A new lawsuit asserted that election discrepancies in Rockland County, New York, occurred during the 2024 cycle, possibly costing votes for now-former Vice President Kamala Harris.
The lawsuit, filed by SMART Legislation, said that more voters indicated in sworn affidavits that they cast their ballots for independent Senate candidate Diane Sare than the Rockland County Board of Elections ultimately certified for her, according to a Tuesday report from Newsweek.
That means the results of the election undercounted the actual number of votes for Sare.
There were additional discrepancies that seem to have affected the presidential election outcome as well.
In several districts, hundreds of voters cast their ballots for incumbent New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, while surprisingly withholding their votes for Harris.
University of Alabama in Huntsville professor of physics and astronomy Max Bonamente published a paper concluding that such outcomes were “statistically highly unlikely” in four of the five towns in Rockland County relative to the 2020 election, per Newsweek.
“These data would require extreme sociological or political causes for their explanation, and would benefit from further assurances as to their fidelity,” Bonamente said in a statement.
Newsweek reported that the allegations come after “unconfirmed reports that voting machines were secretly altered before ballots were cast in November’s election.”
Judge Rachel Tanguay of the New York Supreme Court ruled last month that the allegations from SMART Legislation, the action arm of nonpartisan watchdog SMART Elections, were substantial enough to advance to discovery.
“There is clear evidence that the Senate results are incorrect, and there are statistical indications that the presidential results are highly unlikely,” SMART Legislation founder and executive director Lulu Friesdat said in a statement published by the Associated Press.
“If the results are incorrect, it is a violation of the constitutional rights of each person who voted in the 2024 Rockland County general election,” she continued.
“The best way to determine if the results are correct is to examine the paper ballots in a full public, transparent hand recount of all presidential and Senate ballots in Rockland County,” Friesdat added.
“We believe it’s vitally important, especially in the current environment, to be absolutely confident about the results of the election.”
Northeastern University political science professor Costas Panagopoulos also told Newsweek that “statistical irregularities in elections should always be investigated, but the sources of such inconsistencies, which can include error or miscalculation, are not always nefarious.”
The academic added that “in this case, the drop-off inconsistencies could reflect the idiosyncratic nature of the 2024 presidential election cycle,” while comparisons to previous cycles alone “cannot provide definitive proof of wrongdoing.”
The lawsuit comes amid broader election security concerns which President Donald Trump has frequently mentioned.
Republicans have pushed for a number of election security reforms at the state and federal levels designed to address potential fraud in recent years.
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