On Tuesday, a Montgomery judge heard a lawsuit seeking to end the state’s use of electronic vote counting machines. The plaintiffs claim that the use of electronic vote counting machines adds the ability for election integrity to be undermined by bad actors and creates an unacceptable layer of inaccuracy in Alabama elections. Allegations that the state strongly denies.
The case is being brought by Focus on America (FOA) State Rep. Tommy Hanes, Dr. David Calderwood, and then gubernatorial candidate Lindy Blanchard. Blanchard has since left the case because she says that she supports the full Republican ticket and that the case is being used to advance a write-in campaign. Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman has joined the lawsuit in her place.
The Alabama Attorney General’s office filed a motion asking that the Judge dismiss the case.
Alabama Today spoke with write-in gubernatorial candidate Dean Odle about the court proceedings.
“The judge decided to hear the case,” Odle stated.
Odle said that the case is about “cybersecurity.”
“The most sophisticated weapons the U.S. military has can be compromised,” Odle commented, quoting retired Col Sean Smith, who was an expert witness for the plaintiffs.
“Focus on America wants an election process that the voters of Alabama can have confidence in and that accurately counts every legal vote cast,” Focus On America spokeswoman Rebecca Rogers said in a statement. “Knowing that our machines can be hacked even when they are not connected to the internet, we believe that right now, the best option for a fair vote count in November is to put the machines aside and hand count the ballots. We have some serious concerns about the election machines in use all across the state, which is why we joined State Representative Tommy Hanes’s lawsuit against Secretary of State John Merrill and the Electronic Voting Committee.”
Focus on America is allied with My Pillow founder Mike Lindell and Lindell’s attorneys played a prominent role in the court hearing. Lindell has drawn national attention for his claims that the 2020 presidential election was ‘stolen’ from then President Donald Trump.
“The machines by ESS (the systems that the state of Alabama purchases) and Dominion are the worst,” Odle said.
Secretary of State Merrill has stated that the vote counting machines that the state uses do not connect to the internet and do not even have modems where they could connect to the internet.
“That’s what he says,” Odle replied. “The laptops they use to tabulate the vote, those very computers have both wife and Bluetooth.”
“Someone could alter those machines with a program on a thumb drive,” Odle stated. “There are 80 to 200 vulnerabilities,” in Alabama’s election processes, Odle said the expert witnesses testified.
Odle said that the plaintiffs’ experts told the court to, “Melt them down and bury them. They cannot be secured.”
Odle and Blanchard were among eight Republican candidates defeated by incumbent Governor Kay Ivey in the May 24 Republican primary.
On Thursday, the state Alabama Electronic Voting Committee went into executive session to discuss the pending legal case.
Alabama Today spoke with Secretary of State Merrill on Friday.
“We don’t comment on pending litigation,” Merrill said. “What I can say is that Alabama has the safest, most transparent, and accountable voting process in the nation. And that is not just us saying it, but an independent national review that looked at all the from other states in the country. We believe that when the court reviews all of the evidence that they will come to the same conclusion.”
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