Oregon Voting Machines Challenge

Gunter v. Fagan

Filed: August 24, 2022

Lawsuit filed by a conspiratorial right-wing voter against Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan (D) challenging the state’s use of electronic voting machines. The plaintiff alleges that the use of these machines violates Oregon law, the Oregon Constitution, the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

The plaintiff argues that the voting machines used in the 2020 election are not properly accredited and this deprived voters of their ability to know their votes were “accurately counted.” Further, the plaintiff requests that the court strikes down the HAVA Act and declare it unconstitutional. The plaintiff claims to present “unambiguous evidence” of “foreign interference” — citing Terpsichore Maras, “a trained Cryptolinguist” who claims that machines have “been outsourced to China which if implemented in our Election Machines make us vulnerable to BLACK BOX antics and backdoors due to hardware changes that can go undetected” and attests that there is a ‘“trapdoor” mechanism available to alter votes via algorithms in shuffling or mixing process of which she observed in the 2020 election” — among other allegations. In addition, the complaint promulgates the “Big Lie” by alleging that the “methods by which elections at the local, state, and Federal levels in Oregon were conducted 2020, and are being conducted in 2022, cannot be shown to provide the fair Elections.” Among other requests, the plaintiff requests that the court compel the Oregon secretary of state to “halt the use of any electronic voting machine in Oregon,” preserve the November 2020 election data for investigation and compel the secretary of state to issue a complaint to the Oregon Department of Justice regarding the 2020 election.

This case was consolidated with two similar lawsuits: Gunter v. Gambee and Morrise v. Harrington. On Sept. 6, the court denied the plaintiff’s request for a temporary restraining order. On Feb. 6, 2023, the court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, thereby ending the case. On Feb. 14, the plaintiffs appealed the decision dismissing their case.

On April 2, 2024, the 9th Circuit affirmed the dismissal but sent the case back to the district court with instructions to dismiss the claims against Oregon’s secretary of state without prejudice. The court also instructed the district court to remand the claims against the county defendants to a state court.