Gibbons v. Gibbs - Affirmation of District Court Decision

PUBLISHED UNITED STATES CO URT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH C IRCUIT No. 24-1891 CHRISTINE GIBBON S, Plaintiff – Appellant, v. BETTY ANN GIB BS, in her official c apacity as Secretary of the Lynchburg Electoral Board, and in her personal capa city; STEVE N TROXEL, in his official capa city as Vice Chair of the Lynchburg Electoral Board, and i n his personal capacity, Defendant s – Appellees. Appeal from the Unite d States District Court for the Western Distric t of Virginia, at Lynchburg. Robert S. Ballou, District Judge. (6:23- cv -00035- R SB -CKM) Argued: September 12, 2025 Decided: February 11, 2026 Before THACKER, QUATTLEBAUM, and HEYTEN S, Circuit Judges. Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Heyt ens wrote the opinion, which Judge Thacker and Judge Quattleb aum joined. ARGUED: Stephen B. Pershi ng, KALIJARVI, CH UZI, NEWMAN & FI TCH, P.C., Washington, D.C., fo r Appellant. Blaire Hawkins O’Brien, HARMAN CLAYTOR CORRIGAN & WE LLMAN, Richmo nd, Virginia, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: David P. Corrigan, HARMAN CLAYTOR CORRIG AN & WELLMAN, Richmond, Vi rginia, for Appellees.

2 TOBY HEYTENS, Cir cuit Judge: When a district court rules that certain types of evidence will be admitted but others will not, parties must proffer the evidence t hey wish to present t o preserve appellate review. That rule does not vanish simply because a liti gant predicts an adverse party will ob ject to the evidence and the o bjection will be sustained. Here, a party largely failed to proffer th e evidence it would have put on at trial and has forfeited appellate review. We also see no abuse of disc retion in the evide ntiary rulings to which the appealing party did preserve objections or in the dist rict court’s conduct of jury selection. We thus affirm. I. This case — which is before us a second time — involves t he appointment of a g eneral registrar of elections in Lynchburg, Vir ginia. Under Virgini a law, elections are overseen locally by three - memb er boards. Va. Code § 24.2-106(A). Each local board includes two members from the sitting governor’s party an d one from the party that got the second -most votes in the last gubernatorial elec tion. Id. Eac h board, in turn, a ppoints a general re gistrar. § 24.2-110. Boards may remove reg istrars for failing to “ maintain ce rtificatio n” or “discharge the duties of [their] office.” § 24.2- 109(A). Reg istrars may not, however, be removed because of their political af filiation, nor may a bo ard “ fail[ ] to reappoint ” an incumbent registrar on that basis. McConnell v. Adams, 829 F.2d 1319, 1322 (4th Cir. 1987). Plaintiff Christine Gibbons was unanimo usly appointed registrar in 20 18 by a board that included two De mocrats and one Republican. When plaintif f ’s most rece nt term expired in 2023, the latest gubernatorial election had produced a board wi th two

3 Republicans and one Democrat. Before plaintiff ’s term expire d, she was told the board would be accepting applications for her p osition and that she would have to reapply if she wanted to be considered. Plaintiff reapplied and was among the four candidates interviewed. The boar d ultimately appointed a different candidate, who was a registered Republican. Plaintiff s ued the board and its two Republi can members, alleging the decision to replace her “was not based on any d eficiencies in her perfor mance, but was motivated b y partisan political ani mus toward he r non-partisanship.” JA 29; see Pl.’s Br. 15 (describing plaintiff as “an admitted independ ent”). The defendants moved to dismiss base d on sovereign immunity. The district court dismissed plaint iff ’s claim against the board but allowed her claim against the ind ividual defendants to go forw ard. The individual defendants appealed that order, and thi s Court affirmed. See Gibbo ns v. Gibbs, 99 F.4th 211 (4th Cir. 2024). The case was tried to a jury, wh ich return ed a verdict for t he defendants. This ti me, plaintiff appeals. II. We start with plaintiff ’s argument that the district court failed to properly scree n prospective jurors for partisan bias. We review a district court’s managemen t of jury selection for abuse of discretion, see, e.g., U nited States v. Tsarnae v, 595 U.S. 302, 316 (2022), and we see non e here. The district court began jury selection with its own questioning of prospectiv e jurors. When someone reported seeing new s coverage about the case, the court asked follow- up questions about the nature of the c overage and whether it would impact the

4 person’s ability to be imparti al. The co urt asked all prospec tive jurors about their “knowledge” and “an y opinions about the administration of elec tions in the City of Lynchburg,” and whether their “per sonal political view s or party affiliation [would ] influence [their] ability t o evaluate im partially the eviden ce introduced at trial and to ren der a fair verdict.” JA 195, 198. The court also aske d pro spective jurors if they had “participated in the administration of local, state, or federal elections,” and posed follow- up questions to those who said yes or had otherwise participated in po litical races. JA 199. One of the court’s las t questions was whether the prospective jur ors were “capable of basing [their] decisi on in this case on the evid ence presented and the Court’s instruction s, independent of [their] personal or political views.” JA 203. Although it was not re quired to do so, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 47(a), the district cour t also allowed th e parties to question prospective jurors. Se e United States v. Cou ncil, 77 F.4th 240, 25 3 (4th Cir. 2023) (reviewing courts “must consider th e district court’s jury selection process in its entirety”). For her pa rt, plaintiff asked whether any prospecti ve jurors or members of their immed iate families “ha[d] an occupation that touches on politics or political campaign s.” JA 206–07. Plaintiff also asked ho w much attention th e prospective jurors paid “to current events” and whether they regularly t alked “about current events or politics with [their] family or [their] f riends and co-worke rs.” JA 207. On appeal, plaintiff c hallenges the district court’s decision to pre vent her from asking more targeted questions de signed to “reveal partisa n political bias among potential jurors.” Pl.’s Br. 17. S pecifically, pl aintiff protests the court’s refus al to allow ques tions about “political group memberships; [prospec tive jurors’] sources of news; their sharing o f

5 beliefs with groups involved in the Jan. 6th el ection protests; their beliefs about the 20 20 election result; a nd whether as election officials they would be disinclined to certify the 2024 presidentia l election result if it d id not favor their preferred candidate.” Pl.’s Br. 4; see id. at 17 n.4 (stating th is appeal “is limited t o the voir dire questions enumerated in thi s brief ”). These limits, p laintiff asserts, “led the trial court to recede to a level of abstractio n. . . that was too re mote to allow meaningf ul screening of the venire.” Id. at 21. We see no abuse of disc retion. “The process of selecting an impartial jury is delicate and involves compl ex tradeoffs” betwee n competing interes ts. Cou ncil, 77 F.4th at 25 4. After all, “[t]he Constitution guarantees bot h criminal and civil litigants a right to an impartial jury,” War ger v. Shauers, 574 U.S. 4 0, 50 (2014), an d requires “distr ict courts to remove prospective jur ors who will not be able impartially to foll ow the court’s instructions and evaluate the evidence, ” United States v. Bowman, 106 F.4th 293, 302 (4th Cir. 202 4) (quotation marks and brackets removed). Bu t prospective juror s al so have “legitimate privacy interests,” and there is a risk that “pointed questions” about s ensitive topics might “ exacerbate whatever prejudice m ight exist without s ubstantially aiding in ex posing it.” Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Ct. of Ca l., 464 U.S. 501, 51 2 (198 4) (first quote); Peña- Rodriguez v. Colorado, 580 U.S. 206, 224 –25 (2017) (quot ation marks removed) (second and third quotes). T he Supreme Co urt has specifically flagged the dangers of que stions about prospective juror s ’ “political o pinions and associations,” e mphasiz ing that suc h questions will rarely — if ever — “be appropriate.” Connor s v. United States, 158 U.S. 408,

6 415 (1895). 1 Here, the district court struck this difficult balance by asking (and allowi ng plaintiff to ask) questions that pr obed the prospective jurors’ degree of politica l engagement and ability to render an impartial verdict, while also limiting what questions plaintiff could ask. “Part and parcel of deference to the trial court ’s conduct of voir dire is a rel uctance to second - guess the court ’ s decisio n to refuse inquiry into ce rtain matters. ” Unite d States v. Lancaster, 96 F. 3d 734, 739 (4th Cir. 1996). Plaintiff has cit ed no case in which a trial court was reversed for failing to ask questions about prospective jur ors ’ politic al views or affiliations beyond the sorts of questions that were asked here, and this will not be the first. Mindful that we may not “substitute [o ur] judgment for that o f the district court,” United States v. Mason, 5 2 F.3d 1286, 12 8 9 (4th Cir. 1995), we con clude the court did not exceed its “broad discretion” in deciding “what q uestions” it would not permit plaintiff to ask, Tsarnaev, 595 U.S. at 316. III. We turn next to plaintiff ’s assertion that the district co urt improperly prevented her from presenting certain evidence. The defendants contend that pla intiff failed to pr eserve her evidentiary challenges for our review. In l arge measure, we agree. See Part III(A). And 1 In contrast, Peña-Rodriguez makes clear that cases involvin g racial bias sometimes require such “pointed questions” bec ause “racial bias impl icates unique histo rical, constitutional, and in stitutional concern s.” 580 U.S. at 224. In that c ontext, the “effort t o address the most grave and serious sta tements of racial bias is not an effort to perfect the jury but to ensure that our le gal system remains capa ble of comi ng ever closer to the promise of equal treatment under the law that is so central to a functioning democracy.” Id.

7 for the limited number of challe nges that are preserved, we conclude plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that the district court abused it s discretion. See Part III(B); s ee, e.g., King v. McMillan, 594 F.3d 301, 310 (4th Cir. 2010) (“We revi ew a district court’s ruling on the admission of evidence for abuse of discretion. ”). A. Federal Rule of Evidence 103(a) — capti oned “Preserving a Claim of Error” —tell s litigants what they m ust do to preserve a n argument that a tri al court improperly “admit[ted] or exclude [d] evidence.” A par ty who contend s that a district court er red in “exclud[ing] evidence ” must have “inform[ed ] the court of [the evid ence’s] substance by an offer of proof, unless the sub stance was apparent from t he context.” Fed. R. Evid. 103(a)(2). At the same time, “[o]nce the court rules definitively on the record —eit her be fore or at trial — a party need not rene w an objection or offer of pro of to preserve a claim of error for appeal.” Fe d. R. Evid. 103(b). As the advisory co mmittee’s note e xplains, Rule 103 distinguis hes between situations when a pretrial ruling “is definitive” versu s those whe n it is not. Fed. R. Evid. 103 advisory committee’s not e to 2000 amendment. In the former situati on, “a renewed objection or offer of proof at the ti me the evidence is to be offered is more a formalism than a necessity” and t hus is not required. Id.; accord Wilson v. Williams, 182 F.3d 562, 566 (7 th Cir. 1999) (en ban c) (“ Definitive ruling s ... do not invite reconsideration.”). But when “the trial cou rt appears to have reserved its ruling or to ha ve indicated that [a] rulin g is provisional,” Rule 103 requires the prop onent of the evidence “to bring the issue to th e court’s attention su bsequently ” or be deemed to have abandoned

8 the issue. Fed. R. Evid. 103 advisory committe e’s note to 2000 amendment. “[W]hen there is doubt on that point,” it is the offering part y’s “obligation .. . to clarify whether an in limine or other evidenti ary ruling is definitive. ” Id. Here, there is no need to guess: The district c ourt repeatedly told pl aintiff that the pretrial rulings she now challenges were s ubject to clarification or reconsideration later. Nearly a month before trial, the defendants moved to exclude, among other things: (a) “evidence and testi mony related to the 2020 Presidential Election and event s on January 6, 2021 at the United States Capitol ”; and (b) “evidence relate d to an alleged ‘conspiracy’ to replace registrars.” JA 37. T he court addres sed that motion at a pretrial heari ng 12 days before the start of trial. During th e hearing, the c ourt had the follo wing exchange with plaintiff ’s counsel about evidence involvin g the 2020 election and the events of January 6, 2021: THE COURT: So I’ m going to grant [defendants’ motion to exclude] as it relates to attending January 6th, pictures ab out January 6th, discussion s about the 2020 presidential election nationall y. The re’s been no indica tion at this point that there’s any evidence that [Defendant] Gibbs talked about the Virginia election other wise being corrupt. And the defe ndant doesn’t see k to exclude any evidence —I’ m certainly going to allow discussions about [Defe ndant] Gibbs’ view of how th e 2020 election was administ ered by the Lynchburg re gistrar, whether it was corrupt or not. And I’m going to allow all the evidence. . . but I’ m not going to restrict the plaintiff’ s evidence with respect to, at least at this ti me, the 2020 election in Lynchburg. Understanding tha t there may be a point i n time in which the door gets opened for a more global discussion. But at this point in time, I think the defe ndants need to open that, or there needs to be an otherwise showing that in June 2023, when th is decision is made, that some national view about what happened three years earlier is what colored —what happened three years earlier nationally is what colored the view about a decision that is made lo cally. But I’ m not awa re of any evidence at this point, so I’m going to grant t he motion as it relates t o the national election.

9 [PLAINTIFF’S COUNSEL]: This is exactly the reason we have confe rences like this, so we can be, all of us, aware when the time comes and we’ll have sidebar ahead of time, and we’ ll remember this conversa tion. But, again, I ’ m troubled by the need to split that hair. H er attitude was global and it wa s local and it was the sa me attitude. So I ’ m going to probably be com ing to the Court sometime during the tri al and asking, “Your H onor, please, what do w e do?” THE COURT: That’ s fine. I would rather ke ep the genie in th e box rather than trying to get it bac k. [PLAINTIFF’S COUN SEL]: Understood. Un derstood. JA 93–94 (emphases a dded). The district cou rt’s treatment of the other rele vant part of the motion in limine —to exclude “evidence related to an alleged ‘cons piracy’ to replace registrars,” JA 37—was similarly tentative and nuanced. After a lengthy back and fo rth with counsel in which the court identified some types of evidence it tho ught would or would not be admissible, the court made the followi ng ruling: THE COURT: So here’s what I ’ m going to d o with respect to this. At this point in time, I ’ m going to gr ant the motion, but — so, [plaintiff ’s counsel], the problem with the evidence, as I understa nd it right now, to be able to make this suggestion that there was a broader scheme — not to use the word “conspiracy,” but a broader scheme to replace Democratic - appointed registrars with Republican - appointe d registrars is that right now, th e only evidence that I understand that is goi ng to be offered is that [one or both of the individual defend ants] spoke to other members, oth er Republican electoral board memb ers in another local ity and the other local ity did something similar to what happened here, they either replaced them or failed to reappoint them. And there’s — the missing link is t hat there’s no other evidence sug gesting that that was with a partisan moti vation, that there is a — the re were discussions beforehand, a plan, as we ll. And without that link, I ’m not going to let you then go to make tha t inference and put the other evidence on as well.

10 So I ’ m going to grant the motion at this poin t. It doesn ’ t mean that if the evidence exists, you know, I won’t revisit it. But just, “I had a meeting and they made a d ecision to replace the registrar ” is simply not enoug h to get beyond that. I’ll let you proffer the e vidence at trial that yo u would otherwise want to put on if you want me to rec onsider it. But I would need to know specifical ly what the evidence is before we get there. JA 100–01 (emphases added). The next day, the district court entered a brief written order memorializing it s oral rulings. T he order said, “for the reasons state d on the record,” the individual defenda nts’ motion was granted “[t ]o the extent it seeks to exclude evidence and testimony r elated to the national 20 20 Presidential Election and ev ents on January 6, 2021, ” and “[t]o the extent it seeks to exclud e evidence and tes timony related to an alleged ‘sta tewide conspirac y to replace registrars. ’ ” D. Ct. ECF No. 10 4, at 1 –2. The bullet point containing the first ruling—but not the second—also stat ed the motion was “DENIED w ithout prejudice as to evidence and testimony related to the administr ation of elections in the City of Lynchbur g.” Id. at 2 (boldface remo ved). Th at same day, pl aintiff filed a motion seekin g two “clarification [s] ” of the co urt’s written order. D. Ct. ECF 106, at 1. First, plai ntiff asked whether the “conspiracy” portion of the court’s ruling covered evidence that wa s “limited to [the relevant local] [d]istrict and limited to personal eff orts of the [individua l] defendan ts to encourage other localiti es’ boards to do as they were doing with the Lyn chburg re gistrar’s positi on.” Id. at 2. Second, plaintiff sought clarification about whether the court would, consistent with its oral ruling, “entertain at trial a pr offer of evidence” about the connecti on between the indivi dual defendants and efforts t o remove local registra rs in other jurisdictions. Id. at 2–3.

11 The district court addre ss ed plaintiff ’s motion on the first day of trial before starti ng jury selection. After another exchang e during which it discussed the admissibili ty of certain types of evidence, the c ourt made the followin g ruling: THE COURT: All righ t. So at this point I was n’t intending to circum scribe the evidence of actions taken by these partic ular defendants. Certai nly there ’s going to have to be, like every other pie ce of evidence, an adequate foundation to be able to get it in. So to the extent that — the mot ion to reconsider is grante d to the extent t here’s clarification t hat it wasn ’ t int ended to circumscribe specific action taken by the de fendants. I’ ll grant that as well. JA 143 (emphasis ad ded). The court then disc ussed with counsel the process for pic king a jury before returning to evidentiary is sues. Although the court pe riodically identified certain broad type s of evidence that woul d or would not be a dmissible, it emphasized that particular is sues would have to be a ddressed when the ev idence wa s proffered and tha t admissibility question s would often turn on how a question was phrased and what foundation had been lai d. The court stated: THE COURT: I’ll address the evidentia ry questions as they come up, but let’s not lose sigh t of what this case is about; and that is that in June o f 2023, [plaintiff] was not reappointed as the r egistrar. The claim that is made is that that violated her First Amendment rights bec ause the decision was made for partisan political reaso ns; and as a conse quence, she lost her job and her First Amendment rights wer e violated at that ti me. Certainly there ’ s going to be evidence as to what led to that decision and so forth. The further we stray from 2023 and when [the individual d efendants] came onto the electoral board, then the further we get from relevancy to this particular case. JA 154 (emphasis adde d). The court returned to evidentiary issues imm ediately before opening statements. The court declined to make any adv ance rulings on the admissibilit y of exhibits, no ting it had not even seen plaintiff ’s objecti ons to the defendants’ proposed ex hibits. But consistent

12 with its earlier stateme nts, the court reiterated that whether a ny piece of evidence would be admissible would depe nd on future developm ents: I’m a little bit reticent just to come in and say “ grant, deny, grant, de ny ” the objection without the parties having an a bility to at least make some argument, if they want to do so. But the evi dence has to be tied to the decision t hat was made not to rea ppoint. To the extent that — and that necessar ily means that you ha ve to be able to establish a lead - up to t hat. And the issue — the further you get aw ay from June of 2023 [when pla intiff was not reappointed], the more difficult i t is to say that that’s part of the lead - up that’s relevant. If it ’ s somethin g that happened on May the 31st and the decision i s called on June th e 1st, pretty daggone relevant. But if it goes back to Januar y of 1978 — I know we ’ re not goi ng back that far — th en we ’ ve begun to stra y too far. There’ s a gra y area in between. That’ s what we have to tie this to is knowledge by the defendants and action by the defendants that le d to th e decision not to reappoint [plaintiff]. A nd I ’ m going to give the parties free reign in that rega rd. But a general dislike by a general group of peo ple — by a group, eve n if the plaintiffs are — or the defendants are part of that group — may have more difficulty getting into e vidence. It’s like say ing because you ’ re a member of the Kiwanis Club and the Kiwanis C lub takes A, B, and C positions; therefore, you ’ ve adopted every single one of those positions, tha t’ s not the way a trial is going to o therwise occur, right? And just because a gro up may protest outside of [plai ntiff ’s] home, if the defendants weren’t pa rt of it, it becomes more difficu lt to be able to say that that ’ s tie d to them. Bu t if the defendants are part of it, then mayb e it is. So that’s going to b e part of the parsing that we’re goin g to have to deal with. JA 248–49 (emphases added). Once the trial began, plaintiff offered only two pieces of eviden ce —proposed exhibits 82 and 89 — whose exclusion she challenges on ap peal. But neither pro posed exhibit was made part of th e district court record, and plaintiff failed to correct that oversight—either befo re the district court or when preparing the joi nt appendix for this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 1 0(e)(2) (providing a procedu re for correcting or supplementing the record on appeal “[i]f anyt hing material to either party is omitted fr om

13 or misstated in the [district court] recor d by error or accident”). To be clear, we do not mean plaintiff merely failed to comply with F ederal Rule of Appellate Procedure 30(a)’ s instruction that all “ pa rts of the record to which the parties wish to direct the court’s attention” must be i ncluded in the joint appendix. Be cause proposed exhibit s 82 and 89 were not made part of the distri ct court record in th e first place, the y are not part of “ the record on appeal, ” Fed. R. App. P. 10(a), an d this Court has no way o f accessing them. “It is the appellant’s respo nsibility to provide th e Court with the information it ne eds to decide an issue on appeal.” United States v. Stone, 866 F.3d 219, 230 (4t h Cir. 2017). And based on the infor mation we do have — the litigants ’ (un surprisingly, di ffering) description s of proposed exhibit s 82 and 89 and the distric t court’s ruling s abo ut them — we conclude plaintiff has failed to c arry her burd en of sho wing the district court committed rever sible error by excluding th ose exhibits. See id. (similar). 2 Nearly all of plaintiff ’s other evidentiary arguments fail for lack of specificity or because p laintiff never obtained a definitive ruling from the district court. Plai ntiff broadly argues that the district court excluded “key evidence of the defenda nts ’ partisan political motivation,” “eviden ce of partisan bias underlying the removal dec ision at issue,” or “all evidence”— or “the most important e vidence” —about certain topics. Pl.’s Br. 5–6, 16. But this Court “can assign no error to the exc lusion of evidence, e ven a ‘blanket’ exclusion, where the [appealin g party] has not made a s pecific proffer to the c ourt.” Carter v. Ball, 2 Plaintiff identifies another piece of evidence s he “had the right to have an informed and impartial jury cons ider.” Pl.’s Br. 15. As the cited transcript pages show, the exhibit in question was admitted without objection.

14 33 F.3d 450, 457 (4th Cir. 1994). Subject to the limited excepti ons just noted and two others discussed la ter in Part III(B), plaintiff f ailed to do so here. Plaintiff insists she nee d not have offered the missing evidence— o r even tried to lay foundation for it —bec ause “[h]ad she d one so, the defendants would have objected, a nd the objections would have been sustained.” Pl.’s Br. 11. But, as we have explained, the district court repeatedl y emphasized that its d ecision to admit or exc lude evidence wou ld depend on foundation a nd context and that the court would thus “need to know specifically what the evidence is” before making a final decision. JA 101. And “ we will not re verse a district court’s judgme nt based on assumptions about how the co urt would have ruled had a party attempted to ask a question it n ever tried to ask.” Cou ncil, 77 F.4th at 254; accord United States v. Vest, 116 F.3d 1179, 1188 (7t h Cir. 1997) (ho lding that it was “too late to reopen [an] issue . . . o n appeal” when a trial court made a pretrial ruling excl uding witness es ’ testimony b ut allowed the party to seek leave to call the witness es at trial and the party never did). B. There are, however, two types of evidence where the district court clearly made a final determination and about which plaintiff consistentl y objected. First, the court stated that evidence about national p olitical events (or the individual defendants’ views about them) wou ld not be admitted ab sent some tangible con nection to the ir decisi on not to reappoint p laintiff. Pla intiff prote sted this ruling, insis ting that the topics cou ld not be separated because “the same animus” motivated both. J A 90. Se cond, and relatedly, the court stated that it wo uld not permit evidenc e about other Virginia localities’ fai lure to

15 reappoint their registrars without evidence linking thos e decisions to the individual defendants’ decision not to reappoint plain tiff. For her part, plaintiff insist ed that other local boards removed their registrars arou nd the same time as part of a common scheme, and the fact that one of the individual defend ants was “seen at a meeti ng” of one such board just days before that board removed i ts regist ra r was evidence of that scheme. JA 96. W e see no abuse of discreti on on either topic. To begin, we do not understand the district court to have made an unconditional ruling that evidence about national political e vents (or the in dividual defendants’ beliefs about them) were simply out of bounds. To the contrary, the court ackno wledged the possibili ty that w hat happened locally could h ave been “an exte nsion of [the] overall more national discussion about what happened d uring the [2020] election, ” JA 88, and it repeatedly invited plaintiff to attempt to make such a connecti on. At the sa me tim e, however, the court stre ssed that the centr al issue in this case was why plaintiff was not reappointed in 2023 an d that discussion of br oader matters threatened to derail the trial. See JA 94 (“I wou ld rather keep the genie in the box rather than try ing to get it back.”); JA 108 (“This case [is ] not about 2020. Thi s case is not about what happened in that presidential election. T his case is about a deci sion that was ma de in June of 202 3 to replace [plaintiff].”). Federal Rule of Evidenc e 403 grants district courts “broad discretion” in

16 making such calls, United Stat es v. Sanders, 107 F.4th 234, 25 5 (4th Cir. 2024), and we see no abuse of that dis cretion here. 3 Th e district court’s ha ndling of evide nce about other jurisd ictions was similarl y nuanced. Plaintiff ins ists that the court forb ade her from introducing evidence about “the [individual] defendants ’ involvement in partisa n efforts to replace incumbent registrars” in other localities. Pl.’s B r. 10. But the district court said no such thing —indeed, t he court took pains to say it was not restricting “evidence of actions taken by these particu lar defendants.” JA 143. Instead, the cou rt concluded that the mere fact that one o r both individual defendants “ spoke to” members of other boards and that those boards the n “did something similar t o what happened here” was itself insufficient to r aise an “inference” of a common scheme. JA 100; see Fed. R. Evid. 104(b) (“When the relevance of evidence depends on whether a fact exist s, proof must be introduced sufficient to supp ort a finding that the fact does exist. ”). At the same time, t he court emphasize d that plaintiff was free to try to establish “the missing link” and invited her to “pr offer the evidence at tria l that [she] would otherwise want to put on.” JA 100–01. Thos e p roffers never came, and plaintiff 3 At oral argument, plaintiff insisted th at the district court’s rulings re sted solely on Federal Rule s of Evid ence 401 (which defines relevance) and 4 02 (which states that “[i]rrelevant evidence is not admissible”). S ee Oral Arg. 7:34 – 7:39. We disagree. The Federal Rules of Evidence do not require district court s to cite a particular rule for their evidentiary rulings, see Fed. R. Evid. 103(c), and the district court d id not do so here. In addition, statements li ke “[t]he further we stray from 20 23 and when [the individual defendants] came onto the electoral board, then the furthe r we get from relevanc y to this particular case,” JA 15 4, sound much more in Rule 40 3 than 401. And while “an explicit ruling may be preferab le and may indeed aid this Court in revie wing the record,” United States v. Rawle, 845 F.2d 1244, 1247 (4th Cir. 1988), we do not require a district c ourt to “enunciate its view of the probative - prejudice calculus” that Rule 4 03 demands, United States v. Lewis, 780 F. 2d 1140, 1142 (4th Cir. 1986).

17 neither deposed the ind ividual defendants befo re trial nor called them during her o wn case in chief. And so, f or a final time, we see no abuse of discretio n. Accord Wilson, 182 F.3d at 566 (“Objections alert the judge at critical ju nctures so that errors may be averted. When a judge has made a conditional, con tingent, or tentative ruli ng, it remains possibl e to avert error by revisiting the s ubject.”). 4 * * * The judgment is AFFIRMED. 4 Parts of plaintiff’s pre sentation can be read as suggesting that the jury’s ver dict was against the weight of the evidence o r that she had inadequate tim e for discovery. Any such arguments are not properly before us b ecause they were not made in the argument section of plaintiff’s o pening brief. See, e.g., Grayson O Co. v. Agadir Int’l LLC, 856 F.3d 307, 316 (4th Cir. 2017).