Government

Trump's Clown Car Election Suit Turns Arizona Courtroom Into A Three Ring Circus

Rules of evidence? That's just, like, your opinion, man.

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(Photo by Getty Images)

On Tuesday, the Trump campaign moved to submit evidence under seal in its suit to revive claims of ballots being spoiled in Arizona, AKA Sharpiegate 2: Electric Boogaloo. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Daniel Kiley denied the motion, but after yesterday’s hearing, it’s no mystery why the plaintiffs wanted to keep this stuff under wraps.

Last week, the wingnutosphere echoed with accusations that poll workers had tricked in-person voters into spoiling their ballots by filling them out with Sharpies, rendering them unreadable by the tabulation machines. After Arizona’s Secretary of State assured the public that this was false, the theory morphed slightly. What if devious poll workers supplied the felt tip pens knowing that the ink would bleed through and damage ballots by leaving stray marks which would be read as overvotes, that is votes for multiple candidates in the same race, and thus rejected?

If this was the plan, it seems to have failed spectacularly. (It wasn’t the plan.) Overvotes for president in Maricopa County totaled a whopping 191 ballots, representing 0.002 percent of the ballots cast, which is not entirely consistent with the plaintiffs’ assertion of “systemic error.”  Perhaps that’s why the Trump campaign’s attorney Kory Langhofer was forced to take some unorthodox measures to collect evidence of the “thousands of additional votes for Donald Trump” promised in the original complaint.

To wit, he appears have used an online collection portal where anyone could submit an account of voting irregularities. Despite the use of a CAPTCHA to verify the information, Langhofer was forced to admit in court that much of what he got was lies and spam.” Turns out WHAT IS HYDRANT? is not a good tool for sorting evidence. Good to know!

Langhofer explained that he further verified the online submissions by speaking to the affiants personally and weeding out anyone who was not actually present at a polling place on November 3 to witness the alleged impropriety.

“That just shows you cannot disprove what’s asserted,” Judge Kiley noted before excluding the CAPTCHA evidence.

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And then the Trump campaign called its witnesses, and things really went off the rails.

No one testified to firsthand knowledge of poll workers improperly submitting overvotes instead of supplying new ballots to be repaired. And Gina Swoboda, the Arizona Election Day Operations director for the Trump campaign, testified that she saw no systemic problems on election day, raised no issues at the time regarding poll workers, and has no personal basis for believing that the outcome does not reflect the expressed will of the voters.

Which was a fitting denouement, really. Because Ms. Swoboda was preceded on the stand by Zack Alcoyne, the self-professed elections expert who constructed the online CAPTCHA portal for disgruntled voters who can check all pictures with traffic lights in them. It appears Mr. Langhofer failed to mention one or two salient details about his relationship with the witness.

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On the stand, Mr. Alcoyne was unable to state definitively whether he was being paid for his testimony.

“Not that I know of,” he said. “I haven’t discussed it.” Upon further questioning he was unable to jog his memory. “I’m not sure,” Alcoyne added.

Neat!

At the close of the hearing Judge Kiley took the matter under advisement. But apparently he won’t have to render an opinion on Sharpiegate Subsequent Moviefilm after all.

Ah, well. Nevertheless!

Trump Campaign Lawyer Admits to Judge: Our Search for Evidence of Fraud Produced Obvious Lies and ‘Spam’ [Law and Crime]
Trump attorney tells Maricopa County judge that vote challenge is not about fraud or election theft [AZ Republic]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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