A Montgomery judge has scheduled a hearing for August 30 on the state attorney general’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by former gubernatorial candidate Lindy Blanchard and others alleging that Alabama’s electronic vote-counting machines are susceptible to hacking and should not be used in the election in November.
Montgomery County Circuit Judge Greg Griffin had set the hearing for August 11, but lawyers for both sides asked for the later date. Griffin ordered both sides to file all briefs and written material by August 25.
The lawsuit was filed by Blanchard, state Rep. Tommy Hanes, R-Bryant, Dr. David Calderwood of Madison County, and Focus on America, a tax-exempt social welfare organization based in DeKalb County. They sued Secretary of State John Merrill, the state’s top election official, and the Electronic Voting Committee, a five-member panel created by the Legislature to inspect and certify machines for use by Alabama counties.
The lawsuit claims that the electronic ballot scanners that count votes in Alabama elections are unreliable because they can be connected to the Internet and tampered with. They also claim that the Electronic Voting Committee has failed to publicly inspect the machines.
The lawsuit asks the judge to declare the use of the machines unconstitutional and to order the state to conduct the general election in November with a hand-count of paper ballots that is witnessed and live-streamed and recorded by video cameras.
Lawyers for Attorney General Steve Marshall, who is representing Merrill and the Electronic Voting Committee, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs are asking for a rewrite of state election law “based on nothing more than speculation and innuendo.” The state’s lawyers said the Legislature has declared electronic machines an acceptable method of counting ballots. They said records from the Electronic Voting Committee’s meetings show that the panel publicly inspects machines and ensures that they cannot be connected to the Internet.
Blanchard, a first-time candidate and former ambassador to Slovenia under President Trump, finished second to Gov. Kay Ivey in the May 24 primary, receiving 19 percent of the vote. Hanes, a former firefighter and a commercial fisherman, lost his reelection bid in District 23 in northeast Alabama.
They filed the lawsuit before the primary, on May 19. The plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in June.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers in the case include Andrew Parker of Minneapolis, who has represented My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, a vocal proponent of unsubstantiated claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Lindell has alleged that Alabama voting systems were hacked in 2020 and that thousands of votes cast for Donald Trump were changed to votes for Joe Biden. Secretary of State John Merrill said Lindell’s claim was false and could not have happened.
