You can almost visualize a cartoon villain hopping mad and declaring “Curses! Foiled Again!”
Because today, Nichole Brathwait from Lawrence County just got shut down hard in her attempt to force Lawrence County to hand-count ballots. Specifically, for the layperson, she filed a lawsuit against the Lawrence County Commission demanding that they accept a hand-counting ballot petition after they said “no thank you, and declared the petition improper.” And the court did not agree with her. At all.
For background…
Nichole Braithwait, who introduced and circulated the Lawrence County hand-counting petition, argues that county commissioners do not have the authority to reject a properly filed petition with enough signatures to support a public vote. The authority to determine a petition’s legality lies with the courts and not commissioners, her lawsuit says.
Braithwait is associated with South Dakota Canvassing, the group that helped coordinate the statewide petition effort seeking to require hand-counting at the county level.
“I am convinced that we are on the right side of this issue and eventually the people will realize that our elections are run by corporations where the people have no oversight,” Braithwait said in an emailed statement, adding that “our elections are selections.”
and..
The petitioners’ struggle to retain a lawyer, Frankenstein said, reflects poorly on the claims in the lawsuits. Attorneys generally avoid cases with little to no chance of success, she said.
Frankenstein described the lawsuits as “frivolous” actions that cost counties money for elected officials “just doing what they swore an oath to do,” which is conduct elections according to local, state and federal laws.
Read it here at South Dakota Searchlight.
“our elections are run by corporations.” That gives you a good idea of what we’re dealing with.
Because of this action against the county, Lawrence County Commissioners had to seek legal counsel to respond to the hand-counting petition. And via Sara Frankenstein at Gunderson Palmer, they did so:
Respondents’ Brief in Support of Motion to Dismiss by Pat Powers on Scribd
When you have a 48 page response with a table of contents, one can assume they have a lot of ammunition to bring to the fight.
That was in October. And today, the circuit court made their decision. Not only did they find for the County, they dismissed Braithwait’s action with prejudice.
Order on Petitioner’s Affidavit and Application for Writ of Mandamus by Pat Powers on Scribd
Arguably, this sets a precedent that strengthens the arguments of counties when faced with the attempts by election conspiracists to demand that they not use machines or assistive technologies as part of the election process.
I think you can anticipate that the respondent’s brief and this decision will be circulated among all of South Dakota’s county officials.
And will certainly provide more than adequate ammunition to stave off those who seek to undermine confidence in our state’s election process.
And yet nobody seems to have an adequate answer for, “why CAN’T we hand count them?”
The rank-and-file are left to conclude that where there is smoke, there’s fire.
So the kerfuffel continues.
No, there is an answer for why, hand counting is less accurate. Has been proven time and time and time again. They just proved it Tripp Co.not that long ago. Numbskull.