an immoral secretary

Dear Friends,

I went back and examined some documents I obtained via Public Records Request from both our SoS office and several county election offices.

State statutes and written instructions from our SoS office to our counties both stipulate that write-in votes shall be counted.

All counties are supposed to have a written plan in place for election day. Included in that plan are the duties of the Resolution Board.

One of the duties of the Resolution Board is to document, count and track write-in votes.

Here are the statutory references:

Nebraska Revised Statute (NRS) 32-615 (5) states: 

"A candidate who files a notarized affidavit shall be entitled to all write-in votes for the candidate even if only the last name of the candidate has been written if such last name is reasonably close to the proper spelling."

NRS 32-1005 basically says the same thing.

---

The duties of the Resolution Board can be found in these statutes: 32-1015 and 32-1016. But they don't say anything about handling write-in votes. Those instructions come from the SoS office. Here is the meat of those instructions:

“On the forms provided, hand count any write in votes where an affidavit has been filed making sure you maintain counts by precinct.”

---

Argument.
Backing up. Let me repeat. State statute says:

"A candidate who files a notarized affidavit shall be entitled to all write-in votes for the candidate…”

But what did our immoral secretary decide to do instead? He decided (contrary to statute and his own written instructions to county election officials) that Robert Borer shall NOT be entitled to his write-in votes…

…and it appears he may have concocted a scheme to that end.

If so, that scheme may have involved not informing county election officials of my candidacy.

I got a report that at least one county election clerk was not going to count my votes because he/she had not been informed that I had filed an affidavit, and this was just a few days before the election.

I stopped into the SoS office after receiving this report and confronted Bena about it. He said they would take care of it. My response was, “It’s late. Why don’t they already know??” He didn’t have an answer.

The rest of the scheme appears to have involved muddying the waters after the election by pushing the false narrative that my write-in votes didn’t have to be counted because they didn’t cross an alleged 5%-threshold-of-the-vote requirement.

This narrative appears to have been based on a purposeful misapplication of NRS 32-1008, which says:

"If the write-in vote in the county for a person pursuing a write-in campaign pursuant to section 32-615 or 32-633 totals less than five percent of the vote for such office in the county and the election commissioner or county clerk believes that such vote will not impact the outcome of the election, the number of write-in votes for that office may be counted and listed together as one total."

(Mind you, 32-1008 doesn’t say that the write-in votes won’t be counted—obviously, in order to be “listed together as one total,” they must all be counted—it only says the write-in votes may be *reported as one total.)

After finally deciding to give this argument/false narrative some serious thought, I find that it makes absolutely no sense. Here’s why:

1) 32-1008 is talking about votes for an "office in the county.” Read it again: “If the write-in vote [total votes] in the county for a person pursuing a write-in campaign…totals less than five percent of the vote for such office in the county…”

I repeat, 32-1008 is talking about votes for an office in the county, not a statewide office.

Here’s the proof.
Try applying the logic of our immoral secretary to a statewide office. Suppose a statewide write-in candidate gets 50% of the vote in every county but one, and in that one remaining county, he only gets 2% of the vote.

Are we supposed to believe that the election commissioner or clerk in that county doesn’t have to count and report those write-in votes for that candidate because they don’t rise to the 5% threshold within the county? That's absurd.

32-1008 is talking about county-based election races (countywide races or lower).

2) Further evidence that 32-1008 is talking about an "office in the county" is the fact that 32-1008 follows 32-1007, which says: "If only the last name of a person is in the write-in space on the ballot and there is more than one person in the county having the same last name, the counting board shall reject the ballot for that office unless the last name is reasonably close to the proper spelling of the last name of a candidate engaged in or pursuing a write-in campaign pursuant to section 32-615...." 

If 32-1007 was talking about statewide races, it couldn't say, "...more than one person in the county having the same last name..." It would have to say, "...more than one person in the state having the same last name...,” which would take things outside the purview of the county election official. (The county election official isn’t concerned about any vote counts but those within his/her county.)

In the end, 32-1008 is talking about how the write-in vote count/total for an "office in the county" may be REPORTED, not that write-in votes need not be counted—and certainly not that all write-in votes for a statewide race need not to be counted and reported for a candidate.

---

Conclusion to Argument.
32-615 plainly says: "A candidate who files a notarized affidavit shall be entitled to all write-in votes for the candidate…”

Pray tell. How else is a candidate “entitled” to his votes if not by having them both counted and published?????

Evnen and Bena pulled another con job on the voters of Nebraska. They stole the voice of write-in voters. The reality is, write-in votes don’t belong to a candidate (at least not first and foremost), they belong to the People who cast them. When these votes aren’t counted, the People who cast them are being denied their voice. They are being denied their consent or dissent.

It doesn’t matter how many votes there were. If their vote was cast for a losing candidate, it still needs to be heard because it represents dissent from the herd. These people are being treated like they didn’t even vote. That’s criminal.

---

Recourse.
Per statute, write-in votes (for official write-in candidates) are required to be documented and counted, period.

And if they are supposed to be documented and counted, that documentation becomes a matter of public record, and is therefore subject to a Public Records Request.

I filed the following Request with my local election office. Let’s see what they do with it.

Dear Election Official,
I am hereby requesting, pursuant to Nebraska Public Records Law § 84-712 et seq., a digital copy of all records whereby the Lancaster County 2022 General Election Resolution Board managed write-in vote counts per the instructions of the SoS office, namely the instructions below. Please include write-in vote totals for individual candidates who filed notarized affidavits and were thus entitled to all their write-in votes, per NRS 32-615(5). These totals were never made public.

Election Night Tabulation Plan - DS450 and DS850
Resolution Board
2 to 4 persons 
Station 4 
1) You may receive different types of ballots.
a. Ballots unreadable by the scanner 
b. Ballots with write-ins 
c. Over votes 
2) An unreadable ballot should be documented as an original. Then a duplicate should be marked under the supervision of at least 2 members of the Resolution to be returned to the Scanner station for counting. All originals and duplicates should be marked in corresponding sequence for identification at a later date if needed. 
3) Count any write in votes where an affidavit has been filed on the forms provided making sure you count by precinct. You can either do this by hand or if using Electionware through the write-in images. 

State law allows a four working day response time.

Thank you for your attention.

I bet they deny me. And once again, it will constitute criminal election maladministration. These public records were never made available to the public.

Evnen and Bena are running immoral elections, in numerous ways.

---

For what it’s worth, I’ve been told by a good source that ALL ES&S machines have a “back door.” If this is true, then the best way to describe what Evnen and Bena are doing to our elections is sodomizing them.

---

Last thought.
I hope all members of the private sector workforce who don’t get a paid holiday today understand that they are working to give members of the public sector workforce a free day of pay. If you don’t think there’s something wrong with that, I don’t know what to say.

God bless,

Robert J. Borer
P.S. If you can find a hole in my logic above, please let me know.