Diane Sare et al. v. Rockland County Board of Elections Case Filed in New York Supreme Court

On Dec. 16, the Rockland County, New York Board of Elections was served notice that a lawsuit has been filed with the New York State Supreme Court in regard to the posted results of the November 5, 2024 General Election. Plaintiffs Diane Sare, Adam Mocio, Mark Murphy and Smart Legislation (an election integrity non-profit) are demanding a hand recount of the paper ballots which were scanned by computers to generate the questionable results. They are also demanding that the U.S. Presidential and U.S. Senatorial election be redone in the county due to an abnormal drop-off of votes between Presidential candidates and Senate candidates by party.

In the case of the LaRouche Party candidate Diane Sare, her overall vote was under 0.3% in the county. In 2022, Sare had received 5.8% or 6,212 votes as reported on election night, but by morning, her official vote total had been reduced to 277, or 0.2%. The Board of Elections offered no explanation for this. In 2024, Sare’s reported vote remained at 0.29% throughout the night.

Reportedly, Sare received a mere 0-5 votes per election district, including in her own home district, where she supposedly had only five votes. Since she knew of three votes just in her own household and another from a neighbor, Sare decided to work with a volunteer to make a short canvass of voters on her street. Sare quickly located four more (for a total of seven), of whom three were willing to sign a sworn statement that they had voted for her. Thus, six voters were already willing to step forward. After another short walk down another street, Sare located two more voters. In the suit, Sare filed exhibits showing statements from eight sworn voters in her home district, against an official count of only five; in another district, four sworn voters came forward against an official count of three. The existence of such discrepancies, in a district in which less than 3% of voters were even interviewed, constitutes grounds for a hand recount in front of witnesses.

Smart Legislation pointed out that in Rockland County, the vote for the Republican U.S. Senator candidate was 23% lower than Trump’s vote in that county, but U.S. Senator Gillibrand’s vote was 9% higher than the vote for Kamala Harris. The election watchdog group asked, “Where did all those Senate votes go, if the independent candidate got only 0.29% of the vote?” This unusual gap along party lines is their reason for demanding that the election for those two offices be redone.

The case is called Diane Sare et al v. Rockland County Board of Elections. As of now, there has been no official response, except that the first assigned judge has recused himself, saying he knows one of the sworn voters personally.