Alachua Voter Guide

On Friday morning at 9 AM in the Alachua County Courthouse, plaintiffs Mason Alley and Phil Courson prepared to make their case that there was voter fraud perpetrated by enough individuals to have effected the outcome of the April 13th run-off election. Also present were defendants Pam Carpenter, the Supervisor of Elections, Craig Lowe, the Mayor-elect, and yours truly, Don Marsh, the other candidate for Mayor. In addition, there were the attorneys for Lowe and Carpenter, and Ray Washingt0n, an attorney who was appearing on behalf of himself and his wife, Elizabeth Washington. In keeping with the spirit of Gainsville elections, the hearing was sparsely attended by the public.

Circuit Judge Victor Hulslander started things off by asking if the plaintiffs were being represented by counsel. Mason Alley responded that they were represented by Sarah Rumpf, and that she would be participating telephonically, since she was in Orlando at the time.  The judge allowed Ray Washington to participate as a voter with an interest in the election. This turned out to be a big deal, since we scarcely heard from Lowe’s attorney, Cherie Fine, and Carpenter’s attorney, Daniel Nee. Indeed, it seems that Ray Washington was here to do all the heavy lifting, as he did all the questioning. But this only got started after a brief recess from 9:40 until 10:00 while Rumpf got up to speed with her clients in a private call.

This hearing did not focus on evidence, so much as procedure. The original complaint filed by Courson and Alley was flawed in many ways since they are not attorneys. They had copied and pasted from a similar filing and included me as a defendant. One of the first tasks was removing me as a defendant since I hadn’t actually done anything. Washington spent the bulk of his time challenging the plaintiffs for taking so long to get a challenge underway while Lowe is expected to be sworn in only six days from now. The disembodied voice of Alley’s attorney would periodically object to questioning on various grounds, like Alley was not qualified to offer a legal opinion.  Each of her objections were sustained, and this took a lot of steam out of Washington’s charge.

Alley’s most compelling response to the questions of timing was his testimony of how he was denied the voter history data he needed until after the deadline to file a suit contesting the election. He had been forced to use data from the March general election to see if there were irregularities there, so he could only hypothesize about the April data. Since then he has had a group of volunteers reviewing the voter history data he needed two weeks earlier than Pam Carpenter could give it to him. This is a very serious impediment to any investigation, and this is built into the system, whether it is intentional or not.

Pam Carpenter was questioned by the judge about voter data, and she said that this data was publicly available. She further explained that there was a difference between voter registration data, which is constantly in flux, and voter history data. Voter history data is each voter’s record of when and where they voted, but not how they voted. This was the data Alley needed, but could not get for 15 days. Someone (I don’t remember who) wanted to know if her office could not have found voter irregularities. She said that her office was, “not an investigative office, but an administrative office.” This leaves it up to plaintiffs to take the initiative of investigating.

Ray Washington questioned Alley about what he was trying to prove. Alley responded that anecdotal evidence about people coming from Tampa to vote lead him to want to examine the actual voter data to see if this was true. His initial investigation found that it was. When Washington asked for names, Alley said he was not prepared to give them up at this time. It was after this that Judge Hulslander adjourned the court. This hearing will likely turn to the evidence on Tuesday, when the next hearing is scheduled at 3:30 PM.