A seminal case questioning the accuracy of the 2024 Presidential and Senate election results in Rockland County, New York, is moving forward. In open court, end May 2025, Judge Rachel Tanguay of the New York Supreme Court, ruled that discovery must proceed, pushing the lawsuit brought by SMART Legislation into the evidence-gathering stage. The lawsuit seeks a full hand recount of the Presidential and U.S. Senate races in Rockland County. The next hearing of the case is in September 2025.
The information in this article has been extracted from the public statements and press releases of SMART Legislation, the action arm of SMART Elections, which is the lead plaintiff in the case. Both organisations have described themselves as “dedicated to ensuring fair and accurate elections.”
The June 11 statement by the organisation questions the conclusions drawn in an article on Msn.com that possibly sensationalises the issue. However the fact that the transparency and accountability of the 2024 US elections are the subject matter of serious investigation is based on fact.
Calling into serious questions the US 2024 Presidential race and the transparency of the electoral process, a non-partisan group, Smart Elections has filed a law suit, demanding answers.
“There is clear evidence that the senate results are incorrect, and there are statistical indications that the presidential results are highly unlikely,” stated Lulu Friesdat, Founder and Executive Director of SMART Legislation in a press release. “If the results are incorrect, it is a violation of the constitutional rights of each person who voted in the 2024 Rockland County general election. The best way to determine if the results are correct is to examine the paper ballots in a full public, transparent hand recount of all presidential and senate ballots in Rockland County. We believe it’s vitally important, especially in the current environment, to be absolutely confident about the results of the election.”
As stated in the complaint, more voters have sworn they voted for independent U.S. Senate candidate Diane Sare than the Rockland County Board of Elections counted and certified, directly contradicting those results. Additionally, the presidential election results exhibit numerous statistical anomalies. The anomalies in the presidential race include multiple districts where hundreds of voters chose the Democratic candidate Kirsten Gillibrand for Senate, but where zero voters selected the Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Additionally, a statistician determined that the 2024 presidential election results were statistically highly unlikely in four of the five towns in Rockland County when compared with 2020 results. Max Bonamente, Ph.D., Professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the author of the textbook, “Statistics and Analysis of Scientific Data,” says in an upcoming paper on the Rockland data, “These data would require extreme sociological or political causes for their explanation, and would benefit from further assurances as to their fidelity.”
Discovery (disclosure of evidence) could give both the court and the public a window into what issues in Rockland County are contributing to irregularities in the election results. Plaintiffs anticipate some depositions as well. Because the source of the discrepancies is unknown, a court-ordered recount could alter the election results or reveal issues in other races
(From the Press Release)
- District 39 (Exhibit A): Nine voters signed sworn statements saying they cast ballots for Diane Sare in the U.S. Senate race. The Rockland County Board of Elections recorded just five votes-a nearly 50% shortfall.
- District 62 (Exhibit B): Five voters said they voted for Sare; the Rockland County Board of Elections recorded three – a 40% deficit.
Does this all mean that the Former US Vice-President and Presidential candidate in 2024, Kamala Harris may have actually won the poll race? A report in MSN. Com and then Economic Times suggests that this is possible. However this is what Smart Elections says in response:
Yesterday an article went up on MSN.com with some very serious statements about the 2024 election with information and quotes that were attributed to us – SMART Elections. We appreciate the long overdue focus on this issue……
The article covers software and firmware updates to 2024 election technology and asks whether those updates had the necessary security and transparency. Although the article gets some of the details incorrect, we agree with the article’s overall conclusion that there were serious failures in the security and transparency of the updates. We disagree with the article’s claim that this proves Kamala Harris won the 2024 presidential election. It’s just not that simple.
Regarding the updates: You want technology to get updates. It’s an important part of good security practices. Often that is how you protect against known vulnerabilities that are discovered. You do a software update.
But in this case, the website of one of the testing labs approved to give software updates, was in disrepair for months. The testing lab, ProV&V is one of two that are authorized to approve software updates for U.S. election technology. Was their website hacked? Unknown. Was the company hacked? Unknown. They say they were building a new website, and eventually after months, a new rather incomplete, lame website did emerge.
Is the testing lab Pro V&V sloppy? Definitely. Are we concerned about all the software updates they released. You bet we are. Can we say conclusively that there was some kind of malware in those updates that changed vote totals? No we cannot. That’s why we’re in court. To get that kind of information.”
Who is behind Pro V&V, and why is there no oversight?
At the centre of the controversy is Jack Cobb, the director of Pro V&V. While he doesn’t appear in the headlines, his lab certifies the machines that millions of Americans use to vote. According to the report, once the controversy began to gain traction, Pro V&V’s website went dark, leaving only a phone number and a generic email address. No public logs. No documentation. No comment.
Pro V&V is certified by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). However, once accredited, labs like Pro V&V faces no real public oversight. There is no hotline, no review board, and no formal process for the public to challenge or remove them.
The EAC itself has four commissioners, two of whom—Benjamin Hovland and Donald Palmer—were appointed by Donald Trump during his first presidency.
As of June 2025, Pro V&V remains fully accredited and un-investigated.
Will the outcome of the suit change election results?
In May 2025, Judge Rachel Tanguay ruled that allegations raised by SMART Elections were credible enough to move forward. The case, SMART Legislation et al. v. Rockland County Board of Elections, is scheduled for hearing this fall. While the lawsuit won’t change the outcome of the election—Congress already certified Trump’s victory—it could set off wider probes, from state investigations to federal criminal inquiries. The upcoming court case could become a pivotal moment in election security history. The lawsuit claims that a private company quietly changed voting machines in over 40% of U.S. counties—and no one knew until after the votes were counted.
The implications are serious:
- Could future elections be altered without oversight?
- Should the EAC change how it certifies and monitors voting labs?
- Is the public being kept in the dark about the technology behind their vote?
SMART Elections warns this isn’t just about one race:
“If one underfunded watchdog group can dig up this much from a quiet New York suburb, what else is rotting in the shadows of this country’s ballots?”
Other findings in the Lawsuit by Smart Elections
Drop-off Irregularities in Rockland County could mean the results are incorrect
- Drop-off is a measure of the difference between the presidential candidate and a major down-ballot candidate of the same party.
- A large positive drop-off indicates an “over performance” by a candidate, meaning the candidate received more votes than is typical.
- A large negative drop-off indicates an “underperformance” by a candidate, meaning the candidate received fewer votes than is typical and could signify votes are missing from the candidate’s totals.
- Republican drop-off (23%): 23% of Trump’s totals in Rockland County exceed the 2024 Republican Senate candidate. The high drop-off rate illustrates that the presidential candidate far outperformed his down-ballot counterpart.
- Democratic drop-off is negative (-9%): 9% of Harris’ totals are below the Democratic Senate candidate. This is a highly unusual phenomenon that was repeated across the state andacross the country. Rockland County is the first county where it is being formally investigated.
Why it matters
Typical drop-off rates run 1-2%. Gaps of 23% or -9% are surprising and could indicate that votes were miscounted.
Statistical Analysis, Manual Counts & Examination of Voting Systems Can Reveal Problems with Elections
In Bladen County, North Carolina, statistical discrepancies helped investigators identify fraudulent absentee ballots in both the 2016 and 2018 elections.
- In Philadelphia, an election judge repeatedly committed election fraud in multiple elections. It was discovered by a local election official who noticed that the election results did not reconcile correctlyand reported it to law enforcement.
- In Windham County, N.H., voting machines counted the 2020 election results incorrectly due to dust in the machines and folds in the ballots. The incorrect counts were discovered in a hand recount and explained in a forensic audit.
(SMART Elections is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to making U.S. elections secure, accurate, accessible, inclusive, well-administered, and publicly verifiable. SMART Legislation is the action arm of the organization)
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