A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a request to remove all electronic voting machines and ballot drop boxes for the upcoming 2022 election, saying the motion for a temporary restraining order was long on hypothesis and short on facts.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled that a group of Kansans who promote election fraud theories had failed to meet the standards for granting a temporary restraining order for banning the machines and the drop boxes.
“This is no ordinary motion for preliminary relief. It is extraordinary in the scope of
relief sought and in the threshold legal problems plaintiffs face,” Crabtree wrote.
The plaintiffs’ motion is “long on suspicion, contingency, and hypothesis, but short on facts and identifiable harm,” he wrote in a 12-page opinion.
“Kansas’s popularly elected leaders have chosen processes and methods to use in the
state’s elections,” he wrote.
“It may not represent the system that plaintiffs prefer, and our constitution entitles them to express their opinions.
“But nothing in the current record entitles them to sweeping use of federal judicial power to impose their views on their state or their fellow Kansans.”
Crabtree had largely indicated at a hearing last week that he would deny the request.
The motion was part of a larger lawsuit that the group brought to force the state to rerun the 2020 presidential election in Kansas and force the attorney general to open a criminal investigation of Secretary of State Scott Schwab for “fraudulent election violations.”
The lawsuit came at a time when Johnson County Sheriff Cavin Hayden has said he is investigating election fraud in Johnson County, although he has only produced one offense report related to a violation of election law.
The group, which represented itself, cited in its request to stop the use of the voting machines the recent arrest of a top executive with a Michigan company that distributes and sells software used in Johnson County and elsewhere for managing poll workers.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón recently announced that Konnech Corporation CEO Eugene Yu was taken into custody on suspicion of theft of personal identifying information.
Konnech distributes and sells PollChief software, which is an election worker management system that Los Angeles County used in the last California election.
The software assists with poll worker assignments, communications and payroll.
PollChief requires that workers submit personal identifying information, which is retained by Konnech, the district attorney’s office said.
Prosecutors have said vote tabulation was not affected.
Los Angeles County authorities said that Konnech was supposed to securely maintain the data and that only U.S. citizens and permanent residents had access to it.
Local prosecutors in California found that in violation of the contract, information was stored on servers in the People’s Republic of China.
Johnson County officials said there were about 6,300 people in the system, which was not used for payroll.
The poll worker information in the system included things like names and addresses but not Social Security numbers, they said.
Johnson County has said it does not use the full functionality of the software from the company.
Konnech officials have assured Election Commissioner Fred Sherman that Johnson County data is secure.
The group cited national security concerns and the possibility the Chinese government could infiltrate elections systems after the arrest of the top executive with Konnech.
However, Crabtree wasn’t persuaded that the plaintiffs demonstrated how they would be affected by the use of the Michigan company’s software.
“Plaintiffs hypothesize that Konnech’s CEO might convey wrongfully acquired personal
identifying information to the Chinese Communist Party.
“And then, they theorize, the Chinese Communists might use this purloined ‘poll worker data’ to ‘intimidate or influence elections in their favor’ — meaning, one presumes, to favor the interests of China’s Communists.
“But how might this series of events injure plaintiffs personally? Plaintiffs never say.”
The secretary of state’s office said the ruling once again “reaffirmed that there is no evidence to support allegations that there were problems with the 2020 and 2022 elections in Kansas.
“This is the fifth Kansas court to categorically reject these claims.”
