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Judge gives failed Senate candidate another shot at suing over the September primary he lost

A federal judge today enumerated all the things that were legally wrong in failed Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai's bid to overturn the September Republican primary for Senate, then gave him two weeks to file an amended complaint to properly address his grievances - which is basically that Secretary of State Bill Galvin made him lose.

Galvin has denied the claim, specifically Ayyadurai's assertion that his office destroyed one million electronic ballots - which Galvin says the state never had, so there's no way to destroy them, because all the ballots are on paper.

In a ruling today, US District Court Judge Mark Wolf acknowledged that "exceptional circumstances" could compel a judge to "decertify" election results even after they've been officially certified, but then added that Ayyadurai, who wrote his complaint all by himself, never actually requested decertification as a remedy.

Wolf continued that the candidate's complaint failed to prove his allegation that Galvin manipulated the vote or violated the "one person one vote" rule, which in legal terms is known as a principle of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which means that, legally, Ayyadurai had to make certain specific requests for action, which he did not.

Also, Ayyadurai seems to have sued the wrong state official, since under the Massachusetts constitution, it's the governor and the governor's council, not the secretary of state, who certify election results, Wolf wrote.

Wolf said that because the suit does not mention Baker or the council, he could not file any injunctions against them.

Wolf said that judges have to be extra lenient with complaints and motions filed by pro-se litigants like Ayyadurai, but that there are limits, specifically, "it is not the duty of the court 'to fabricate a claim that the plaintiff has not spelled out in the complaint.' "

Although Wolf did not mention it specifically in his ruling, when he told Ayyadurai last week to answer the specific legal issues raised by the state Attorney General's office - which is representing Galvin - Ayyadurai responded with a 10-page document that mainly argued that five other failed Republican candidates with their own election suit are out to get him, rather than responding to the specific points made by the state.

Wolf concluded he could have just dismissed the case without prejudice. But that would let Ayyadurai simply file a new lawsuit, so Wolf concluded it was "more efficient" to continue the case to let Ayyadurai amend his complaint to add Baker and the council and to request the specific legal remedies allowed under the 14th Amendment, which means the case will continue even longer, because the existing and new defendants would have to be given time to respond to the new complaint.

Ayyadurai has a separate suit, also being heard by Wolf, in which he charges Galvin used his influence at Twitter to make that company suspend his Twitter account at key points in the campaign. Galvin has also denied that claim.

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Comments

Enough of him already. I consider myself a right-of-center moderate. I don't understand why you are following his nonsense. It's time to cut him loose.

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104,782 Republicans in Massachusetts thought this guy should be their candidate for US Senator this year.

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So probably a good thing I haven't even posted about all his filings, like the one where he praises UHub as Boston's premier local news source so it's a shame I'm just a mouthpiece for two-bit Marty Walsh (really!).

I'm following all his cases (let's see: Two against Galvin, one against Bobby Kennedy, Jr., one against some other anti-vaxxer and one against Marty Walsh and Bill Evans) because, OK, I'm fascinated by how the court system works and how these are wending through it. I've spent way, way, way more time writing about his court cases than I ever did about his Senate races (unless you count the time I wrote about his suit against Cambridge over his Real Indian bus).

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I admit that I follow Shiva mostly for his entertainment value, but you’re right that it’s interesting to see what the legal system does under the strain of unremitting absurdity. The contrast between Shiva’s filings and the judge’s rulings is extreme. There’s an old nostrum that bad cases make bad law, and I’m beginning to think that Judge Wolf is determined to disprove it.

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In short, Judge Wolf is going to allow the good Dr. Shiva (now is he a 'real doctor?') to add even more drugs to the prescription he wrote himself in order to avoid additional cases of doctor shopping while the system runs out the clock on these sad episodes of self-medicating a serious case of grandiose narcissistic victim syndrome.

Now I'm not a doctor or a lawyer, but at some point doesn't Bill Galvin has some sort of recourse here, outside of just ignoring a troubled person?

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I couldn't help but imagine the two of them canoodling which left me feeling quite nauseous

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