An election watchdog group is vowing to appeal a Central District of California judge’s dismissal of their lawsuit challenging the state’s election practices.
The Election Integrity Project (EIP) and various plaintiffs sued various county election officials on Jan. 4 alleging in their lawsuit that California’s voting practices are unconstitutional and asking the federal judge to issue an order requiring state officials to decertify the November 2020 election results and allow an inspection of all voting machines by subject matter experts.
“California’s voting process is broken,” said James P. Bradley, one of the plaintiffs. “It is ripe for irregularities and manipulation at every level of the process. Future elections will be marred with massive irregularities too unless the process is changed. Without fair and transparent elections, citizens lose faith in the process.”
But U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr., appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, ruled that the plaintiffs failed to show that injury was concrete and particularized.
“Plaintiffs’ allegations amount to an incremental undermining of confidence in the election results, past, and future,” Birotte wrote in his June 15 decision. “Such a generalized grievance is insufficient for standing. Ultimately, and as our sister courts have found, a vote cast by fraud, mailed in by the wrong person, or otherwise compromised during the elections process has an impact on the final tally and thus on the proportional effect of every vote, but no single voter is specifically disadvantaged.”
As previously reported, the issues alleged in the 44-page complaint include unremedied irregular voter rolls, voting machine vulnerabilities, invalid ballots, and live vote-by-mail ballots being sent to deceased persons, non-citizens, and non-residents.
“The irregularities EIP has identified are likely just the tip of the iceberg,” said Bradley who is campaigning for the 2022 Senate seat that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris vacated. “Election observers were obstructed from observing key parts of the election process in counties across the state, which is why it will take the legal discovery process to determine the full extent of the problem.”
The plaintiffs, who are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, also allege that executive orders signed by Gov. Newsom and emergency legislation bypassed traditional legislative approval.
“The Governor and Secretary of State promulgated emergency orders and regulations, which the other defendants implemented, that were contrary to the laws passed by the legislature, including allowing ballot stuffing of two or more ballots returned in a single ballot envelope and eviscerating effective signature verification by presuming all signatures on vote-by-mail envelopes valid, among other things,” Bradley told the Southern California Record.
Plaintiffs intend to file a notice of appeal within several weeks, according to an EIP statement online.
“There are in-person voting processes that have worked for decades, which California has largely abandoned in favor of universal vote-by-mail with inadequate security and chain of custody,” Bradley said. “A return to those voting practices would offer a much higher level of protection than the current system.”
The lawsuit was signed and filed by attorney Josh Kroot.
“Practices that promote the casting of illegal or unreliable ballots or fail to contain basic minimum guarantees against such conduct, can violate the Fourteenth Amendment by leading to the diminution in value of validly cast ballots,” Bradley added.