Petition for Writ of Mandamus
Writ-of-Mandamus-Reply to Respondent’s Opposition
Petitioners-Reply-to-Respondents-Opposition-06-09-2026Memorandum of Law
Petitioners-Memorandum-of-Law-06-09-2026Emergency Motion to Accelerate Proceedings
Petitioners-Emergency-Motion-to-Accelerate-06-09-2026Proposed Order to Accelerate
Proposed-Order-To-Accelerate-06-09-2026Key Takeaways
- This fight begins with the 2020 Massachusetts U.S. Senate race.
The ballot-image issue did not appear out of nowhere. It began when my 2020 Massachusetts Republican U.S. Senate primary results raised questions that forced me to investigate machine tabulation. - Ballot images are the machine-readable records at the center of this fight.
When a paper ballot goes through an optical-scan voting machine, the machine creates a digital image. That image is the record the machine uses to interpret and count the vote. - Massachusetts cannot delete the record and then pretend the record never existed.
My position is simple: auto-delete is not non-creation. Auto-delete means the system created the record and then destroyed it. - This matters to my independent U.S. Senate campaign because independents are attacked at every layer of the system.
Visibility, ballot access, debate access, media coverage, polling, and machine-layer record deletion are all connected. If you want real election integrity, you must see the whole system.
“It’s interesting, you have a law, and governments violate the law, and so we’re making sure that they don’t violate the law.”
–Dr.SHIVA®
This Is a Fight Over the Record
Election integrity is not an abstract slogan. It is not a talking point for television. It is not left versus right, Democrat versus Republican, Trump versus Biden, or any other media distraction designed to keep people trapped in surface-level debate.
This fight is about a specific record: the ballot image.
Once you understand what a ballot image is, why it matters, and why Massachusetts does not preserve it, the entire lawsuit begins to make sense. The ballot image is the digital record created when a paper ballot passes through an optical-scan voting machine. The machine scans the paper, creates an image, interprets the marks on that image, and produces the vote count.
Most people are told that paper ballots are preserved, and therefore everything is fine. But that avoids the central issue. If the machine uses a digital image to interpret and count the vote, then the public must be able to inspect that digital image. Otherwise, the people are forced to trust a machine-counted result without access to the machine-readable record behind it.
That is not transparency. That is not election integrity. That is asking people to trust a black box.
How This Began in the 2020 Massachusetts Senate Race
In 2020, I ran in the Massachusetts Republican U.S. Senate primary. We built a dynamic campaign. We raised two million dollars. We had three thousand volunteers, twenty-five thousand lawn signs, and ten thousand bumper stickers.
Then the results came in.
I won Franklin County by 10 points, where votes were paper ballots and hand-counted. But everywhere else, where machines were used, the pattern flipped: I kept ending up on the losing side of the same sixty-forty result.
That result forced me to investigate the system. I did not begin this fight as someone obsessed with election fraud. I began as an engineer looking at an output that did not make sense. When an output does not make sense, you do not worship the output. You inspect the system that produced it.
In systems terms, you look at the inputs, the transport, the conversion, the structure, and the output. In an election, the voter’s mark is the input. The scanner transports that mark into the digital system. The software converts the scanned image into a vote interpretation. The structure is the machinery, software, rules, and administrative process surrounding the election. The output is the reported result.
When that output raises questions, the record that matters most is the one the machine used to produce it. That record is the ballot image.
What a Ballot Image Is and Why It Matters
A ballot image is the digital image created when a paper ballot passes through an optical-scan voting machine. This is not complicated, but it is deliberately made to sound complicated so ordinary voters will stop asking questions.
Think about the chain clearly: a voter marks a paper ballot, the paper ballot enters a scanner, the scanner creates a digital image, software interprets the marks on that image, and the machine reports a vote total. The paper ballot matters, but the ballot image also matters because that is the machine-readable record used in the counting process.
If the paper ballot is preserved but the ballot image is deleted, then the public loses the ability to efficiently inspect what the machine actually saw and counted. Accessing physical paper ballots can be a huge and long process. Ballot images allow a faster audit of the machine layer, which is precisely why they must be preserved.
My argument is direct: if a ballot image is created in connection with a federal election, and if that image is used in the vote-counting process, it is a federal election record that must be preserved under 52 U.S.C. 20701.
The Email, the Tweet, and the Twitter Removal
After the 2020 primary, my team and I sought ballot images, log files, voter lists, and other election records. I went to the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office with a volunteer and demanded the ballot images through a Freedom of Information request.
The key communication came when Massachusetts election officials communicated that ballot images were not stored. I interpreted that as deletion or destruction of federal election records that should have been preserved.
Let me be clear about the distinction: I said ballot images, not ballots.
That distinction matters because the paper ballot can be sitting in a box while the digital image used by the machine has already been deleted. If the public does not understand that distinction, the system can hide behind the preservation of paper while destroying the machine-readable record.
On September 25, 2020, I tweeted that Massachusetts had deleted 1.7 million ballot images. I also shared screenshots of the email exchange showing that the ballot images were not stored. Within 24 hours, I was removed from Twitter.
External summaries in the historical context state that Massachusetts defendants notified Twitter through the Partner Support Portal, that Twitter removed the tweets, and that Twitter suspended my account on September 26, 2020. I frame that as Massachusetts officials contacting Twitter to deplatform a U.S. Senate candidate who exposed the ballot-image issue.
This is where the system revealed itself. First, the ballot-image record disappears. Then, when I expose the disappearing record, the system tries to make me disappear.
Win Back Freedom: The First Lawsuit Exposed the Censorship Machine
That Twitter removal became the basis for my federal First Amendment lawsuit. The historical context identifies the case as Ayyadurai v. Galvin, filed on October 20, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
This is why WinBackFreedom.com matters. It documents the 2020 lawsuit and the fight against government-backed censorship. The ballot-image issue and the censorship issue are not separate. They are connected parts of the same system.
A reductionist looks at the Twitter suspension by itself. A systems thinker asks: what was I suspended for? What record was I exposing? Who contacted Twitter? What government officials were involved? What election records were being discussed? What does this reveal about the relationship between government power, social media platforms, and political speech?
That is how you begin to see the whole system. The issue is not merely that I was removed from Twitter. The issue is that a candidate for U.S. Senate was removed after exposing that Massachusetts did not store ballot images from a federal election.
That is not just a social media story. That is an election integrity story. That is a censorship story. That is a constitutional story.
Why the Voting-Machine Details Matter
To understand the current lawsuit, you must understand why the machine layer matters. Voting machines are not magical boxes. They are computer systems. They scan paper ballots, create digital images, interpret voter marks, and produce vote totals.
That is why systems such as ES&S DS-200, ES&S DS-450, and Dominion ImageCast matter in this fight. These are examples of optical-scan systems discussed in my current legal rebuttal because the argument is that scanners must generate a digital image file in memory before software can interpret voter intent.
You do not need to become a voting-machine expert to understand the key point. The machine cannot interpret what it does not first scan. The scanner must create an image for software to analyze. If that image is created and then deleted by configuration, the issue is not whether the record never existed. The issue is whether the record was created and destroyed.
Massachusetts wants to turn a software setting into a legal escape hatch. My position is that a state cannot configure a machine to delete a federal election record and then claim there is nothing to preserve.
Created in Memory, Deleted by Configuration
Massachusetts argues that if the requested records do not exist and will not exist, there is no duty to preserve them. That argument depends on confusing two different things: whether an image is created and whether that image is retained.
Any engineer understands the difference. Data can exist in memory before it is saved to persistent storage. A file can be generated and then deleted. A record can be created and then destroyed. The fact that a system is configured to auto-delete a record does not prove the record never existed. It proves the system was designed to destroy it.
That is the technical heart of this fight. Auto-delete is not non-creation. Auto-delete is destruction after creation.
If the state can avoid federal preservation law simply by configuring a system to delete a record immediately, then any government could destroy any record automatically and claim there was nothing to preserve. That is not law. That is a loophole engineered through software.
The Law: 52 U.S.C. 20701
The legal anchor is 52 U.S.C. 20701. My argument is that this federal law requires the preservation of records connected with a federal election for twenty-two months.
A record connected to a federal election must be preserved because audits require records. If the machine creates a ballot image and uses that image in the counting process, then the ballot image belongs at the center of preservation. A state cannot create the record, use the record, delete the record, and then tell the public that the record never existed.
This is why the issue is so important. The law is not meaningful if government can defeat it through software configuration. A preservation requirement means nothing if the state can design the system to destroy the record before anyone can inspect it.
The Supremacy Clause Problem
This fight also goes directly to the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article 6, Clause 2. Massachusetts cannot use state administrative policy or voting-machine software configuration to override federal preservation law.
That is the constitutional issue at the center of the current fight. If a federal law requires preservation of election records, a state cannot nullify that requirement by choosing a machine setting that deletes the record. A local administrative choice cannot override federal law. A machine configuration cannot become a constitutional escape hatch.
If Massachusetts can get away with this, the precedent is dangerous. Any state could design systems that auto-delete inconvenient records and then claim no duty exists because the record is gone. That would transform federal preservation law into theater.
The Current Writ of Mandamus Fight
The current legal phase began on April 17, 2026, when I filed a writ of mandamus in Massachusetts to compel the preservation of ballot images connected to federal elections.
A writ of mandamus is a legal action to force a government official to perform a duty required by law. In this case, the duty is clear: preserve federal election records under 52 U.S.C. 20701. My position is that ballot images are federal election records because they are created by optical-scan voting machines and used in the vote-counting process.
Massachusetts responded on May 26, 2026. Assistant Attorney General Marina Polaritis sent the opposition, and the state’s argument exposed the whole problem: Massachusetts claimed there is no duty to preserve requested records if those records “do not and will not exist.”
That is where the system reveals itself.
If the image is created in memory and then auto-deleted, the issue is not non-existence. The issue is destruction after creation.
On June 9, 2026, my team filed our response: a reply, a 19-page memorandum of law, an emergency motion to accelerate hearings, and a proposed order. Then the judge scheduled a pre-trial hearing for November 17, 2028.
Think about that. We are demanding preservation of records for upcoming elections, and the court schedules a pre-trial hearing more than two years later. Delay becomes another mechanism of denial.
That is why this fight matters now. The record must be preserved before it is deleted, not after the damage is done.
Why This Matters to My Independent U.S. Senate Campaign
This is not only about ballot images. It is about how the system suppresses independent candidates at every layer.
The system does not wait until Election Day to attack independents. It begins with visibility. Who gets media coverage? Who gets treated as legitimate? Who gets invited to debates? Who gets ballot access? Who gets polling? Who gets amplified by CNN, Fox, and the rest of the media machine? Then, after surviving all of that, the independent candidate still faces the machine layer of election administration.
Ballot-image deletion matters because it hides what happens at that machine layer. If you look only at the machine, you miss the media. If you look only at media, you miss ballot access. If you look only at ballot access, you miss debate access. If you look only at debate access, you miss the records being deleted after the vote.
That is systems thinking. The truth emerges when you see the interconnections.
My independent campaign for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts is not merely about winning one seat. It is about exposing the machinery that tells working people they are free while trapping them inside two controlled lanes. The establishment does not want independent voters voting independent. It wants people managed, distracted, and obedient.
You are not free when the record is deleted. You are not free when the machine counts in darkness. You are not free when the system tells you to trust the result while destroying the evidence.
Why Run If the Battlefield Is Controlled?
Some people ask why I would enter an election if the battlefield is controlled. It is a fair question, but it misunderstands the purpose of a movement campaign.
The goal is not merely to win an election or win a lawsuit. The goal is to build an independent, bottoms-up movement. Elections and lawsuits are controlled battlefields, but they can still be used strategically. They expose the system. They educate people. They force hidden mechanisms into public view.
The battlefield we can control is the movement. When we organize, teach, build, and act together, we stop being passive consumers of politics. We become the Controller of our own system. We set the Goal. We observe the Output. We identify the Disturbance. We adjust the Input. We build the Structure.
That is how real change happens. Not by worshiping politicians. Not by waiting for saviors. Not by begging the same system that created the problem to solve the problem. Real change happens when people learn how the system works and build the force to confront it.
From Exposure to Parallel Action
The movement is not here to complain. The movement is here to build.
That is the difference between outrage and action. Outrage without structure becomes noise. Outrage with structure becomes power.
We teach people what ballot images are. We show people why they matter. We expose the deletion. We build an open archive. We organize volunteers. We use the campaign to reveal the system and move people into action.
That is how knowledge becomes liberation. You cannot fight a system you do not understand. You cannot change a machine if you do not know how the machine works. You cannot win your freedom if you keep outsourcing your thinking to the same people who benefit from your ignorance.
Education is the weapon. Organization is the vehicle. Action is the proof.
The Fight Is About Records, Power, and Independence
If a record is created, counted, and deleted, the public must confront that system. That is the issue. Not personality. Not party. Not left. Not right.
The fight is about records, power, and independence. It is about whether independent people will remain trapped inside systems they do not understand, or whether they will learn, organize, and act.
The ballot image is the record. The auto-delete is the mechanism. The legal fight is the exposure. The movement is the solution.
Now you have a choice. You can keep believing the machine, or you can become part of the movement that forces the machine to reveal itself.
Build the Movement for Independent Power
Volunteer. Organize. Make phone calls.
We need 300 volunteers to make phone calls for one hour a day.
Get involved in the campaign at www.shiva4senate.com.
Study the 2020 lawsuit and censorship fight at www.winbackfreedom.com.
Join the education, curriculum, community, theory, and action at www.truthfreedomhealth.com.
Become a leader, not a follower.
Be the light,
Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai
Timeline: Ballot Images, Twitter, Lawsuits, and the Current Fight
- September 1, 2020: Massachusetts Republican U.S. Senate Primary
I ran in the Massachusetts Republican U.S. Senate primary. I won Franklin County by 10 points, where votes were paper ballots and hand-counted. But in the other counties, where machines were used, I was on the losing side of the same repeated sixty-forty pattern. That is where this investigation began. When the output does not make sense, you inspect the system that produced it. - September 2020: We Demand the Election Records
My team and I sought the records needed to understand what happened: ballot images, log files, voter lists, and related election data. This was not complicated. If machines are used to count votes, the people have a right to inspect the records those machines create and use. - September 22, 2020: Visit to the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Office
I went to the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office with a volunteer and a camera. We physically delivered a Freedom of Information request and demanded the ballot images. This is where the fight moved from suspicion to evidence. We were no longer talking about theories. We were asking for the actual records. - September 24 to 25, 2020: The Email and the Twitter Post
I shared screenshots of an email exchange with Michelle Tassinari showing that ballot images were not stored. On September 25, 2020, I tweeted that Massachusetts had deleted 1.7 million ballot images. I said ballot images, not ballots. That distinction matters because the paper ballot can be stored while the digital machine-readable record is deleted. - September 26, 2020: Twitter Removes Me
Within 24 hours, Twitter removed the tweets and suspended my account. Massachusetts officials had notified Twitter through the Partner Support Portal. Think about what that means: I exposed the deletion of election records, and instead of preserving the records, the system moved to silence the person exposing it. - October 20, 2020: Federal First Amendment Lawsuit Filed
I filed a federal lawsuit challenging the reporting of my tweets, their takedown, and my suspension from Twitter. This became the Win Back Freedom fight. The issue was bigger than one Twitter account. The issue was whether government officials could use a private social media platform to silence a candidate exposing government conduct. - October 30, 2020: Emergency Court Hearing
At the temporary restraining order hearing, state officials were sworn and examined. The court docket also reflected that a defendant agreed not to contact Twitter before a specified time. In plain English: we forced the government-Twitter relationship into the open. That was the beginning of exposing the censorship machine. - February 2021: The TASSINARI Keyword Fight
We filed to stop the use of the keyword TASSINARI and to reverse the related suspension. Why does this matter? Because once the system starts treating a public official’s name as a trigger for suppression, you are no longer dealing with free speech. You are dealing with a censorship architecture. - May 2021: Twitter-Related Court Activity
The case continued with Twitter-related hearings and filings. This phase exposed the larger government-social media censorship infrastructure. The ballot-image issue had now revealed a second layer of the system: delete the record, then suppress the person who talks about the deletion. - August 2021: Dismissal Arc of the 2020 Federal Case
The 2020 federal case later moved into dismissal activity. But the core exposure had already happened. The lawsuit showed the country that government officials and social media platforms were not separate systems. They were connected. - April 17, 2026: Writ of Mandamus Filed in Massachusetts
I filed a writ of mandamus in Massachusetts to compel the preservation of ballot images connected to federal elections. This brought the ballot-image fight forward from the 2020 censorship battle into a direct preservation-law battle under 52 U.S.C. 20701. A writ of mandamus is simple: there is a legal duty, and the government must be forced to perform it. - May 26, 2026: Massachusetts Responds
Massachusetts responded through Assistant Attorney General Marina Polaritis. The state’s argument exposed the whole problem: it claimed there is no duty to preserve requested records if those records “do not and will not exist.” That is the loophole. Configure the system to delete the record, then claim there is no record to preserve. - June 6, 2026: Public Coverage of the Ballot-Image Suit
Universal Hub reported that I sued Secretary of State Bill Galvin seeking an order requiring Massachusetts to retain ballot images for upcoming elections. The media repeated the state’s framing, but the core issue remained simple: if the machine creates a ballot image and uses it to count votes, that record must be preserved. - June 9, 2026: Emergency Response Filed
My team held an emergency huddle and filed our response: a reply, a 19-page memorandum of law, an emergency motion to accelerate hearings, and a proposed order. We did this because election records must be preserved before they are deleted. You cannot wait until after the destruction and then pretend there is a remedy. - November 17, 2028: Pre-Trial Hearing Scheduled
The judge scheduled a pre-trial hearing for November 17, 2028. That is more than two years later. Think about that: we are fighting to preserve records for upcoming elections, and the court schedules the matter years into the future. Delay becomes another mechanism of denial.
Bottom line: this entire saga is one connected system. First, Massachusetts does not store the ballot images. Then I expose it. Then Twitter removes me. Then the lawsuit exposes the government-social media connection. Now, in 2026, the same ballot-image issue returns through the writ of mandamus. The fight is about records, power, censorship, and whether the people are allowed to inspect the machine that counts their votes.