas: Once again, I guess to Steel Man, I mean, I doubt that anyone would think that this person in particular who gets a few votes is being targeted. So I suppose if you're like, well, if you using this as our like, it's almost like your control kind of sample a little bit, which might make sense. Like if you were trying to test a system, let's say you put five like dummy ballots in there that you know are a particular quality. And then you look at the results and they're like, oh, those aren't there. That would be alarming. It'd be like it's failing kind of a test that you're running. So I guess maybe it's worth looking at. Somebody take five minutes to look at it.

0:33:40 Jenessa: Yeah. Of the problem is, okay, the first thing to know is everybody's small potatoes here. We've got Rockland County Board of Elections, which is a county in New York, and they're appointed to commissioners. Like they they just like we have a lawyer um where we have like four whole dollars um four litigants as far as I can tell they were pro se until about five minutes ago so that has contributed to some filings that don't make a ton of sense and then when you're pro se the judge you know they're supposed to be a little gentle with you about like I'm gonna read into this the argument I think you probably meant um then you've got like the budget lawyer you know with all due respect I've I've been practicing for all of 14 minutes like I don't have a lot of room to judge um you se litigants and a lawyer for the county who is just doing their best we have a very strange allegation and then we have the response that's just um you don't have jurisdiction and they haven't joined an important plaintiff and they aren't, you know, providing this evidence, whatever. But it just says, like, they have not joined a necessary plaintiff.

0:34:53 Thomas: Does that mean? Joined a necessary plaintiff okay oh

0:34:56 Jenessa: Is a reason to dismiss a case. If there is a necessary party to a lawsuit, it's a little more complicated than that. Sometimes there are parties that are required for a lawsuit to go forward. So you could imagine, let's if I was to try to sue to say, probably what they're alluding to is like Gillibrand and the Republican Senator, for example, presumably they were also affected.

0:35:01 Thomas: In order to have standing or something hmm

0:35:24 Jenessa: And how can we go forward with a lawsuit that will obviously directly affect them and they're not parties? You have to join them. And if you can't get ahold of them to join them, like then what do we do? There's a whole process. Sometimes there are permissible plaintiffs, like people who could join if they wanted to, but it doesn't kill the lawsuit if they don't join. So what you're a reason to dismiss. You would say that and then say who those people are and why they're necessary and the rules. And they don'T do that. They county clearly did not take this seriously in the beginning they just said like dismiss because this this this is this done yeah

0:35:23 Thomas: Okay hopefully they'll go away fair

0:36:04 Jenessa: Kinda and they're pro se and like what are they gonna say and the judge was like you kind of do have to go the merits of the arguments you have to address it so what has got a lot of people like amped is oh a judge is letting it go forward what that means is um There has been a single order in the entire case that we are going to have discovery, which I think is largely driven by you didn't lay the smack down early when you should have. They could have.

0:36:09 Thomas: Enough yeah okay wow so it's the order is like guys guys take this seriously like that's essentially kind of the let

0:36:36 Jenessa: That's how I read it. It was just like, you're telling me I don't have jurisdiction and you're right, mostly.

0:36:40 Thomas: Your little brother play court or whatever

0:36:44 Jenessa: Yeah, kind of. It's more than half of it. They were like, yeah, you are entirely correct. Um request the that I invalidate the results of the election um I do not have authority to do that the requestthat I decertify that I do this and this that I order a special election cannot do that I like I'm not gonna like give them credit and do a thing I can't do um do have the authority to order a recount which is a thing they're requesting and you just haven't gone into like why I really shouldn't entertain the idea they essentially respond and say which is true um only do recounts when it's close here are all the rules for when it is close enough um and it's not that close and I think what the judge is really alluding to is yeah but in theory if this was messed with we don't know how close it is it's not really actually that close um they're alleging the presidential might be close and it was in that county it obviously wasn't in the state yeah I really think if you came in hard you could have kicked this to the curb earlier um

0:37:54 Thomas: Yeah but it just sounds like they didn't really make a good effort at that

0:37:57 Jenessa: I mean their response to this like multi -page complaint was a page and a half and it didn't elaborate on the reasons to dismiss the thing um know they easily could have talked about like the count here comes from the machine and if you're alleging the machine count is wrong why is all the relief requested things like oh when you transport the paper ballots you need to put seals on the box and you need To have better recording of when the seals are broken that would not affect the the digital count on relief requested would not have and will not in the future affect the problem they are alleging that would be a great argument to get rid of this and I don't know why they didn't make it there's quite a few pieces like that that are just missing so I think that's why we're going to go forward in discovery and then it's going to die because we're going to discover there's nothing wrong with the machine um is a procedure it's laid out it's now been submitted as exhibits it really should have been done earlier of um the machines are audited before and after the elections how the paper ballots are auditted so three percent of paper ballots Are pulled out and they are hand counted and then they're run through a machine and we check that matches and we make

0:39:15 Jenessa: Sure everything's good what are the odds that the randomly polled three percent matches exactly what we expected and somehow there's like this massive discrepancy that only works if you're alleging a conspiracy right so

0:39:30 Thomas: So in terms of the legal stuff just to summarize it usually didn't these things go nowhere um you're saying the response was hey you didn't join a uh necessary party and they kind of tried to get rid of it quickly which don't blame them but the judge was essentially like hey that's not quite enough it's going forward now it's Going Forward to Discovery though that part was a little weird like didn't doesn't that doesn't it skip a thing or two or no so

0:39:55 Jenessa: No yeah basically we went through the first they sent in their complaint the county responded that response was sparse um now uh you've had your back and forth your answers We've submitted some exhibits to, you know, we submitted, yeah, the very early motion to dismiss would be things like, you don't have jurisdiction, failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, blah, blah.

0:40:09 Thomas: They just couldn't get a motion to dismiss, essentially? Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:22 Jenessa: You do discovery, I feel very strongly they're going to win summary judgment. The no jury couldn't reasonably find anything here. The facts are just so strongly in our favor. There's nothing, there's nothing here. You know, they are vaguely alluding.

0:40:40 Thomas: Let's not waste people's time.

0:40:42 Jenessa: Yeah, yeah, they're, it's this very vague allegation that something must have happened. And if in discovery, you do not find evidence that something happened, like, well, then the fact that there's like a weirdness, what? Okay. Who are you suing and for what? What have they done?

0:41:05 Thomas: Sue, math, the concept of math itself.

0:41:08 Jenessa: Yeah, it's just not going to get you there. Um that's pretty much where we're at legally the perception that oh my god it's going forward that means it's real we have not even hit discovery yet we are at the phase of one person made an allegation and one person said you should dismiss this and the judge said yeah let's look big if true yeah

0:41:30 Thomas: Yeah, well, that's interesting. So, I mean, I'll give them credit for that, but this kind of thing can take a while, but do you have any idea when the next, like, deadline is kind of think?

0:41:39 Jenessa: They just had a, hearing get scheduled. I think the hearing is going to come up September. They finally got a lawyer. That helps. Um, plaintiff. So smart elections is the only plaintiff left.

0:41:51 Thomas: Sorry, who's the they? Oh, they're not pro se anymore. Gotcha.

0:41:56 Jenessa: They are no longer pro se. I know the first three plaintiffs. So there was the senator candidate and two voters who swear they voted for that senator. They have all left. They signed something that said we're out of the lawsuit, but we still like stand by what we said. And were listed as pro se at the time. On the very same day, they filed something getting a lawyer.

0:42:15 Thomas: That's interesting. Hmm.

0:42:20 Jenessa: So I guess they're anticipating, I'm sure they are going to be deposed and things like that. And

0:42:27 Thomas: I guess if it's going forward, huh?

0:42:29 Jenessa: If it's going forward, you shouldn't go to a deposition without a lawyer. What you're going to get yourself into. The remaining party, which is smart legislation, they tell for sure if they were pro se from the beginning. It sure looks like it. And they have finally very recently recorded an attorney joining. So hopefully they will have a better in terms of organizing these documents and making these arguments. That should also speed up the discovery process because you will have requests that make sense. To be fair, the attorney is also a perennial candidate for different elected offices in New York State. So we got a little bit of a club going on. I don't have any reason to believe he's not a good attorney or or a bad one. Soon -ish they're gonna have their first hearing where they set out like you know there's a schedule for discovery now of like oh you have to get us documents by this date depositions have to happen by this date but I don't see anything of like these people will be deposed on this day that I don'T see yet so it'll take a while

0:43:39 Thomas: Interesting. So that's the legal part. And, you know, I'm glad we're getting the the word out. But I at least it's hard to blame your average person for being like, oh, that's cool that they got past this phase. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ways to get past that first initial, you know, motion to dismiss. And it's, it's interesting, but you think your explanation makes sense like it sounds like this is more that they didn't do a good job trying to dismiss this or they kind of messed up their legal strategy a little bit rather than there's anything there. I

0:44:06 Jenessa: Yeah, yeah, that's my perception of it. I'm certainly open to hearing an alternative, but yeah, also just kind of makes sense. If the allegation is true, it would make sense to do a recount. Let's do a little bit of digging to see if it's true. Not enough to say, well, the margin's too small for a recount, we don't know what the margin is, if

0:44:28 Thomas: Why wouldn't the who is it again the defendant essentially like what actual specific the county at a certain point could they be like look it's going to be cheaper to just do a quick count real quick than try to go through a legal battle could they just like settle real quick

0:44:33 Jenessa: Rockland County Board of Elections. Mm hmm. So I should mention, because this is not how it works in a lot of other states. In New York, we largely vote on paper ballots. They hand you a paper ballot and a pen. We mark it and then we feed it into a scanner. We do have ballot marking devices. Can use them. The reason they're there is by federal law, you have to have this for accessibility purposes. Marking a paper ballot is not accessible for many different disabilities. Despite the fact that there's always one there, they're not well advertised. Um, who don't need it often do not use it. Most of us are hand marking, a paper ballot, feeding it into a scanner. Um, States to meet the requirement to have a paper record, the machine creates a paper record and also records, right? Right. Have pen, pencil marked, hand marked ballots. And in that county alone, there's like hundreds of thousands of votes.

0:45:42 Thomas: Okay so it's not just a matter of like a precinct it's like you'd have to look at the whole thing okay gotcha

0:45:46 Jenessa: So they are asking for the entire county and really, I believe, in certain places, the entire state. I think they don't understand that the jurisdiction of this court could not possibly order the whole state. Um could order the whole county in theory that would be hundreds of thousands of votes and you have to get a bunch of volunteers or really probably paid because you pay poll workers um them in there they have to hand count this you're going to make more mistakes hand counting than that machine ever will and you're gonna have to count it and recount it and re-verify and with the way this plaintiff is working if there's two votes wrong they're gonna be like conspiracy um so

0:46:30 Thomas: Yeah, that's like 50 % of the votes.

0:46:33 Jenessa: It's oh my god that was just so painful to me, so I think there's that big concern that like it's such an undertaking to manually recount a hundred percent of the votes when they already audit recount three percent of the votes to triple check. That's already been done and it's found no problems. And it's going to cost time. It's going to cost money. It could raise alarm bells for people when that is not necessary. If it was like a small town, I probably would just be like, do what I got to do to get you off my back?

0:47:07 Thomas: Makes sense.

0:47:08 Jenessa: Kind of where it's at legally. The other thing to note is, yeah, they can't invalidate the election. It has already been certified. So, you know, what do you do if the people who are responsible for saying, yes, it looks like everything was done correctly, the audit happened, they said it was done incorrectly, they sent it to the state, the state said it wasn't done correctly. They didn't move for an injunction. They filed this before certification and they could have said, if they had a lawyer, don't certify. That wouldn't have to say invalidate the results. You would say stop them from certifying and count and then certify. That's what happened in North Carolina with that ridiculous dragged out Supreme Court race. They didn't certify for like a year. So they failed to make a really important motion that would have protected their rights because they're pro se. Say um yeah they just everybody on both sides is kind of missing the mark in my opinion that's where we're at legally

0:48:22 Thomas: It for part one. Was the legal stuff. Part two, we're really going to dig into the numbers. And I think you're goingto see why this case perhaps does not stack up. And Jenessa's got a really detailed breakdown for us. So looking forward to that in part two. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so mucho por apoyar. Nos vemos entonces. Your little brother play court or