Part 6: She won. Or did she? A Deeper Look at Smart Elections and the Rockland Lawsuit

A lawsuit in Rockland NY could be a template with far-reaching implications

Author’s Note: After offering a critical analysis of election-fraud claims by a variety of groups and individuals—today we arrive at Smart Elections and—spoiler alert—this one is a pleasure to write because I genuinely like what Lulu Friesdat and Smart Elections (and its action arm, SMART Legislation) are doing, and can finally write a review that is favorable without caveats. This doesn’t mean their lawsuit in Rockland County will prove fraud; but they’re going about challenging it in the right way and their work can be a template for efforts around the country to ensure election transparency.

Starting Point: A Documentary Film

Lulu Friesdat first examined America’s fragile voting infrastructure with her 2008 documentary Holler Back – [not] Voting in an American Town, which exposed both the human barriers to the ballot box and the hacking vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines. Deciding to move beyond filmmaking, she gathered a core team of technologists, lawyers, and grassroots organizers and, over the next few years, formalized their work under the banner of SMART Elections—a nonpartisan coalition dedicated to securing every aspect of our elections. By late 2024, that coalition had spun off SMART Legislation, a dedicated legal arm ready to turn field findings into court action.

The Trigger: November 2024 in Rockland County

In the aftermath of the November 5, 2024 general election, Rockland County—a community long accustomed to tight races—was rocked by puzzling results. In precincts like Ramapo 35, hundreds of voters who cast ballots for Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand somehow registered zero votes for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris—a “statistically highly unlikely” pattern that local media and data analysts flagged immediately. Reports of missing votes for independent Senate candidate Diane Sare only heightened concerns, as sworn affidavits began to circulate indicating voters’ selections had simply vanished from the certified tallies.

Gathering the Evidence

SMART Elections volunteers went to work, interviewing dozens of Rockland voters under oath and collecting sworn affidavits from those who insisted they had marked their ballots for Diane Sare—even in districts where the Board of Elections showed zero such votes. Parallel to that grassroots effort, SMART Legislation engaged data experts to review the county’s drop-off rates and other voting patterns. The results were striking: a credible statistician retained by the team concluded that both the Senate and presidential anomalies could not be explained by normal voter behavior alone. After thoroughly investigating the matter, with affidavits, data analyses, and a growing body of evidence, SMART Legislation prepared a comprehensive set of fifteen pages of discovery requests—seeking everything from voting‐machine firmware logs to chain-of-custody documentation and network diagrams.

Filing the Lawsuit

On May 29, 2025, SMART Legislation officially filed its complaint in New York Supreme Court (Rockland County), asking the court to order a full, public hand recount of every 2024 presidential and U.S. Senate ballot cast in the county. The filing wove together sworn voter statements, peer-reviewed statistical findings, and detailed procedural critiques—painting a coherent picture of systemic irregularities rather than isolated glitches.

Addressing Counter-Explanations: Orthodox Block Voting

Almost as soon as the Rockland anomalies made headlines, some analysts proposed a familiar explanation: Orthodox Jewish bloc voting. In tightly knit Hasidic communities across Rockland County—particularly in villages like Kiryas Joel and parts of Ramapo—voters often follow guidance from local rabbinical councils, resulting in near-unanimous support for endorsed candidates. Critics argued that if community leaders backed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand but remained neutral or silent on the presidential race, it could produce the illusion of a “drop-off” at the top of the ticket. Under this theory, block voting—not machine error or tampering—explained how Gillibrand might receive hundreds of votes in a precinct where Kamala Harris officially tallied zero.

Similarly, the New York Supreme Court’s recount summary noted that split-ticket voting is not unheard of in Rockland’s Orthodox enclaves, where local interests sometimes diverge from national party lines. In other words, the same social pressures that yield near-perfect turnout for down-ballot races could plausibly undermine top-of-ticket participation—without any underlying irregularity.

Smart Elections’ Rebuttal

Smart Elections anticipated this counter-argument and responded on two fronts: direct voter testimony and rigorous statistical modeling. First, volunteer affidavit collectors returned dozens of sworn statements from precinct voters confirming they had indeed marked their ballots for Kamala Harris—but witnessed a machine or tabulator record zero presidential votes. That testimony undercuts the notion that these voters abstained by choice .

Second, Smart Elections commissioned a peer-reviewed analysis showing that true bloc voting would still produce some distribution of presidential votes—especially given the known turnout levels for down-ballot contests. Professor Max Bonamente (et al.) concluded that the probability of seeing zero top-ticket votes in precincts with hundreds of Senate votes is vanishingly small, even under extreme bloc-voting assumptions . This statistical model factors in turnout consistency, expected variance, and historical split-ticket patterns, demonstrating that Rockland’s figures lie well outside normal bounds.

By combining on-the-ground affidavits with peer-reviewed forensic statistics, Smart Elections made a compelling case that Orthodox block voting alone cannot account for the magnitude—and the absolute zeros—of the observed drop-off. That dual approach persuaded Judge Tanguay to allow full discovery, ensuring that the court will examine machine logs, chain-of-custody records, and other hard evidence that can definitively distinguish between voter behavior and procedural errors.

A Court-Mandated Path to Transparency

In court, Justice Rachel Tanguay agreed that the plaintiff’s evidence merited serious scrutiny and declined to dismiss the case outright. Instead, she ordered the Rockland County Board of Elections to comply with the discovery requests, compelling the production of hard-drive images, software-update logs, chain-of-custody records, and more—and setting a compliance conference for September 22, 2025. That judicial mandate will create an unprecedented level of transparency, and although this is only for a single county, it nonetheless sets a powerful template for election boards across the nation. So, there is at least hope that this could have resonance far beyond a single county.

The Takeaway

This is credible work by credible people, undertaken in the right way, with muscular effort and follow through. It’s a template for how to go about this: citizens equipped with data, volunteers committed to nonpartisan oversight, and lawyers willing to hold election officials accountable.