Point to a single court case in the US regarding this election year where evidence was presented in court and judged.
Every single case was dismissed on procedural grounds.
Edit: At least with this lawsuit we will finally see some evidence.
Every single case was dismissed on procedural grounds.
Edit: At least with this lawsuit we will finally see some evidence.
Bowyer v. Ducey (while it was also dismissed for a variety of reasons including standing, abstention in the face of overlapping parallel state court claims, mootness, and laches, the analysis in the ruling leading to dismissal for failure to state a claim included a finding that the offered evidence was a combination of unreliable and irrelevant to the claims.)
Plus there are at least four cases that proceeded to trial.
> Every single case was dismissed on procedural grounds.
That's both false (not every single election-related case has been dismissed), and beside the point (as, to the extent that “failure to state a claim” is procedural—arguably that and standing are not, really—it often still involves reviewing the proffered evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff as to whether it could sustain a prima facie case.)
So, the procedures should have been followed.
This is such a simple thing to say, and easy to understand. Except you seem to not accept that. Why not?
And the Supreme Court case, they said, even if they'd listened to the case, there would have been no remedy. Meaning, it would have been pointless to listen, but they think by law they should have listened.
This says to me that the people filing these cases do not understand the procedures, do not understand the possible remedies, were not acting in good faith.
Why doesn't it say that to you?
You're accusing attorneys of not acting in good faith or sheer incompetence for not having a firm understanding of an entirely novel legal scenario. The Texas case was, according to reports, hotly debated in private by SCOTUS before they made their decision. Shame you weren't there to educate them on proper procedure.
One of them literally called for the execution of the Vice President of the United States. [1]
Another called for "trial by combat." [2]
How tolerant am I supposed to be?
> Maybe there isn't actually a procedure for this situation?
For the 60 court cases? Yes, there are.
> If the highest court in the land says even if the claims turn out to be true there is still no remedy to be had.
Actually, that was the dissenting opinion. The decision was that the petition lacked standing.
> In other words, even if the election was provably stolen
They had 60 chances to prove it was stolen.
I have little sympathy for someone who believes that somehow 60 different court cases were simultaneously wrongly decided.
Move on to changing the laws, winning the next election. This one is decided.
> Shame you weren't there to educate them on proper procedure.
I think they came to the right decision. You're the one who wants to educate them.
[1] : https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-allies-attack-lin-wood...
[2] : https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/watch-giuliani-deman...
Giuliani used the words "trial by combat" but it's not an accurate description of what he was calling for. There's a lot to blame Giuliani (and others) for here, but let's try to be precise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
In this case, out of context, "let's have trial by combat" seems worse than when placed in the context that marks it as clearly metaphorical - he had just explained what he meant by it.
It's absolutely heated rhetoric, and one example of many - on the part of Giuliani, Trump, and others - that together built a context that led to violence.
It is absolutely appropriate to blame them for that.
That doesn't make labeling it a call for "trial by combat" a good representation of what happened in that moment.
There is, for at least the vast majority of the issues.
E.g., for the allegedly not-legislatively-authorized election-process issues that have been the center of many of the challenges, the process is to challenge the change when you have notice of the process before the election, the failure, despite knowledge of the facts motivating the challenges, to do that in favor of doing post-election and often post-certification challenges is the source of both laches and mootness dismissals of those claims.
Kind of depends on what precisely you mean by "presented in court and judged", but the evidence was evaluated by judges and found wanting:
Bowyer v. Ducey, in Arizona [0]:
> The various affidavits and expert reports are largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections. Because the Complaint is grounded in these fraud allegations, the Complaint shall be dismissed.
> Plaintiffs first “describe specific violations of Arizona law” to support their fraud claims. In doing so, they attach declarations from poll watchers that observed election officials during the November General Election. As Intervenor-Defendant Maricopa County points out, these are the only declarants offered by Plaintiffs with first-hand observation of the election administration. But these four declarants do not allege fraud at all... These objections to the manner in which Arizona officials administered the election cannot serve to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona because they fail to present evidence that supports the underlying fraud claim.
> The sheer unreliability of the information underlying Mr. Briggs’ “analysis” of Mr. Braynard’s “data” cannot plausibly serve as a basis to overturn a presidential election, much less support plausible fraud claims against these Defendants.
> To lend support to this theory [of voting machines being hacked], Plaintiffs offer expert Russell Ramsland, Jr., who asserts there was “an improbable, and possibly impossible spike in processed votes” in Maricopa and Pima Counties at 8:46 p.m. on November 3, 2020... Thus, the Court finds that while this “spike” could be explained by an illicit hacking of voting machinery in Arizona, the spike is “not only compatible with, but indeed was more likely explained by, lawful, unchoreographed” reporting of early ballot tabulation in those counties.
----
King v. Whitmer, in Michigan [1]:
> The Court may deny Plaintiffs’ motion for injunctive relief for the reasons discussed above. Nevertheless, the Court will proceed to analyze the merits of their claims.
> Plaintiffs attempt to establish an Equal Protection claim based on the theory that Defendants engaged in “several schemes” to, among other things, “destroy,” “discard,” and “switch” votes for President Trump, thereby “devalu[ing] Republican votes” and “diluting” the influence of their individual votes.
> But, to be perfectly clear, Plaintiffs’ equal protection claim is not supported by any allegation that Defendants’ alleged schemes caused votes for President Trump to be changed to votes for Vice President Biden.
> But of course, “[a] belief [from a sworn affidavit] is not evidence” and falls far short of what is required to obtain any relief, much less the extraordinary relief Plaintiffs request.
> With nothing but speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden, Plaintiffs’ equal protection claim fails.
----
Law v. Whitmer, in Nevada [2]:
> The Court nonetheless considers the totality of the evidence provided by Contestants in reaching and ruling upon the merits of their claims.
> Contestants offered Mr. Baselice to opine on the incidence of illegal voting in the 2020 General Election based on a phone survey of voters.
> The Court questions Mr. Baselice's methodology because he was unable to identify the source of the data for his survey and conducted no quality control of the data he received.
> Contestants offered Mr. Kamzol to opine that significant illegal voting occurred in Nevada during the 2020 General Election, based on his analysis of various commercially available databases of voters.
> The Court questions Mr. Kamzol's methodology because he had little to no information or supervision over the origins of his data, the manner in which it had been matched, and what the rate of false positives would be. Additionally, there was little or no verification of his numbers.
> As reflected herein, the Court finds that the expert testimony provided by Contestants was of little to no value. The Court did not exclude consideration of this evidence, which it could have, but gave it very little weight.
----
There's more, but I hope I've made my point: evidence was considered in more than one case, and was found to be insufficient to rule in the plaintiffs' favor.
----
> Every single case was dismissed on procedural grounds.
At least based on my reading of the ruling, this is wrong. Law v. Whitmer was dismissed due to the presented evidence being insufficient:
> CONCLUSION
> The Contestants failed to meet their burden to provide credible and relevant evidence to substantiate any of the grounds set forth in NRS 293.410 to contest the November 3, 2020 General Election
----
[0]: https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/...
[1]: https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/...
[2]: https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/...
Edit: Remove unnecessary "emphasis added"
Edit 2: Add section pointing out Law v. Whitmer was not dismissed on procedural grounds
Oh, and by the way, if a judge dismisses a case on procedural, jurisdictional or standing and then goes on to provide an opinion of the claims/evidence presented in a complaint -- it doesn't mean that the adjudication was based upon the merits of the case. So the claim that most of the dismissed cases were for procedural, jurisdictional or standing reasons still stands. A judge is required to evaluate the evidence in a light most favorable to the plaintiff. Most of these cases didn't get that far.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related...
The claim I was addressing:
> Point to a single court case in the US regarding this election year where evidence was presented in court and judged.
The cases I listed are cases where 1) evidence was (arguably) presented in court, in the form of affidavits/expert opinions/reports/testimony attached to the complaint, and 2) judged to be insufficient for one reason or another.
The fact that other lawsuits were dismissed solely on procedural or jurisdictional grounds is irrelevant for the purposes of addressing that specific claim.
Law v. Whitmer, in particular, does not appear to have been dismissed on procedural grounds, and is sufficient on its own to prove both the claim I originally addressed and the other part of GGP's comment incorrect:
> CONCLUSION
> The Contestants failed to meet their burden to provide credible and relevant evidence to substantiate any of the grounds set forth in NRS 293.410 to contest the November 3, 2020 General Election
"Cherry-picking" is also meaningless here, as I made no extrapolation about post-election lawsuits in general based on those 3 cases.
----
> Oh, and by the way, if a judge dismisses a case on procedural, jurisdictional or standing and then goes on to provide an opinion of the claims/evidence presented in a complaint -- it doesn't mean that the adjudication was based upon the merits of the case.
Well, sure, but it also doesn't mean that the ruling was not based on upon the merits of the case either. A case can be dismissed for multiple reasons, after all; for example, King v. Whitmer was dismissed partially on standing grounds and because the judge found that the plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on the merits (not strictly a final ruling on the merits, but based upon the merits nonetheless).
In addition, the line between "procedural dismissal" and "ruling upon the merits" can get a bit hazy if the dismissal relies upon evaluation of evidence provided by the complainant. For example, Rule 9(b) requires federal fraud claims to be pled with particularity. If the provided evidence fails to satisfy Rule 9(b), then the case can be dismissed. Does this count as a procedural dismissal (not meeting the requirements of a rule), or a ruling based upon the merits of the case (insufficient evidence)?
----
And also note that I said:
> Kind of depends on what precisely you mean by "presented in court and judged"
The commenter I replied to didn't give a precise definition of "presented in court and judged", so I worked off what I hope is a reasonable interpretation of the phrase.
If it is a tangential opinion (not supporting one of the decisive grounds for an action), sure. If it is a opinion that is part of the basis for a grounds of dismissal that inherently asks whether, even before considering how the other side might challenge it, the evidence could ever support the plaintiff winning, it absolutely is adjudication.
The difference is important because the last can be (and has been in some of the cases at issue) part of the analysis when dismissing for failure to state a claim.
That...depends. “Failure to state a claim” is one of the bases that is being described as procedural, but it can involve not just a analysis of whether the plaintiff has recited the legal elements of an actual offense, but whether the evidence the plaintiff has identified that they can present would be sufficient, before considering any potential counterevidence, to make a prima facie case for facts that would justify the claim stated. Where that analysis is conducted, and it is concluded in the negative requiring dismissal, while the basis may be characterized as “procedural”, it includes exactly a decision about the merits of the case.
That is what has occurred in several of the cases at issue where failure to state a claim was one of the grounds for dismissal.