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Judge tells losing Senate candidate he has to follow court rules when filing a suit even if he doesn't have a lawyer

A federal judge said today he's willing to consider failed Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai's allegation that the state destroyed one million ballots to deprive him of his allegedly rightful place on the November ballot, but, no, he's not going to issue an emergency court order to bar the state from certifying the final results of both the September primary and the November general election.

The ruling comes in what is now Ayyadurai's second pro-se suit against Secretary of State William Galvin.

In the first, in which Ayyadurai is now seeking several hundred million dollars in damages - down from the $1.2 billion he originally sought - because Galvin's minions allegedly used their control over Twitter to get the platform to ban him for several weeks after he insisted on tweeting allegations about Galvin destroying ballots. At a hearing last month, US District Court Judge Mark Wolf said Ayyadurai presented enough evidence to at least consider whether the state impermissibly tried to stomp on Ayyadurai's First Amendment rights.

Galvin's office has denied the allegations, saying the state specifically does not take photos of ballots, all of which are safely sealed away now.

In the newer suit, filed after the November election, Ayyadurai sued specifically over that alleged destruction of ballots, or more specifically, images of actual ballots that he claims would prove his case that he should have been on the November ballot as the Republican candidate, rather than the guy who beat him in September. In the newer suit, filed Nov. 20, he was seeking an injunction to keep the state from certifying the results of both the September primary and the November final election, in which he ran a write-in campaign until he could make his case.

But in an order today, Wolf said you can't bring a suit like this without providing proof you actually served the person you're suing with a copy - and that you tried to work the matter out first, and Ayyadurai failed to do that. Wolf wrote that this failure is particularly egregious because he specifically told Ayyadurai that during the hearing last month on the first case - and that this was not something he could just wave away just because he fired his lawyer and decided to continue the suit by himself.

Wolf added that Ayyadurai - who in addition to this year's two losing efforts, also failed in a bid to unseat Elizabeth Warren two years ago - didn't even provide any proof that the Secretary of State's office will actually certify results next week.

And citing one of the many failed election suits brought by the failed Trump campaign and its allies, specifically, to try to invalidate certain ballots in Houston, Wolf continued that Ayyadurai needs to not dilly dally when it comes to such important matters as election scheduling.

Wolf said the time to question the September results would have been September, not November. And even with the Nov. 3 ballot, Ayyadurai seems to have waited too long to file his complaint, on Nov. 20, Wolf said.

So no injunction, doc. Instead, Wolf ordered him to serve Galvin's office with a copy of the complaint and to try to at least show they talked about whether there's a possible settlement.

Only then, and assuming the state tells him no deal, could Ayyadurai submit an affidavit trying to support the claims he's made and formally request an injunction.

Judge's complete order (236k PDF).
Ayyadurai's new complaint (2.8M PDF).

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Comments

Y’know, the second I saw “Judge tells losing Senate candidate” in the title, I just knew it was gonna be “Dr Shiva”.

This kind of thing is like the resumes I’ve gotten that claim the candidate has great attention to detail” and yet have multiple, glaring, errors throughout.

He’s doing a great job of showing why he lost. And that’s before all the hanging out with white supremacists at rallies (I know, I know, he didn’t inhale) and the “inventor of email” bs (sorry, EMAIL).

I will...miss the comedy. (Editor: no you won’t)

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An Indian-Amircan (from Wikipedia lest he want to sue me) version of Lyndon LaRouche.

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for sending me down the Shiva Wikipedia rabbit hole.

Today I learned he dated–and reportedly married but didn't actually marry?–the Fran Drescher. Based on how he's quoted on the matter, all I can picture is a scene similar to the ending of the 40 Year Old Virgin. If you know, you know. Kind of an odd couple too, given her apparent politics.

Anyway, now my head hurts and I'm going to lay down.

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is greatly exaggerated to the point of absurdity. (He's very Trump-like in that way, the huuuge business success built on bankruptcies, decades of elaborate tax fraud, theft from charities, and tens of millions of dollars in inheritance -- a giant layer cake of bullshit.)

He and Fran were buddies and did some kind of friendship ceremony, probably when both were high on ether and grain alcohol. I imagine she is profoundly embarrassed by him these days, just as I am by childhood friends I used to think were intelligent, empathetic human beings but who grew up to be Trumpies.

(Caveat: this story is fiction, as they were legit married for two years, but I stand by the fact that you probably get kicked out of a Drescher party these days for bringing up That Guy.)

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I knew it was fiction, because it wasn't sufficiently ridiculous to be true.

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I hope someone from the MA delegation gets a post in the new administration so we don’t have to wait until the next election cycle for another episode. Fingers crossed - Netflix & Prime are getting stale and the recent glut of judicial spankings is going to dry up.

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What a waste of what I assume was a well functioning brain at one point.

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"The crying on the inside kind, I guess."

Professor Herr Doctor Pocket Nazi is an incompetent oaf, but he is entertaining, in that cringe-y Jackass sort of way. "Ow, a face-plant and a nut-shot at once! That's gotta hurt!"

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for Senate in Georgia.

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we can’t risk siphoning votes from donald trump in that race

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According to the, um, Secretary of State's office, Ayyadurai convinced 21,134 people to write in his name in November. That's 0.6% of the vote.

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134? OK. 21,000? They must belong to the Jim Lyons Club. That's roughly 2/3 of Fenway Park seats filled.

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will soon be proven in litigation. #Krackeniswhacken

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for someone on the margins. A lot of them are still out, in the same kinds of spaces one sees "We buy houses" signs. I've yet to see one on an actual lawn.

What a P.I.T.A.

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Serious question.

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But neither is our outgoing POTUS, and he got to be POTUS. I said he's on the margins, but we still have to keep our guards up. There's enough people out there who either are also not okay, or won't see that he's not okay.. and next thing you know, we are the brink of losing our country as we know it.

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as he was born in Mumbai.

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...err, lawsuit for that.

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for a party like the GOP who stands steadfast on the moralbwahahahahh sorry, couldn’t get through that without laughing

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I want to see his birth certificate that proves he was born in Mumbai. Otherwise I fear he might claim otherwise.

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I think we need proof that he was born at all, and is not just some fictional creation of software robots run amok. Perhaps the Internet has developed sentience, and the new Intermind is, predictably, insane, and in its diseased depths spawns monsters. Having its Shiva-creature claim to have invented email could be just its first step on its way to claiming to have invented itself.

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Althea ,Doug and Shiva.

Guaranteed to help you lose an election and look crazy while doing it.

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sitcom for the OAN lineup.

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Althea came in 5th place in the at-large City Council race a few years ago. That was enough to put her into City Hall for a couple months...

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She was a representative in the state senate for two years.

In addition to 32 failed runs for various offices.

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Roy Owens

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The clock is ticking down.

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it looks like they're deterring it through decisions like these. If someone is suing for something they were never entitled to in the first place, just to be obnoxious, they'll toss it out saying it wasn't done exactly correctly.

In other types of cases, in which people are suing the government for actually having wronged them and intruded into their lives, I see the opposite. I see decisions in which the judges write that it is an important component of justice that redress is available to your average person with no funds for a lawyer, thus they won't accept the state's argument that the plaintiff didn't exactly follow the law in bringing suit (and/or the government policies surrounding the issue at hand, if applicable).

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has annoyed judges enough with ridiculous lawsuits that they will insist that everything he files is done exactly by the book, because "vexatious litigation" is a nuclear option.

But it does happen, and I'm quite sure it eventually will when one judge finally reaches their limit of patience.

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