Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Lol man, this stuff is so political (obviously), it’s painful to find the truth without watching the trial (which I did).

Many Republican elected officials were in a lawsuit opposing election fraud claims. This story seems suspect imo — as most of the party was on the other side fighting the election fraud claims.

Further, of the 30 or so claims only a handful made it to court. The primary ones (1) there was no chain of custody on hundreds of thousands of ballots (2) there were minimal to no signature verification and (3) hundreds of thousands were unable to vote on the AZ Election Day causing a suppression of the vote.

Only number 3 was litigated, and of that it was effectively admitted to but argued “well, they could have voted earlier”. Aka “too late, nothing we can do to fix it”. Quite literally the appellate court cited that they should have brought the claims earlier.

In either case, without actually reviewing the evidence in court it’s a bit painful.

It's hard to discern just what side of the issue you're on.

In any case, if your beef is with decisions of the courts, the linked article is not about that but the investigations of the staff of a Republican attorney general.

That staff, not the courts:

stated "virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded"

"systematically refuted accusations of widespread fraud and made clear that none of the complaining parties — from state lawmakers to self-styled “election integrity” groups — had presented any evidence to support their claims."

"did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in [early ballot handling and verification] during the 2020 general election."

stated "virtually all allegations [of improper signature verification, misuse of drop boxes and incomplete access to records] had been deemed unfounded"

"did not find that the county had mishandled ballots"

stated “No improper Election Procedures were discovered during the Signature Verification review.”

emphasized that, “no evidence of election fraud, manipulation of the election process, or any instances of organized/coordinated fraud was provided by any of the complaining parties.”

"reported that three high-profile Republican officials — who had publicly made fantastical claims of fraud — did not reiterate those assertions under questioning by agents, when they were subject to a state law prohibiting false reporting to law enforcement."

You’re kind of making my point, I don’t care what staffers say — all these parties are opposed to one another already in court and politically.

My beef is that none of this was litigated in a jury trial and that claims are dismissed via legal methods imposed by judges. For instance, before the election stuff is dismissed as “no injury” after the election it’s “no way to rectify”.

Just debate the issue publicly; present the evidence from both sides (not hearsay, which is all this article is).

I’m frustrated because a “democracy” only functions when the vast majority of the citizens feel empowered. Currently approximately half of the population feels disempowered. That’s a recipe for disaster and I’d like someone to adjudicate the issues before what happens next.

> You’re kind of making my point

As I said in the first sentence of my post, it's hard to discern your position exactly, so I'm not surprised.

> none of this was litigated in a jury trial

To get a jury trial, you have to state an actionable claim of damages backed by evidence, which plaintiffs largely failed to do. In general plaintiffs didn't ask for jury trials, but for injunctions, for which one has to make a case to a judge. Juries don't issue injunctions.

> claims are dismissed via legal methods imposed by judges

In the case brought by Kari Lake, not by judges, but Arizona law, which requires that challenges to existing election procedures be brought before the election. Lake brought hers after the election. Ergo, dismissed.

> hearsay, which is all this article is

An official document release by the current attorney general of an investigation done by the attorney general's office. The opposite of hearsay: direct reports by the people who did the investigation.

> a “democracy” only functions when the vast majority of the citizens feel empowered.

What's more empowering than being able to vote? Which the released report as well as Arizona court cases showed citizens were able to do freely and fairly.

> I’d like someone to adjudicate the issues

"adjudicate" = "have a judge decide". Which has happened dozens of times, all claims disproven and dismissed.

> For instance, before the election stuff is dismissed as “no injury” after the election it’s “no way to rectify”.

Are there cases where the same plaintiff got the same claims dismissed before an election due to lack of injury-in-fact issues and after due to lack of remedy? Off the top of my head, there weren't such cases - pre-election challenges and post-election challenges were generally by different plaintiffs who brought different claims, so dismissals due to standing or laches can make perfect sense.

Also, did you mean the doctrine of laches by "no way to rectify"? They're technically two distinct issues - the latter is a prong for standing (along with injury-in-fact), and the former was not an uncommon sight in post-election challenges.

> For instance, before the election stuff is dismissed as “no injury” after the election it’s “no way to rectify”.

You have to be more specific here. The way you're describing it, sure, that may sound unfair.

But let's look at what was being claimed before the election. Then, lawsuits were about restricting which votes could be counted and when. The Trump campaign and Republicans were very concerned about drop box votes, which they felt could potentially be fraudulent. Mind you, they didn't bring evidence that the votes were fraudulent. There were just theories that they could be, and therefore should be summarily rejected. Cases like these were rightly dismissed, because they didn't state an actual injury, and they didn't even provide evidence of a potential injury. You can't sue for anything with no evidence and expect to win.

The net result of accepting the Trump campaign's claims at face value would be to disenfranchise voters without any evidence their votes should be discarded or made harder to cast. Weighing definitive disenfranchisement against potential and unspecified voter fraud leans in favor of the latter.

As for "no way to rectify" after the election, that's not quite true. There are processes within each state to challenge their individual elections after they are held. The Trump campaign went through that process and lost. One main reason they lost is they didn't allege any fraud in court. Think about that for a moment. The entire Trump campaign and the GOP apparatus was on TV, all day, every day from November to January claiming fraud.

But when standing in front of a judge, they demurred. Why? The obvious answer is because they didn't have proof of their claims. If they did, they would have provided it. But they didn't have proof, so they didn't make the claim in a court of law where it would have legal ramifications, unlike TV.

Moreover, when the relief they wanted was untenable. They wanted things like entire elections to be thrown out after they were certified. They wanted to rerun the entire presidential election at the national level. There's just not mechanism to effectuate what they wanted to happen, which is they wanted the courts to install Trump as POTUS over the will of the electorate. Indeed, there's no way to rectify their perceived injury, and telling them as such shouldn't cause a beef in anyone who has followed the state-level recounts and audits. Because the Trump campaign lied, and anyone who still is pushing the idea the 2020 election was stolen from Trump was lied to, or is still lying to this day.

> Quite literally the appellate court cited that they should have brought the claims earlier.

From the appellate decision:

"The superior court dismissed eight of the ten counts for failure to state a claim, for undue delay, as duplicative, as outside the scope of an election contest, or for some combination thereof."

"her request for relief fails because the evidence presented to the superior court ultimately supports the court’s conclusion that voters were able to cast their ballots, that votes were counted correctly, and that no other basis justifies setting aside the election results."

https://www.azcourts.gov/Portals/0/OpinionFiles/Div1/2023/1%...

> Quite literally the appellate court cited that they should have brought the claims earlier.

didnt they bring claims before the election about it that got thrown out because no injury yet? Or am I confusing things?

In the period when cases were being brought after the 2020 election, there was a pervasive talking point that the cases were not being heard on their merits, and were being dismissed for "mere" procedural reasons like standing.

Notwithstanding that the cases notably refused to allege election fraud (Rudy Giuliani famously refused to make a claim of fraud in front of a judge, but claimed fraud profusely in front of TV audiences), in the years since every election has been looked at fully and thoroughly. All ok the claims made in the last months of 2020 have been shown to be baseless. Not just Arizona -- Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan all had zero fraud of the kind alleged.

Arizona state law requires that challenges to existing election procedures must be brought before the election.

From the appellate decision:

"at best, Lake’s signature-verification claim attacked Maricopa County’s process for verifying signatures that first-level reviewers questioned—a challenge to the County’s election procedures, not a claim that the overall procedures were violated. Accordingly, the superior court correctly concluded that Lake’s contest attacked the manner of holding an election"

ah yes, thats the one I was thinking of.

Before the election Lake et al. brought a lawsuit to bar use of voting machines. Suit was thrown out because judge ruled they offered only conjecture and speculation, no evidence, and lawyers were sanctioned for lying to the judge.

I don't know what any of that has to do with this story. It just says the AG for the state spent thousands of person-hours on his staff to investigate election fraud based on any and every angle they could find and ended up with nothing which he kept under wraps for as long as he could.

There doesn't seem to be much mystery to what happened or why.

Good thing the official running the election wasn't up for election themself. I mean that would make mass issues on election day look like intentional tampering to those "crazy conspiracy theorists."

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