Clifford: Lake v. Hobbs, day 1 // (Scott Johnson)

Attorney John A. “Jack” Clifford works with Merchant & Gould. P.C. Jack was a lawyer I had the good fortune to meet many years ago. We are sent this report by him on the Lake v. Hobbs et. al. trial which opened yesterday. is the AP’s report on the first day. Jack says that this is what Jack learned from day one of the trial.

I write for myself and not for any client or employer. Below are my observations and general impressions of witnesses and the overall situation.

* Ms. Lake lost by approximately 17,000 votes the November 2022 general elections for Arizona governor to Katie Hobbs, our current Secretary of State. The outcome of the Maricopa County Superior Court case is being challenged on a variety of grounds. Two of these grounds were granted a mini-trial before Judge Peter A. Thompson in Mesa, Arizona. Yesterday, December 21, was the first day of testimony.

* Ms. Lake is challenged by the requirement to prove a case within one case. She must show that serious problems were caused. It is a heavy responsibility, as any malpractice attorney can tell you.

* There was significant motion practice prior to this mini-trial. The docket is available at Civil Court Information – Case History (maricopa.gov).

* Yesterday’s early witnesses were Stephen Richer, a Maricopa County Recorder’s Office employee, and Robert Jarrett, the Maricopa County Director for Elections. Both witnesses, as expected, said that everything was professionally and professionally managed during the 2022 general elections. Richer wore a Tshirt and testified via video from Panama City, Florida. He was on vacation. Jarrett was present in person and wore a suit.

Jarrett testified to the fact that Maricopa County had 12,000 different “ballot types” due to the large number of local school board elections last month. This number of variations is unbelievable to me and it just makes sense.

* Registered voters can vote anywhere in the county. Therefore, ballots must be printed “on demand” after voters have identified themselves at the polling station. The scanner can identify which type of printed ballot is being scanned by markings on each ballot. This allows the scanner to tabulate the votes according to the registered marks.

Jarrett testified to the fact that, although the ballots were printed using 20-inch paper and the software allowed only a 20 inch ballot format, previous elections used a 19 inch format. He stated that 70 of the 223 voting centers required that computer technicians be sent on election day to modify settings on the computers that spooled print jobs, the printers, and any other part of the on-demand printing system.

* Surprisingly, Jarrett did not mention printer toner problems. Jarrett denied that the wait times were longer than in other elections or that the Republican party’s request to vote in person on election Day caused an increase in the number of voters that the voting system couldn’t handle. Ms. Lake was not helped by the testimony of these witnesses.

Clay Parikh was called to testify as an expert in cyber security after he examined the few paper ballots that the judge allowed. He has years of experience in security issues related to ballots. He is currently employed by Northrup-Grumman. He looked the part, dropping a lot of jargon during testimony, such as “standard logic and accuracy tests,” ghost printing, and the like. The defendants moved to exclude him, but he was denied.

* He claimed that he had 20 years of experience, which I found to be highly qualified. He appeared to be the ultimate computer geek. On a scale from 1 to 10, his intensity was around an 8.5.

* He was permitted to inspect a few ballots on December 20, He stated that 19 of the 113 ballots he had examined had a 19-inch image printed on 20 inch paper. He also stated that he had examined 15 original ballots and found that 14 of them were 19-inch images printed on 20-inch papers.

* He stated that the Dominion ballot scanners used in this case will reject a ballot with a 19 inch image printed on 20 inch paper. He also stated that a ballot printed on 19-inch 20-inch paper won’t scan at the central scanning location.

* You may recall that voters were allowed put their unscannable ballots in “drawer 3”, which was to be scanned later downtown. This is for any ballot that is tattered, has coffee stains or is otherwise unable to scan.

* Thousands of ballots were placed in drawer 3. Many of these needed to be duplicated. This is why Arizona elections take so long. I believe that the duplication process is done by hand, with a Republican or Democrat transferring marks from the original to duplicate ballots.

* Parikh stated that both the original and duplicate should have serial numbers so that they can be cross-checked later if necessary. According to Parikh, it could take up a week for the county to locate the duplicates of the few original ballots that he reviewed.

* Parikh refused to admit, during cross-examination. That the voter’s votes were scanned and apparently tallied after they had been duplicated in the correct 20-inch image on 20 inch paper format. This seemed unnecessary argumentative to me. However, proving a series errors that did not materially alter the outcome of the election does not make the case within a case standard.

* It was also discovered that Parikh was being paid, and his travel expenses were covered by a group associated to the “My Pillow Guy,” Mike Lindell.

* I thought he did a great job explaining what seemed impossible, namely why so many ballots couldn’t be scanned at the polling station. He didn’t talk about toner issues, or ballots with registration marks that were so hard to read by scanners. He spoke about how the system was set up so that only 20-inch formats could be printed. He suggested that someone somehow overrode those systems to print a wrong format ballot. He stated that this would not be a mistake.

* He left me feeling like he had more to say, but was limited by the scope of the questions. He didn’t say what I was thinking, that somehow the settings had not changed since the last time the system was used for an election using the 19-inch format. I’m not a computer expert.

* Trial time lost almost 30 minutes due to confusion over who to call next, whether that person was already on the witness list, etc. Plaintiff called two witnesses, but neither made it to the witness boxes. I was embarrassed for those lawyers involved in that mess. This would have been a serious mistake in a jury case. The judge was patient with the delay.

* Heather Honey, a consultant on open-source investigations and someone who has experience with chain of custody issues, testified about several matters. She examined the documents that showed how many ballots were taken from ballot drop boxes each day. She inspected the very detailed documents that established a chain of custody for such ballots, up to the day before the election.

* She testified that the pre-election day drop box chain to custody documents were appropriate, were completed correctly, and were “fine”. She also stated that while the drop boxes were operational on Election Day, the county has so far been unable produce any documents regarding how many ballots were removed.

* She said that 275,000+ ballots had been placed in drop boxes on election day. There was no chain of custody documentation that the county had been able find. The county’s election procedures require such documents. Arizona law allows ballots can be dropped in a drop box on election day. She stated that it was impossible to determine whether any ballots were added or removed from the ballot stream without a proper chain of custody. She asked why a chain of custody was required for some ballots but not all.

* She also spoke out about Runbeck Election Services employees being allowed to drop their ballots, as well as those of family members, into the ballot stream without any chain of custody. She said that she relied upon the personal observation of another witness who saw at least 50 ballots being placed in the ballot stream by Runbeck staff.

* She testified that Arizona law only requires that all ballots enter the stream in one of a few ways. Runbeck employees inserting their ballots or those of relatives was not one of these. She stated that such ballots would be invalid under Arizona law. However, there was no way to determine which ballots were in question or how many total ballots were entered through the loophole.

* Her testimony came down to the conclusion that the county failed to maintain a proper chain of custody for all ballots, despite the fact that it was required by Arizona law. This means that Runbeck staff inserted an unknown number of invalid ballots.

* She said that the county did a better job in 2022 with chain of custody than they did in 2020, in a truly embarrassing moment. It must have been awful back then.

* She also pointed out the fact that Runbeck was the county’s primary source of work, which complicates the chain of custody. I found her composed and held up well to cross-examination. The purpose of the cross examination was not to prove that any of her misdeeds were motivated by malice or bad intent, nor were they sufficient to alter the outcome of the election.

* Robert Betancourt (34), a temporary tech support worker, testified about the technical issues that he saw with printers and the solutions he and his team used to fix them. He wore a ill-fitting suit, shirt, and tie. I was offended by the fact that he wore his tie three inches below his unbuttoned collar. But, he was a tech guy and not a lawyer.

* He presented into evidence a long list of text messages that his team had generated. They testified to the problems they observed in the field on election Day and the solutions they devised for them. He talked about cleaning the connection wires and shaking the toner cartridges in printers to improve the quality on-demand printed ballots. These fixes helped with many printing problems, but not all.

* He didn’t mention registration marks that were too faint to scan or anything about 19-inch formats on a twenty-inch ballot. He claimed that he did not know of any problems that were deliberately caused or had changed the outcome of the election. He seemed puzzled by the question, as he stated that he was only a part-time employee. I understood that he wasn’t a big picture guy. He did mention that many of the voting places he visited on that day had long lines, and that he worked until 10:00 PM that day.

* Attorney Mark Sonnenklar is a 26-year-old law practitioner and was a roving lawyer on election day. He was part the Republican Election Integrity Project. He visited 10 voting sites and supervised a group of 10 other people who visited 115 of the 223 locations.

* He testified that it was pandemonium out in the field.

* I don’t know how that proved Kari Lake would win if there weren’t any problems.

* He stated that six of the ten voting sites he visited that day had tabulation issues, which I understood to mean that completed ballots wouldn’t scan. He could not explain why this was so. He stated that the wait times for checking in exceeded 80 minutes and voters were forced to leave the line.

* I was unable to understand why defense counsel asked him questions about ballot harvesting. This seemed to open the door for plaintiff to ask about it, even though it had never been brought up before. His cross examination consisted largely of asking lawyers argumentative questions and then objecting to the witness’s argumentative answers. It was getting late and nobody seemed amused.

Today, the defense is on the defensive.