Daily Archives: 13 April 2023

I Have Questions

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Recall that Maricopa County, AZ, has developed a hoary history of election ballot and counting irregularities, most recently in the 2022 election in which the county was unable to deliver sufficient ballots in sufficient numbers to accommodate the voters, many of whom were denied their right to vote by those ballot failures. Maricopa County investigators, led by Former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor, have released their report on causes of those…snafus.

Between the August primaries and the November general contest, the county expanded the length of the ballots from 19 inches to 20 inches in order to include all of the required information. The increased ballot size in combination with the use of 100-pound ballot paper, the report concludes, was too great a strain on the printers.
“Based on our tests, and for the reasons described in this report, we concluded that the combined effect of using 100-pound ballot paper and a 20-inch ballot during the 2022 general election was to require that the Oki B432 printers perform at the extreme edge of their capability, a level that could not be reliably sustained by a substantial number of printers,” the report states.

That raises questions in my poor, dumb, flyover country northern Texan mind.

Who reviewed the performance specifications for the Oki B432 printers?

Who tested those printers on the larger paper?

Who tested those printers on the heavier-weight paper?

Who tested those printers on the combination of larger size and heavier weight?

Finally, an encompassing question: of the County’s election officials and staff, for how long have the staff members—the bureaucrats and volunteers, not the elected officials—been in place?

Rogue Judge

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A couple of teachers had the impudence to demur from compulsory “antiracism training” imposed by their Springfield Public Schools district managers.

In response, US District Judge Douglas Harpool, of the Western District of Missouri, not only ruled against the teachers, he ordered them to pay $313,000 in legal costs for bothering the district, and he did this cavalierly disregarding their arguments and issuing his ruling via summary judgment—which means the court—Harpool—never really took the case up, or took it seriously. He wrote in pertinent part, as summarized by Just the News:

They have not provided evidence they were compelled to “speak favorably” about the district’s message or “somehow affiliate or associate” with that message, as evidenced by Lumley’s allegation that “her own coworkers berated her during training” for disagreeing, Harpool wrote.” about the district’s message or “somehow affiliate or associate” with that message, as evidenced by Lumley’s allegation that “her own coworkers berated her during training” for disagreeing, Harpool wrote.

Never mind that the very parts that Harpool cited demonstrates the compulsory nature of the requirement not to speak unfavorably about the district’s “message” and not to remain unaffiliated or unassociated with the district’s “message.” That pressure to not be unaligned or to not speak unfavorably is exactly the compulsion to speak favorably and to align. The fact that the beratement went unchallenged by the program’s instructors or the district’s managers further emphasizes the compulsory nature of the district’s “message.”

This is a Federal judge who needs to be removed from the bench forthwith. He has shown himself not just incapable of, but openly refusing to, adjudicating a case objectively and on the basis of the facts and statute(s) presented. Instead, Harpool reigns over his court on the basis of his personal agenda.

Harpool’s ruling can be read here.