I just received a message from Dan Richard. The NH State Supreme Court has affirmed that he has standing on his equal protection claim (Richard v. Sununu) in his election law lawsuit.
Richard v. Sununu et al., 2023-0097, Affirmed in part; vacated in part; and remanded.
BASSETT and DONOVAN, JJ., concurred; HANTZ MARCONI, J., sat for oral argument but did not participate in the final vote.
The Court affirmed that I have standing on my equal protection claims and is remanding the case back to the lower court for hearing on the merits.
Thank you for all the prayers and support!
Quote from the decision.
[¶20] The plaintiff alleges in his complaint that “[t]he Defendants’ sanctioning of the discretionary use of voting machine[s] at the local level” violates the equal protection clause of Part I, Article 1 of the State Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution by authorizing the “use of programmable, open source, electronic vote counting machines in some towns, cities, or other political subdivision[s] of the State or not.” He argues that the State’s action “sets up an unequal election process across the state” wherein “103 communities in the State hand count, while at [the] same time permitting voting machine counts in 135 communities.” According to the plaintiff, this disparity between the methods of counting votes and the “non-verifiability” of ballots submitted by electronic voting machine “at the time of counting and for later auditing (re-counts) of the validity of each ballot/vote” produce “an unreliable outcome and hidden opportunity to manipulate computer-counted data,” thereby depriving him of a lawful count of the ballots and diluting his vote.
[¶21] Applying our standard of review, based upon the alleged facts, we determine that the plaintiff has sufficiently demonstrated his right to claim relief and has therefore demonstrated standing as to his equal protection claim set forth in Count II. See Avery, 173 N.H. at 736-37; see also Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 205-06 (1962) (noting that voters have standing to bring equal protection challenges to complain of vote dilution and observing that “[m]any of the cases have assumed rather than articulated the premise in deciding the merits of similar claims”). Because the trial court did not address the plaintiff’s equal protection claim, we remand for further proceedings consistent with this decision. In doing so, we express no opinion on the merits of the plaintiff’s claim
NH Supreme Court, Sept. 12, 2024
No other part of the suit appears to have survived (you can dig into past copious details here), but it’s something. And another delay. We should not expect any good news or any ‘new’ news until after the November election, but I might be wrong about that.
I don’t think I am, but if we got a ruling that required machine towns to hand count, it would be seismic, so I don’t expect any verdict unless it is against so – nothing until after the November Elections. We wouldn’t want to mess up the potential for chicanery.
