[HN Gopher] Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani
___________________________________________________________________
Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani
Author : cf100clunk
Score : 263 points
Date : 2021-01-25 16:22 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Seeing lots of throw-away accounts popping in to drop
| misinformation... At least five, by my quick count? Seems like it
| would be helpful to disable commenting for new-user/low-karma
| accounts for certain threads.
| ily_dominion wrote:
| I'm actually really proud of Dominion here. We went from 2016
| being totally hacked, and we all know it, and then in 2020 we had
| the most secure election in history. What a turn around!
| tptacek wrote:
| Ken White has been talking about the potential for this suit for
| a couple weeks now. He spends a lot of time talking about what
| _isn 't_ defamation --- people use defamation suits and threats
| thereof to chill free speech, and he's a 1st Amendment guy ---
| but the Dominion cases are apparently examples of very serious
| defamation cases.
|
| The core of defamation is (1) a false statement of purported fact
| that (2) causes damage (there are some exceptions to (2) that
| aren't relevant here). Most defamation cases you hear about fall
| apart on (1) - they target non-falsifiable statements of opinion,
| which can't be defamation because they don't purport to relate an
| objective fact. What makes Dominion's cases terrifying is that
| they are chock full of purported facts, all of which are batshit,
| and have so devastated Dominion's reputation, in a reputation-
| intensive business, that it had to hire private security to
| protect its employees from death threats.
|
| What makes the case challenging for Dominion is that they will
| almost certainly be treated as a public figure for the purposes
| of the case. The standard for defamation of a public figure is
| higher than that of a normal person; we add a condition (3):
| actual malice or negligence, meaning Dominion must show that
| Giuliani either intended to destroy Dominion's reputation by
| spreading facts he knew to be false, or that he was at least
| negligent, acting with reckless disregard for the truth.
|
| The problem is that it's not totally clear whether Giuliani
| believed any of his crazy-talk. It may actually be the case that
| Giuliani is just off his rocker. If he himself was sold by the
| (false) facts he received from others, he is a more difficult
| defamation target.
|
| Here's attorney Akiva Cohen analyzing the case a bit:
|
| https://twitter.com/AkivaMCohen/status/1353700596407283721
| wcunning wrote:
| As to (3), Ken and others have also pointed out, Rudy or Sydney
| Powel being lawyers have a duty to know this sort of thing so
| there's a chance that they'll be found to have actual malice
| even without a finding that Rudy was knowingly lying.
| vsareto wrote:
| Rudy also had a cybersecurity company and was named as a
| cybersecurity advisor. Would that help Dominion's side that
| this wasn't just crazy beliefs on Giuliani's part and be in
| favor of actual malice?
| akiselev wrote:
| IANAL but "they should have known" doesn't follow from how
| they market themselves as a business unless it's a licensed
| profession. It's not uncommon for defendants to completely
| contradict their previous public statements under threat of
| a lawsuit like all the Fox News lawsuits where their
| lawyers win by claiming that it's an entertainment channel
| and their viewers should know better [1]. Beyond that, one
| can easily argue that political appointments and executive
| positions rarely deal with the nitty gritty details,
| instead providing value through things like political
| connections and existing business relationships.
|
| [1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
| courts/new-yor... - "Fox persuasively argues, that given
| Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive
| with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the
| statement he makes."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If the court rules that the statements were false, but Giuliani
| is off his rocker and so Dominion doesn't get their billion,
| Dominion might still find that an acceptable outcome. They need
| their reputation at least as much as they need the money; a
| court ruling that the claims were factually wrong would go a
| long way toward restoring their reputation.
| simonh wrote:
| All the claims if significant vote fraud were thrown out by
| courts up and down the land, including the Supreme Court and
| yet still a huge mob of nutters stormed the Capitol. A mere
| court finding isn't going to stop Dominion employees getting
| death threats.
|
| It needs to be clearly and forcefully demonstrated that
| knowingly and recklessly and maliciously lying to the public
| with the intention of causing harm to a company or individual
| like this carries heavy consequences.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The most significant cases were dismissed on procedural
| issues without reaching the merits. That doesn't
| necessarily mean they _had_ merit, but arbitrarily many
| procedural dismissals don 't show that one way or the
| other.
|
| I feel like this is the problem with the discourse right
| now. It's understandable why you're making that argument,
| because the media has been saying that for months now.
| Because in fact a large number of cases were dismissed (so
| it's not technically a lie), but it's only rhetorically
| effective if you don't look at the details.
|
| So then we end up with this massive polarization because
| one side keeps relying on an argument that sounds very
| convincing to their base who never hear the
| counterargument, but will never convince the other side who
| have, and then there is never reconciliation. Or even a
| motive to find more convincing arguments that there wasn't
| fraud, because they're only talking to their base and not
| even _trying_ to convince the other side.
| javajosh wrote:
| "[Dominion will probable be] treated as a public figure." Why?
| I'd never heard of them before November 2020, and I imagine
| that is true for most people. I'd also be curious to learn more
| about what counts as "reckless disregard for the truth", if
| you're willing to share.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/proving-fault-actual-
| malice...
|
| Dominion seems to be very clearly a "Limited Purpose Public
| Figure" in the domain in which the disputed statements apply.
|
| Their lack of general celebrity is a good argument that they
| aren't an "all purpose" public figure.
| javajosh wrote:
| Great link, thank you! That's precisely what I was looking
| for (and I highly recommend it to anyone else reading this
| thread). It does seem strange to me that we set the bar so
| high for defamation, but its one of those times where the
| trade-off is very clear, and it seems like in this
| particular case "reckless disregard for the truth" seems to
| fit extremely well.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| > It does seem strange to me that we set the bar so high
| for defamation
|
| Well, it's not that strange, if you look at how
| frequently _mere threats_ of defamation lawsuits are used
| to chill free speech.
| javajosh wrote:
| Indeed. The solution, though, is simple: every man woman
| and child in the USA should just get a law degree!
| tigershark wrote:
| Every man, woman, person, camera, TV!
| hajile wrote:
| Most people (even people who follow politics) weren't
| familiar with Obama before 2007 election cycle.
|
| The Covenant Kid was thrust into the media and when he sued
| for defamation, at least some judges accepted the claim that
| he was a public figure -- even though he was suing over the
| very thing that thrust him into the national spotlight.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Most people (even people who follow politics) weren't
| familiar with Obama before 2007 election cycle.
|
| Obama was a public official, so the standards for public
| figures that aren't public officials wouldn't apply.
| vhold wrote:
| One way to demonstrate nobody had heard of them: https://tren
| ds.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=d...
| webdevatlurk wrote:
| The breakdown of interest by subregion is... unsurprising.
| javajosh wrote:
| On a side note, interestingly every single post I've made in
| the last week has been downvoted. Even this one, which is
| literally just asking questions. Its almost like I'm being
| targeted. Dang? Is something going on?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Jurisprudence includes the concept of a "Limited Purpose
| Public Figure", which typically includes anyone or anything
| that is part of a prominent matter of public interest. It is
| not a requirement that this person or group be prominent
| before hand. Unfortunately this occasionally has the effect
| of making some plaintiffs a LPPF by the very nature of the
| allegedly defamatory statements made against them, but that's
| how the law works.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| > Unfortunately this occasionally has the effect of making
| some plaintiffs a LPPF
|
| I wouldn't call it unfortunate. If you don't want to be a
| public figure, one thing of which to steer clear is
| certainly the business of operating voting systems in the
| US presidential election. This is clearly public interest.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _If he himself was sold by the (false) facts he received from
| others, he is a more difficult defamation target._
|
| A skilled liar would never for a moment reveal that they did
| not truly believe what they were saying, not even in private
| correspondence. Even in typical, not overtly evil companies,
| the saying "write for the subpoena" is passed around as advice
| for would-be upfront communicators.
|
| Still, if criminals never made mistakes the justice system
| would convict almost nobody of anything.
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| > The problem is that it's not totally clear whether Giuliani
| believed any of his crazy-talk. It may actually be the case
| that Giuliani is just off his rocker. If he himself was sold by
| the (false) facts he received from others, he is a more
| difficult defamation target.
|
| That part seems bizarre. Surely he ought to still be culpable
| is he said false things with the intention to damage Dominion,
| even if he can convince the court that he believed the things
| he said. Unless, of course, you're talking about an insanity
| defense or a claim of provocation, but those a very different
| matter, and I highly doubt that's a viable route.
| um_ya wrote:
| There is still meaningful court cases going on, in relation
| to this election. If your curious to see all the evidence
| Giuliani and other lawsuits brought forward, here's a
| compilation of the evidence brought forward, sorted by
| significance:
|
| https://airtable.com/shrhYBx2cboqsKv14/tbl0at4AkLpdBFOzp?bac.
| ..
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Dominion seem to be spinning this out as a campaign, so I doubt
| Giuliani is the end point.
|
| I also doubt Trump is the end point.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| I remember a lot of accusation about Diebold voting back in the
| 2000s, and concerns about lack of auditability. My understanding
| is that newer systems now let you vote at a machine, but it spits
| out a receipt that the voter can verify and the county can hold
| on to for the sake of audits and recounts. Is this standard now,
| or on a state by state basis?
| adrr wrote:
| Dominion voting machines in Georgia is literally a computer
| hooked up to a printer that prints out a ballot for you that
| you turn in. Ballots are then scanned to get the results.
| elihu wrote:
| It looks like the current holdouts (allowing electronic voting
| with no voter-verified paper trail) are Indiana, Kansas,
| Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma,
| Tennessee, and Texas.
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...
| yters wrote:
| Dominion purchases Diebold in 2010.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems
|
| Hopefully they improved the security since then...
|
| https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~matth/lists/
| HNfriend234 wrote:
| Yup. I think there is room for a lot more transparency and
| "double-checks" so to speaks built into voting going forward.
| Allow each voter to audit their own vote. We have the
| technology to allow for this to happen so there really is no
| excuse. This is really how you build confidence is the voting
| system. Anyone who is truly skeptical can cast their own vote
| and double-check it though the system.
|
| I know quite a few people that fully believe that voting is
| effectively a sham now.
| csours wrote:
| Worse, depending on state it may be statewide, or county by
| county.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _My understanding is that newer systems now let you vote at a
| machine, but it spits out a receipt that the county can hold on
| to for the sake of audits and recounts._
|
| Not new. I've had paper voting receipts for at least 15 years.
| Probably longer.
|
| _Is this standard now, or on a state by state basis?_
|
| There are no voting machine standards. It varies by state, and
| in some states by county.
|
| Some people see that as a flaw. I see the diversity of voting
| systems as a security plus. There was even an article in the
| newspaper shortly after the election stating that certain
| foreign governments looked into hacking America's voting
| systems, but it wasn't worth the effort because they were all
| constructed and implemented differently.
| caminocorner wrote:
| Interesting. Defamation aside, FUD, and 'fraud' claims aside, I
| hope this gets enough attention that they will actually fix the
| very real issues voting machines have had for the past decade:
|
| https://securityboulevard.com/2019/09/voting-machines-still-...
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| Is it just me, or does a name like "Dominion" in the context of
| voting just beg for conspiracy theories? The name seems _so_
| anti-democratic.
| jes wrote:
| Did Dominion create, for example, FMEA analyses during their
| software development efforts?
|
| Such analyses are de rigueur in the development of software in
| regulated industries (medical devices, aviation, etc.)
|
| Should the development of election systems software be regulated?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I sincerely hope that whatever happens with these lawsuits
| doesn't chill the speech of actual voting machine security
| research.
| joshuakelly wrote:
| I think you have to be outside of America to have this
| perspective now, it's too drowned out inside to make sense to
| anyone who can only read it through the American lens. I would
| be less concerned with any particular legal case though, and
| more concerned with the chilling effects of American political
| culture itself. By its very nature, any supposedly
| disinterested researcher will now be viewed with intense
| suspicion.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Do defamation lawsuits tend to chill speech that isn't
| defamation? I would assume not.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'd be much more worried about the absolutely insane nonsense
| that Giuliani and his ilk have been spewing. That is far more
| damaging to voting machine research than this lawsuit.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Wasn't that the kraken thing that Giuliani wasn't really
| involved with?
| loonster wrote:
| He wasn't. That was a Sidney Powell thing. I think this
| 4chan Post describes the Kraken very well:
| http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/301180971/#301180971
|
| >This is my contribution to the Trump team's legal case
| against election fraud. The Kraken was a crowdsourced legal
| case that they were building with the help of hundreds of
| volunteer experts, but most of it never got to see the
| light of day. We were explicitly told not to release any
| information to the public because that could undermine
| their case, since it would expose our work to the ongoing
| media slander campaign and allow the defense to more easily
| prepare counterarguments. Clearly that's no longer a
| concern, so I'm publicly releasing my contribution to the
| case.
|
| >Interactive Colab notebook with code and full replication
| of findings: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1Pwiip
| IQif63EMCxGFYA...
|
| >The key takeaway of this analysis is that the Biden vs.
| Trump advantage of a vote tally reporting batch is highly
| (i.e. extremely) correlated with meta information about the
| counting process itself. This implies that if you counted
| the votes a different way you would have gotten a different
| final total, which is absolutely preposterous and a clear
| indicator of fraud. Additionally, we don't see this happen
| tptacek wrote:
| In case anyone else was about to waste a couple minutes
| of their life that they will never get back, a quick
| warning that you will never get the minutes of your life
| back that you lose paging through this very silly Python
| notebook, which was very clearly created to snow people
| who don't know what a Python notebook looks like.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The claims Giuliani made against Dominion and it's voting
| equipment is verbose in articles related to this topic, as
| well as the case filing.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| As long as potentially hackable voting machines are used in
| elections, the anxiety about hacking will be there and will
| eventually be exploited by politicians. If we want to fix the
| issue, we really just need to move back to hand counting
| paper ballots.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Dominion voting machines leave an auditable paper trail and
| thus do support hand-counting of paper ballots, which was
| done as part of the recounts in disputed states. No
| discrepancies beyond the margin of error of hand counting
| were found in those recounts vs the electronically reported
| results.
|
| You can see how they work in this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BDiO3JGTs
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I'm not saying they were hacked. I'm saying the layman
| needs to be confident beyond a reasonable doubt. A normal
| non-security professional needs to understand and have
| confidence in the system they use to vote. Most people
| don't even know how to troubleshoot computer issues
| beyond rebooting, let alone understanding complex IT
| security or auditing measures put in place for these
| machines.
| Me1000 wrote:
| If you watch the video you can see that a layman would
| easily understand how it all works. It literally prints a
| ballot where you can verify your choices, and you drop it
| off.
|
| This is pretty much the gold standard: a paper trail that
| can be audited every step of the process.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Still not sufficient though, you only need to hack enough
| to get outside the automatic recount margin. You also
| need hand-recount of random samples in _all_ elections.
| kube-system wrote:
| Of course, if someone hypothetically hacked an election
| even more brazenly to get outside of that margin, the
| result would be even more unexpected and likely to be
| manually contested.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Yes, this election was the most secure due to the paper
| trail that mail-in ballots provide. I would trust that more
| than the bits of a closed, black voting box
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| That doesn't give anyone the right to say baseless claims
| and present them as facts on front of millions of people.
| [deleted]
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the
| future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated
| technology such as paper ballots.
|
| Does the future of voting not belong to online remote
| voting, like almost everything else? You can even buy a
| house from your phone now. In the future, we will know the
| results of the election as soon as the online polls close.
|
| The future is paperless.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the
| future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated
| technology such as paper ballots.
|
| I'm not. No one understands as well as technologists how
| often "novel technology" represents a regression from the
| tried and true, and how much the cry of "new" is used to
| sell defective crap.
|
| > You can even buy a house from your phone now.
|
| This is technically partially true in that a lot (not
| all) home purchase and finance paperwork can be done via
| electronically signed documents, and if you have a
| tolerance for extremely bad UI you can sign those on a
| phone. Typically, you'll still need some wet signatures
| (notarized even) at the end of the process.
|
| But that's, even if it was completely accurate, a
| different problem domain than voting. (Both have concerns
| for assurance, but only one also has nonattribution as a
| critical goal.)
| lovecg wrote:
| With the election process, optics is as important as the
| actual security. It has to seem simple and secure for
| most people to accept the results easily. We saw recently
| that even that does not always work but I have hope it
| was an aberration. Can you imagine the fallout if
| everything was done digitally instead, considering the
| average person's understanding of crypto and "hackers"?
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Once you know how the sausage is made, sometimes you
| don't want to eat sausages.
|
| I actually do think that digital voting is theoretically
| possible, if done cautiously and in an open source
| manner. (it needs to be fully open source to be
| verifiable at all)
|
| A remaining problem is that -in an election system- every
| voter needs to be able to check and _perceive_ that the
| election was honest. That could still be a bit tricky in
| a society where not everyone is a programmer.
| rtkwe wrote:
| One big barrier to online voting is that you don't want
| people to be able to be forced to show their votes which
| makes any kind of verification immensely difficult (you
| have to accomodate people needing to show a fake
| verification) because otherwise you leave things open to
| voter intimidation and vote buying.
|
| Another is that by going online you instantly open the
| attack surface up massively. Currently to steal an
| election you have to physically move a large number of
| people to a broad set of voting sites or send in a lot of
| forged mail votes. Those both require physically doing
| something in the US where an online system lets anyone in
| the world potentiall attack the system.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| No it isn't.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
| failrate wrote:
| I disagree with your conclusion. Voting does not need to
| be made more convenient beyond preventing obvious voter
| suppression and making election day a federal and/or
| state holiday. Additionally, a digital compromise of a
| fully digital system could compromise all votes. If the
| system has a nondigital artifact it can reference as a
| source of truth, then it can be validated, verified, and
| restored to truth.
| loonster wrote:
| A federal holiday would be fantastic. The main benefit is
| not getting more people to vote, but getting more people
| to watch the polls & counting. The more opportunity that
| people have to watch, the more faith people will have in
| the system.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology
| such as paper ballots._
|
| "Antiquated" is a loaded word that smacks of ageism.
| Restaurants are antiquated, too. Do you never go out to
| eat?
|
| _Does the future of voting not belong to online remote
| voting, like almost everything else?_
|
| Are you trying to say that every other country votes
| paperless? Because that's simply not true.
|
| _You can even buy a house from your phone now_
|
| You have obviously never bought a house, and certainly
| not one from your phone. Just because there's an ad on
| YouTube doesn't make it true.
|
| _In the future, we will know the results of the election
| as soon as the online polls close._
|
| Why is that necessary? What benefit does it provide?
|
| _The future is paperless._
|
| People have been saying that for over a hundred years.
| Yet, here we are, still with a durable, recordable medium
| that does things that paperless methods can't.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Nothing can "fix the issue" when the issue is primarily
| that some candidates will not accept a losing outcome.
|
| Had this election been entirely hand-counted, the same
| claims of fraud would have arisen. When a candidate
| declares in advance of an election that he can only lose if
| there is fraud, you can be sure he will act in bad faith if
| he loses.
|
| Incredulity was all he needed to claim fraud - the numerous
| conspiracy theories explaining the fraud would inevitably
| surface after the fact. If it's not Dominion voting
| machines, it's dead voters, boxes of ballots showing up,
| and hand wavy claims of the opposition being in charge of
| the counting and abusing that role.
| corrys wrote:
| Hand counting can be manipulated too [0], so the idea that
| we can just move back to it and save our democracy is not
| accurate (or at least not a complete solution). In other
| words, dishonest politicians will find ways to exploit our
| fears even if we use paper ballots.
|
| [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S
| 02613...
| reaperducer wrote:
| No one ever claimed that hand-counting is perfect. Is
| isn't. For example, all of the Chicago ballot boxes that
| famously ended up in Lake Michigan in the middle of the
| last century.
|
| But hand-counting works because it's virtually impossible
| to coordinate fraud widespread enough to actually make a
| difference. Whereas, if your entire voting system is
| computerized and all the computers are linked together,
| causing widespread changes are much more possible.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Good thing hand counting can be (and is) used with the
| Dominion voting machines to verify the electronic result,
| then.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Certainly a good thing!
|
| Do let me temper that slightly :
|
| Some states didn't or didn't fully have a paper trail
| quite yet https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equi
| pment_by_stat...
|
| Also, be aware that Dominion voting systems actually
| acquired the old "Diebold Election Systems", who were not
| so secure a couple of years back. (though things may have
| changed by now, of course)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Election_Solutions
| r00fus wrote:
| You linked to an abstract of the Russian vote
| manipulation behind a paywall. That abstract says nothing
| specifically about hand-count being manipulated.
|
| Hand counting remains the golden standard for voting.
| tartoran wrote:
| All allegations against Dominion voting machines were
| pretty much disproved by subsequent manual vote courting.
| Again, the machines leave a paper trail that allows
| manual counting for verification. That makes simple
| handcounting without any assistance more prone to errors
| and less paper trail as well.
| r00fus wrote:
| In what world would manual counting have less paper
| trail?
|
| What is for sure - with voting machines, there is less
| validation. Hand counting means - all ballots are counted
| always (by volunteers with all parties invited) - whereas
| voting machines means a spot-test (in some states), and
| only a full manual count is when a recount is demanded.
|
| All this to say - I think Dominion did a thorough job -
| but this all only happened because the election was
| close. What about those where the election isn't "close"?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Voting by hand takes days, which is why it is only done
| _automatically_ for close elections.
|
| However, a losing candidate may request a recount after
| the election. In most states, if the margin is outside of
| a stated threshold, that candidate must pay for the
| recount. If there is a discrepancy between the two
| counts, then a hand recount is performed.
|
| If an election isn't close, then the respective Secretary
| of State will audit (by hand) a random selection of
| precincts to verify vote totals match, but this is a
| security check and generally takes place weeks after the
| election.
| r00fus wrote:
| Voting by hand takes days - in the US. Not in Finland,
| France or the many other countries where voting is done
| by hand 100% successfully for decades with timely
| results.
|
| Here's the conundrum - what constitutes what's "out of
| threshold"? If a voting machine, either by design or
| flaw, pushes a close vote outside the threshold - then
| that's a way to bypass the checks & balances and can be
| exploited by the unethical.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Scale matters. 160 million votes were cast in the U.S. in
| each of the past 2 elections.
|
| 36 million votes were cast in France in the last
| election.
|
| The U.S. is capable of counting 36 million votes by hand
| overnight as well, and most votes were once counted by
| hand in the U.S.
|
| _What constitutes what 's "out of threshold"? If a
| voting machine, either by design or flaw, pushes a close
| vote outside the threshold - then that's a way to bypass
| the checks & balances and can be exploited by the
| unethical. _
|
| That paragraph is disingenuous. A vote that is outside
| the threshold for an automatic recount is not a close
| vote; the margin between candidates is thousands of votes
| (or more).
|
| If a voting machine has a design flaw or other flaw, that
| would have been discovered during one of the several
| inspections and trial runs it was put through before
| being certified for use. Moreover, many states now
| require paper receipts of all ballots cast (as a result
| of Russian hacking of election machines in 2016), so if
| there is any suspicion of manipulated results, the human-
| legible ballot receipts can be tallied. States with these
| types of printed ballot receipts will audit the
| electronic tallies against hand-counts of the printed
| ballots on a random precinct-level basis.
| r00fus wrote:
| You scale by district. You just get more people involved
| in the counting per ballot location.
|
| It's a scalable method. Yes, the reconfirmation at the
| regional levels are important.
|
| Your faith in machines is questionable. I leave you with
| this obligatory xkcd - it's still completely valid:
| https://xkcd.com/2030/
| gamblor956 wrote:
| In my state, the machines print out paper ballots in
| legible English saying exactly who I voted for.
|
| I don't trust the machines, but I do trust the people
| doing the counting, especially since the counting process
| is observed by both sides.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Even that won't stop the lies about the election being
| stolen. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia are all paper
| ballot states [0] counted by machine but preserved for
| manual recounts. The lie just became that there was either
| ballot stuffing at some point, a point which changed every
| time a claim was disproven, or that the Dominion tabulation
| machines changed some Trump votes to Biden votes. Even
| Members who were elected in that very same election were
| saying it was fraudulent, just not their votes of course.
|
| [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by
| _stat...
| gameswithgo wrote:
| It has been fascinating to watch recent events unfold, wherein
| various horrible things including direct threats to democracy
| have happened due to people increasingly being able to just
| completely make up stuff, and spread it around readily and
| effectively on unfiltered internet mediums, and a great number
| of people's immediate concern is that free speech may get
| quelled too much which will do great harm.
|
| This here is another example, nobody did any voting security
| research, some Trump associates just made up the idea, and were
| able to easily spread that messages to millions of people,
| playing a large part in inciting an attempted coup. The maker
| of that device is now suing for damages, as they should, and
| your concern is free speech again.
|
| It seems almost performative.
| lovecg wrote:
| That's a story as old as time. Getting millions of people to
| believe a lie is not exactly an innovation.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Anyone actually involved in voting machine security research,
| and not just a fraudulent troll like Rudy Giuliani, welcomes
| this lawsuit. His unhinged spouting of unsubstantiated
| conspiracy theories has only harmed and discredited legitimate
| voting security research.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The thing that confounds me is that this is the same guy who
| took down organized crime in NYC the 1990s. No small task,
| and one that required meticulous gathering and handling of
| evidence. Are we to believe he's simply gone insane in his
| old age?
| the_local_host wrote:
| It'll be a win/win situation if baseless allegations of fraud
| are punished, and every detail of how voting machines work,
| including source code, are made public.
| tartoran wrote:
| I agree but wouldn't making the source code becoming public
| make the machines more prone to hacking?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Not if they're well designed, if the security of the
| system depends on it's function being completely secret
| it's not secure.
| tartoran wrote:
| Yes, security by obfuscation is not good but imagine a
| bad actor discovers a bug and by the time the bug gets
| discovered and patched they could do a lot of harm in an
| election. Somehow I agree with the idea of making the
| code public only with the idea in mind that it gets
| scrutinized my more eyeballs but since we're talking
| about elections maybe this changes the perspective a bit?
| rtkwe wrote:
| If you have the access to the machines to hack a number
| of them you likely already have the access to dump and
| analyze the source code, the physical access required is
| basically the same in both cases and getting the code
| initially is easier because you only need one machine
| (/maybe/ two to see if there's any interesting
| differences) where the final hack would require more.
| Also just because the code isn't released doesn't mean
| it's secure that same bad actor can theoretically hack
| the same code out of the writing company to start with.
|
| It's a debate we've had with secure messengers the
| benefit of having that many eyes on a piece of software
| outweighs the minor risk of a secret zero day.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Not at all, it's actually the opposite. Security by
| obscurity is a terrible way of securing software since
| once someone backward-engineers it, you're hacked.
| Instead, if you open source it, all security researchers
| will be able to audit the code and be paid bounty money
| if they find bugs (and believe me, they will find bugs).
| lokedhs wrote:
| Not if they are secure. In the security community, if the
| integrity of the platform requires information about the
| platform to be secret, it's not secure.
|
| The keys should be secure, but the design of algorithms
| and implementation of the system should not be.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I'm reminded of an xkcd alt text, " There are lots of very
| smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting
| protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing
| all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently
| working in that field has retired."
|
| https://xkcd.com/2030/
| reaperducer wrote:
| _There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work
| on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and
| encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper
| ballots until everyone currently working in that field has
| retired._
|
| It's funny how things change. Just five years ago, HN was
| awash in people shouting that paper ballots are not secure
| and everyone should switch to electronic. Now the
| conventional wisdom is the opposite. Much like the way that
| in the 90's, keeping a password on a Post-It note was
| considered not secure, and now it's the safest thing going.
| hajile wrote:
| They _could_ blockchain votes and have independently
| auditable election results easily available.
|
| Instead, time after time, we get shady software from shady
| people with disturbing political connections (I'm not
| talking the dominion thing either -- this seems true for
| all voting software). The idea that crooked politicians
| hire crooked companies to wrire crooked software shouldn't
| come as a surprise to anyone.
| failrate wrote:
| Keeping a password on a Post it is still dangerous.
| gilbetron wrote:
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down
| _yo...
| tzs wrote:
| That's implicitly assuming that you can't do cryptographic
| voting protocols with paper ballots. That is false. You can
| in fact make a cryptographic voting system where:
|
| 1. Voters vote by marking ovals with a marker pen on paper
| ballots.
|
| 3. The paper ballots can be counted by the optical scan
| machines that are already widely used in many places.
|
| 4. The paper ballots can be hand counted.
|
| 5. All the ballots can be published, allowing anyone to
| independently verify the counts.
|
| 6. An individual voter if they choose to can make a note of
| short alphanumeric code that is revealed when they vote for a
| candidate, and using that note later can verify that their
| vote was included in the total and went to the correct
| candidate.
|
| 7. An individual voter cannot prove to a third party that
| they voted for a particular candidate.
|
| Here is a paper on such a system:
| https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf
|
| Wikipedia article on it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
|
| Here is a paper showing how it satisfies item #7:
| https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502
|
| Almost all of the cryptographic mojo takes place when the
| ballots are printed, so no modifications are required to the
| scanners. You do have to use a special marker to mark the
| ballots.
|
| Doing the cryptographic verification of all the votes would
| almost certainly be done by software, but as all the ballots
| are published and the system is completely open and
| documented, independent parties can easily do their own
| counts. The software is also fairly simple.
| bitstan wrote:
| Except software does control airplanes and elevators..
|
| Subscribing to this kind of "digital bad" dogma is lazy
| because you don't have to think for yourself.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Software does control airplanes and elevators. When it
| fails, it can kill people.
|
| But when people _think_ elevator software is broken, they
| don 't take the elevator. When (enough) people think voting
| software is broken, they topple governments and start civil
| wars.
|
| And some people who disagree with you are still thinking
| for themselves. That "not thinking for yourself" is lazy
| argument.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Good thing Dominion voting machines do leave an auditable
| paper trail, which was hand-audited in all of these disputed
| states and which verified the electronically-reported
| results.
| throwaway23242 wrote:
| what about reports out of michigan that audit trails / logs
| were missing for election night?
|
| https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_
| m...
| gilbetron wrote:
| False reports based on hearsay.
|
| https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-
| county-r...
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Do you have a link to anything that has been established
| as true in court? Because that link is pants-on-fire
| lying: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/
| russell-ja...
| throwaway23242 wrote:
| oh, cabal fact checkers seem to say this link is garbage
| (do they though?). i will flog myself and pledge
| allegiance to the cabal to repent.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Even a cursory review of the Ramsland report you linked
| to indicates it was largely fiction. From the politifact
| review:
|
| _Ramsland lists "Fenton" without specifying Fenton City
| or Fenton Township. But the turnout Ramsland lists for
| Fenton does not match the turnout in either jurisdiction.
|
| The actual turnout statistics reveal the inaccuracy of
| Ramsland's numbers. His figure for North Muskegon is off
| by a factor of 10: The actual number is 78.11%, not
| 781.91%. For Zeeland Charter Township, he inflated the
| turnout nearly sixfold. For Grout Township and the City
| of Muskegon, his number is more than triple the correct
| number._
| throwaway10923 wrote:
| "Likewise, all server security logs prior to 11:03 pm on
| November 4, 2020 are missing. This means that all
| security logs for the day after the election, on election
| day, and prior to election day are gone. Security logs
| are very important to an audit trail, forensics, and for
| detecting advanced persistent threats and outside
| attacks, especially on systems with outdated system
| files. These logs would contain domain controls,
| authentication failures, error codes, times users logged
| on and off, network connections to file servers between
| file accesses, internet connections, times, and data
| transfers. Other server logs before November 4, 2020 are
| present; therefore, there is no reasonable explanation
| for the security logs to be missing. "
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The Gish Gallop isn't going to get you anywhere. Give up.
| You're not fooling anyone.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
|
| Also read this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| >Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but
| please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community
| --users should have an identity that others can relate
| to.
|
| Stop making throwaway sock puppet accounts every time
| your lies are rightfully downvoted and your posting
| rights restricted. Your lies aren't "sensitive
| information".
|
| We've ALL heard the tired old conspiracy theories you're
| parroting before, and we've ALL seen them thoroughly
| debunked already. You're the only one who seems surprised
| you were duped.
| throwaway10923 wrote:
| "A staggering number of votes required adjudication.This
| was a 2020 issue not seen in previous election cycles
| stillstored on the server.This is caused by intentional
| errors in the system. The intentional errors lead to bulk
| adjudication of ballots withno oversight, no transparency
| or audit trail. Our examination of the server logs
| indicates that this high error rate was incongruent with
| patterns from previous years. The statement attributing
| these issues to human error is not consistent with the
| forensic evaluation, which points more correctly to
| systemic machineand/or softwareerrors. The systemicerrors
| are intentionally designed to create errors in order to
| push a high volume of ballots to bulkadjudication"
|
| " Antrim County failed to properly update its system. A
| purposeful lack ofproviding basic computer security
| updates in the system software and hardware demonstrates
| incompetence, gross negligence, bad faith, and/or willful
| non-compliance in providing the fundamental system
| securityrequired by federal and state law. There is no
| way this election management system could have passed
| tests or have been legally certified to conduct the 2020
| elections in Michigan under the current laws. According
| to the National Conference of State Legislatures
| -Michigan requires full compliance with federal standards
| as determined by a federally accredited voting system
| laboratory "
|
| " Significantly, the computer system shows vote
| adjudication logs for prior years; but all adjudication
| log entries for the 2020 election cycle are missing. The
| adjudication process is the simplest way to manually
| manipulate votes. The lack of recordsprevents any form of
| audit accountability, and their conspicuous absence is
| extremely suspicious since the files exist for previous
| years using the same software. Removal of these files
| violates state law and prevents a meaningful audit, even
| if the Secretary wanted to conduct an audit. We must
| conclude that the 2020 election cycle records have been
| manually removed. "
|
| so this is just made up?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Yes, all made up.
|
| First paragraph: simply made up by Ramsland, by basically
| treating all the times a ballot was entered incorrectly
| (such as upside down) as a vote requiring adjudication.
|
| Second paragraph: False. The person in charge of updating
| the system...was a Republican. Also, the voting machines
| _were_ in compliance with federal voting system
| standards. The machine that was not updated prior to the
| election was the computer that the voting machines
| connected to, which was updated after the election during
| vote tabulation. (A hand recount of the paper receipts
| printed on Election Day confirmed the post-update count.)
|
| Third paragraph: Also fiction, and quite literally
| contradicts your first paragraph. (They can't both
| possibly be true; either the adjudication logs were there
| and there were a lot of adjudicated votes, or they
| weren't, and the first paragraph is made up.) Also, the
| machines were audited after the election...by
| Republicans.
|
| On a further note, neither NASA or MIT has any record of
| Ramsland or any of his companies, doing any work for them
| as he claims (and which forms the basis of his supposed
| technical expertise).
| [deleted]
| tptacek wrote:
| https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-
| county-r...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| How about you throw away your actual HN account too,
| because people who spread long debunked baseless
| conspiracy theories aren't welcome here. Good to see
| you're at least embarrassed to admit who you actually
| are. That's the first step to realizing you're been fed
| lies and brainwashed. Go find something to believe in
| that you're not embarrassed to associate with your true
| identity.
| nkassis wrote:
| Researchers usually have well research and evidence to back
| their claims which wouldn't put them at risk like Giuliani.
| Giuliani has also repeated these claims that have so far been
| unsubstantiated repeatedly even after being asked to retract
| them. There is some willful level malice implied in this
| lawsuit that is I think is not applicable to security
| researchers so I'm personally not worried but I do get the
| general sentiment whenever libel laws are brought up.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| And researchers aren't usually operating under the
| delusionally optimistic assumption that they'll get $20,000
| per day and a presidential pardon for their work.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Let's see. $1 billion damages vs. earning $20,000 per day.
| Guiliani comes out ahead after 50,000 days. I kind of doubt
| he got that long...
| elicash wrote:
| Why would it? Voting machine research isn't at issue in this
| case. What you're concerned about would require a change in
| law, if not the Constitution.
| duxup wrote:
| >These pieces rely on discredited sources who have peddled
| debunked theories about Dominion's supposed ties to Venezuela,
| fraud on Dominion's machines that resulted in massive vote
| switching or weighted votes, and other claims falsely stating
| that there is credible evidence that Dominion acted
| fraudulently
|
| That's Dominion's statement. They're describing a pretty
| exceptional situation / distant from what I would think of as
| security research.
|
| Obviously that's not a legally binding statement or anything
| but I think that at least illustrates what this situation is
| about.
|
| This isn't a case of someone being mistaken or putting forth a
| good faith concern about security.
|
| These accusations are based in nothing at all, disproven, and
| Giuliani and others just kept at it.
|
| Researchers usually have actual evidence for concerns and so
| forth. And their motivations usually really is security.
|
| This situation with Giuliani and actual security research seem
| completely disconnected.
| williesleg wrote:
| Toronto? Weird.
| pupdogg wrote:
| The article states that at one point in time, at a voluntary
| hearing in Michigan, Dominion CEO said "It is technologically
| impossible to see votes being counted in real-time or to flip
| them". I think that everybody here is fairly technically inclined
| so what are your guys thoughts on this? My personal opinion is
| that using the term "technologically impossible" in this instance
| was not a good idea.
|
| If @antirez is reading this, would love if you could provide any
| useful insights. FYI, I ask becuase of your background in
| research and development of "TCP Idle Scan" back in '98.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> It is technologically impossible to see votes being counted
| in real-time or to flip them_
|
| Dominion machines aren't on the internet. Dominion doesn't have
| centralized access to all of their machines.
|
| Could they eg send out an army of technicians to every voting
| location and use some insane side-channel attack to physically
| read and flip bits from across the street? Sure. But by that
| logic it's also "not impossible" for you or I to launch the US
| nuclear arsenal.
|
| I think saying that "it is technologically possible to see
| votes being counted in real-time or to flip them" is
| "technically correct" but obviously not actually correct in any
| reasonable sense.
| rglover wrote:
| Eric Coomer (on many of Dominion's patents) mentions that
| there's a cellular modem in the machines: https://www.youtube
| .com/watch?t=2529&v=YLIS68YfMYU&feature=y...
|
| So it's not just a LAN connection that would be isolated to
| the network in the voting place (what you'd expect).
|
| They also reported sending out updates to the machines in
| some precincts after certification, just before the election:
| https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/georgia-election-
| ma... (not sure of the current veracity of this but
| bookmarked it as it was interesting).
| yielding wrote:
| The claim that the CEO is disputing is that the Dominion
| machines are operated from a central location which can monitor
| and control the outcome of any action taken with one of their
| machines. The "technology" is specifically referring to the
| Dominion system, not "technology" in general. If the Dominion
| system does not include remote access, if it doesn't include
| remote monitoring and if it doesn't include remote vote
| management then "technologically impossible" is a fair
| statement.
|
| They are not arguing that it is impossible for such a system to
| ever be built, they're arguing that their system is not built
| that way. Voting machines are audited and have a chain of
| custody, it would be very difficult to argue that "someone
| could hack all the machines and install this capability" fits
| within the realm of possibility.
| rglover wrote:
| This isn't for a Dominion machine but it's for an old Sequoia
| machine (which I believe that company was acquired by
| Dominion): https://file.wikileaks.org/file/advantage-
| insecurities-2008.....
|
| It's certainly technically possible (which of course it is, if
| you control the software and access to the machine, you can do
| what you want).
| [deleted]
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| This is hn and we should recognize the inherent weakness in
| electronic voting machines for the blatant issue it is. That
| said, the primary retort I keep seeing is something along the
| lines of "well, but these produce an auditable paper ballot".
|
| So my question is this: How much of those auditable trails have
| actually been audited, in what places, and in what numbers (I
| don't think spot checks will suffice to reassure people, the
| numbers need to be a statistically significant percentage in the
| most contested places), _and, more importantly_ where are the
| results of these audits being published?
| useerup wrote:
| The entire state of Georgia. where Guiliani alledged that votes
| were "switched" by Dominion machines, were in fact _hand
| counted_ and affirmed the machine-counted tally.
|
| Even _after_ the hand-count clearly confirmed that the machines
| had _not_ switched any votes, Guiliani spread the same lie.
| This is actually documented in the suit.
|
| Mind you, it is not that the vote-tally machines leave a paper
| audit trail. The vote-tally machines work by _scanning_ the
| actual paper ballots.
| justinzollars wrote:
| I worked on campaigns for 10 years, I was an elected Hillary
| Rodham Clinton DNC Delegate and I witnessed real problems that
| should be of concern of every American.
|
| Votes should be cast in person, with identification and counted
| by hand.
|
| If Democracy is sacred we can wait a few days for results we can
| all trust. The system is clearly breaking down today where 75% of
| Republicans do not trust the election results and 75% of
| Democrats didn't trust the 2016 election.
| the_drunkard wrote:
| Can you elaborate on this? I'm very interested, especially
| given your perspective.
|
| The 2004 election also had its fair share of electronic voting
| criticism:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_vo...
| patwolfe wrote:
| Do you have a source for the claim that 75% of Democrats didn't
| trust the 2016 election? While I've read reports about
| frustration with the electoral college among Hilary voters and
| a fear of election interference from foreign nations, I haven't
| read much about that level of suspicion of ballot-level fraud.
| I would push back on the idea that those concerns (which I
| don't feel qualified to speak on that true validity of) are
| equivalent to the idea pushed by Donald Trump that there was a
| scheme to legitimately steal the election, as in to produce a
| situation where the votes cast do not determine the winner.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > 75% of Republicans do not trust the election results and
|
| If their mistrust is based on crazy, there's nothing that can
| be done to fix it except to cure that crazy.
|
| And I think it's based on crazy: the reasoning seems to break
| down to: (A) belief that Donald Trump won implying (B) the
| election must be fraudulent (since it didn't confirm A).
| dboreham wrote:
| It's been very interesting to observe because although I had
| heard the notion that malignant narcissists "can't accept
| ever losing" I realize I hadn't truly perceived what that
| entails. They invent an entire reality, Truman Show / The
| Matrix / Inception-style, where they didn't lose. And of
| course that alternative reality by definition has to feature
| some reason why there's a new dude in the WH now.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I look forward to any establishment figure working to
| reestablish trust in political institutions and media
| reportage.
|
| Before the problem can be addressed it must be acknowledged.
| Unfortunately, so far I only see finger-pointing and
| deflection. As far as each respective side is concerned,
| there's no problem on their end and they have no
| responsibility. It is all the fault of the others. The only
| thing that is changing is the increasing intensity of outrage.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > The system is clearly breaking down today where 75% of
| Republicans do not trust the election results and 75% of
| Democrats didn't trust the 2016 election.
|
| To the extent that's true, it has far less to do with voting
| machines than with self-selected information bubbles.
| mbg721 wrote:
| This was also an election where for months, everyone had
| nothing to do _except_ sit around and consume filter-bubble
| news.
| stevenalowe wrote:
| "It is technologically impossible to see votes being counted in
| real-time or to flip them"
|
| I wonder how they debugged the code then
| dboreham wrote:
| Casting our minds back to Texas Cattlemen vs Oprah..
| yesdocs wrote:
| I hope whatever happens with these lawsuits it chills the
| baseless accusations of voter fraud used to undermine voter
| confidence in our democracy
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| > the baseless accusations of voter fraud used to undermine
| voter confidence in our democracy
|
| "This study applies Benford's law to detect anomalies in
| county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election.
| Most prominent distribution violations are observed with
| Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in
| states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote
| counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing
| states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing
| states won by the Republican nominee. The results are robust to
| two-digit analysis, Monte Carlo simulations of p-values, broad
| or narrow swing state definitions, and when compared to
| distributions observed in 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections." -
| Detecting Anomalies in the 2020 US Presidential Election Votes
| with Benford's Law,
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626
| yters wrote:
| Ironically, a previous version of this company known as Diebold
| was used in the 2004 election, and Democrats claimed the
| electronic voting machines were used to commit voter fraud.
| Apparently, one could open up the vote ledger in MS Access and
| modify the votes without any kind of audit trail or password.
| Hopefully after the multiple rebrandings Dominion has gotten
| its security under better control :D
|
| See the leaked memos from Diebold here:
| https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~matth/lists/
| tunesmith wrote:
| The problem is it - not the lawsuit itself, but the public
| perception of it - could come back to bite the other side.
| There have been plenty of good reasons to suspect electronic
| voting in the past, at least in the absence of verifiable paper
| backups _and_ regular random sampling recounts of those paper
| ballots. Which is still a pretty rare practice, isn 't it? In
| the absence of those standards, it's still reasonable to have
| suspicion even if you don't have evidence; the entire problem
| is that you're kept from _gathering_ the evidence.
|
| The biggest reason to doubt the "voter fraud" theories this
| time around is because of who is making the complaints, not
| because the voting companies (or the laws surrounding e-voting)
| are beyond reproach.
| cma wrote:
| Those things in the past helped push for paper receipts. In
| every contested state there were paper receipts this time. We
| should expand that to everywhere that uses electronic voting,
| but we don't have to lie about irregularities to do it.
| jonas21 wrote:
| But that's the thing about Dominion -- their machines _do_
| generate a paper trail, and this paper trail _was_ audited.
| One of the big pushes to secure this election compared to
| previous ones was to use as many voting machines with
| auditable paper trails as possible.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> their machines do generate a paper trail_
|
| Not the same kind of paper trail that exists when a voter
| fills out a paper ballot.
|
| If I fill out a paper ballot, that ballot is independent
| evidence of the votes I intended to cast, because I filled
| it out directly, with no machine in the middle. So that
| paper ballot is a useful auditing mechanism for checking on
| machine-generated vote counts.
|
| If I electronically cast votes on a machine, and the
| machine prints out a paper record of my ballot, unless I,
| the voter, leave some record that I inspected that piece of
| paper and agree that it reflects the votes I intended to
| cast, it's useless as an auditing mechanism. As far as I
| can tell, no such voter inspection record is made with
| electronic voting machines.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That doesn't seem much different than saying that a
| traditional hand-filled ballot doesn't leave a useful
| paper trail because there's no evidence that the voter
| placed the pen markings where they intended to place
| them. Which, in fact, is an argument that's been made
| before with hand-filled ballots.
| athenot wrote:
| Since I voted in Georgia on these machines, the process
| is the following:
|
| - get ID validated & ability to vote
|
| - get an initialized smart card
|
| - insert in polling machine, fill out stuff
|
| - submit, get printout from printer
|
| - scan printout into a machine
|
| - return smart card
|
| At the polling places I was at (we had a runoff), the
| staff + signage was emphasizing to check results on
| printout.
|
| The printing and the scanning felt terribly wasteful but
| as it turned out, it became a precious way to audit. The
| bonus is that the printout is normalized, not some
| person's handwriting that could be subject to
| misinterpretation.
| pilotneko wrote:
| A very similar process in Tennessee. I'm not sure if the
| machine was made by Dominion, but I had a chance to
| review the printout before scanning. The printout
| appeared to pass through the scanner and into a locked
| container beneath, presumably for actual paper audits.
| pdonis wrote:
| So you take the printout from one machine and insert it
| into another to be scanned? I agree that would satisfy
| auditability, since you can look at the printout and make
| sure it's correct.
|
| Were these Dominion voting machines?
| enzanki_ars wrote:
| In Ohio, we used the same Dominion voting systems with
| the same process:
|
| Poll worker validates proper ID, get ballot code for your
| precinct, walk to voting system, poll worker enters the
| precinct, voter validates info on screen, voter votes on
| the touch screen, system prints out choices, walk to
| scanner system, vote gets scanned, scanner stores those
| ballots in it's tray in case need for audit.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Conversely, hand filled out ballots are a mess, often
| illegible, the hanging chad fiasco, etc. With electronic
| voting, the voter can (should?) see on a screen exactly
| what they did, and the machine can make multiple exact
| copies in electronic and paper formats of that exact
| result. There is far less ambiguity in the physical
| record once this has been done.
| pdonis wrote:
| I agree that if the electronic voting machine is just
| helping you print out an easily legible copy of your
| ballot, which you then verify for correctness and take to
| another machine to have it scanned for counting, that's a
| good thing, for the reasons you give. Not only does it
| help with auditability since the physical record is more
| standardized, it also probably reduces the error rate of
| automated counting.
|
| What I'm not sure about is whether that is actually the
| way it is done for _all_ electronic voting machines.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| It is the way it is done for all Dominion voting
| machines, which replaced Diebold AccuVote machines (which
| did not leave a paper trail) in Georgia in 2019.
| rwmj wrote:
| The UK has paper-only ballots and none of this stuff is a
| problem. (There are no "hanging chads" because ballots
| are marked by the voter with a pen or pencil on a piece
| of paper). The polls close at 10pm, the votes are counted
| overnight by volunteers, and the winner takes office the
| next morning. It always baffles me that the US system is
| so complicated.
| rconti wrote:
| You're telling me out of millions of ballots, none of the
| pen or pencil markings could be unclear?
|
| The reality is, there are always ballots that fall in a
| grey area. That's being exploited to sow doubt in the
| uncertainty of an entire election.
|
| Hell, same thing happened during Brexit:
|
| > The first stage will see all ballot papers - though not
| actual votes - counted, a process known as verification.
|
| > Any ballots which are later rejected are included in
| these verified ballots.
|
| I submit it COULD happen there, too. Votes being counted
| by local authorities, making judgement calls, and the
| plan being to announce the preliminary results if the
| election is "clear" that night.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-
| referendum-36044026
| jackson1442 wrote:
| It's definitely unnecessarily complicated, and the
| hanging chad problem simply stems from elections where
| making such a claim can win the whole election for your
| candidate.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| There are not literal hanging chads but you can still
| have problems, such as marks in multiple boxes when only
| one choice is permitted, or marks outside the designated
| boxes.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> There are no "hanging chads" because ballots are
| marked by the voter with a pen or pencil on a piece of
| paper_
|
| This is how it is done in many US jurisdictions as well
| (including all the ones I have voted in).
| birdman3131 wrote:
| Its kinda hard not to see how you voted at least around
| here. It is printed off in fairly large print on the
| paper ballot which is then taken to a separate machine to
| actually tally the votes. (No clue as to the brand used
| though. At a ~65% trump vote my vote was worthless
| anyways though so why pay attention to the machines.)
| purchaceallsus wrote:
| The issue had to do with mail in votes. Those are not
| viewed by the vote caster when the machine processes
| them.
| perydell wrote:
| The electronic voting machines I use in Southern
| California actually print my selections on a piece of
| paper that I can look at under a little piece of plastic.
| I approve that it shows my votes accurately and then the
| paper slides away. Presumably kept with the machine so an
| audit could be done.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| These machines create an auditable paper trail, replacing a
| system that did not in Georgia. The conspiracy theorists
| claimed that the electronic votes were modified in Venezuela.
| The validation of the paper ballots showed that this had not
| happened.
|
| https://statescoop.com/georgia-buys-new-voting-machines-
| with...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/5a76e11db8e64f7ca32197f2934a86df
| atoav wrote:
| Another one of these issues that get easier once you have 3
| major parties competing nationwide.
| roenxi wrote:
| More to the point - if there is actual voter fraud at some
| point it will need to announced, communicated and
| investigated. Electronic voting systems can be used to remove
| humans from the loop and that has real potential to undermine
| the election system.
|
| There needs to be a very high tolerance of criticism towards
| voting machines and the companies that make them. Ordinary
| standards of transparency are not enough, for example.
| triceratops wrote:
| > There needs to be a very high tolerance of criticism
| towards voting machines and the companies that make them.
|
| There is. It's called the 1st Amendment.
|
| If the company is suing for defamation, that is also their
| right. Giuliani isn't some small fish being silenced by a
| defamation suit.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The problem is it - not the lawsuit itself, but the public
| perception of it - could come back to bite the other side.
|
| That's a valid concern when you're dealing with a good-faith
| actor. But if voting machines are open-source (which I
| heartily support), they'll move on to baselessly discrediting
| something else to shape public perception. The problem isn't
| the technology per se. _The problem is we 're not dealing
| with a good-faith actor._
| AnHonestComment wrote:
| No, the problem is the technology as such:
|
| Voting is a system that needs to be simple, transparent,
| and auditable. The technical solutions are 0/3 and an
| example of "over engineering" leading to a poor quality
| solution.
|
| Our current voting system is _well_ below international
| standards -- and it's because of the technology.
| teraflop wrote:
| > the entire problem is that you're kept from gathering the
| evidence.
|
| Well, there's also the fact that the folks advancing these
| theories are _insisting_ that they 're being "kept from
| gathering the evidence", when in reality much of what they're
| saying is _contradicted_ by evidence.
|
| For example, the instances cited in the lawsuit where
| Giuliani and others continued to insist that Dominion voting
| machines had changed the Georgia election outcome by flipping
| votes, even after the original results had been confirmed by
| a full hand recount.
| imperfectcats wrote:
| > the fact that the folks advancing
|
| Too many arguments boil down to people, and motives, not
| facts. It is a bad idea to put the short term desire to see
| a foe vanquished over the long term cost of bad laws and
| policy.
|
| Laws are not perfect, and I'm not convinced we want the
| basis of democracy to be closed source voting machines, or
| that even if we do, the checks and balances as they stand
| are currently 100% correct.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Well sure, if we're going to conflate arguments in good
| faith with arguments in bad faith, we won't really get
| anywhere... the point is that without doing manual recounts
| it's hard to gather evidence of possible flaws in an
| electronic count, and you can't always count on the recount
| happening. In contrast, Georgia's recount _did_ happen, so
| they _were_ able to gather evidence, and didn 't find
| any... so yes, of course that's a different thing entirely.
| tomp wrote:
| Won't baseless accusations of _no_ voter fraud undermine the
| confidence even more?
|
| After all, is there any evidence for voter fraud in Russia?
| bredren wrote:
| This is not what is happening. Time and time again the
| repeated phrase is there is no evidence of _widespread_ voter
| fraud.
| julienchastang wrote:
| Or "sufficient voter fraud that would change the outcome of
| an election".
| rtkwe wrote:
| Yeah, there's a tiny smattering of cases (the most
| memorable ones to me being Republican voters trying to
| counter supposed fraud with some fraud of their own) that
| get caught but nowhere near enough to impact elections.
| Much more prevalent though is intentional voter
| disenfranchisement keeping people from voting and
| gerrymandering.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Won't baseless accusations of no voter fraud undermine the
| confidence even more?
|
| > After all, is there any evidence for voter fraud in Russia?
|
| The accusations of there being no voter fraud in the 2020 US
| election fraud aren't baseless: all the verification checks
| have passed, and for that to happen _and_ fraud to have
| occurred would require a conspiracy of unbelievable scale and
| secrecy. Also, the claims that there is fraud are not just
| baseless, they 're _incoherent_.
|
| While Russia may make baseless claims their elections are
| fair, there's more than enough evidence to disbelieve them
| (like how they disqualify and murder their political
| opponents).
| [deleted]
| dragontamer wrote:
| Presumably, the issue is baseless accusations in general. It
| doesn't matter what side a baseless claim happens: its bad
| either way.
|
| Dominion Voting Systems must prove that Rudy Giuliani was
| making up information to succeed in this court case.
| Unfortunately, defamation is surprisingly hard to win in the
| USA (which is why the US's Tabloid media can get so far with
| so many claims).
|
| Dominion Voting Systems is not a public figure however, its a
| company. That... probably makes it easier to win this case.
|
| Still, if Dominion's lawyers think that this case is worth
| pursuing (despite the difficulty of defamation / libel /
| slander), that doesn't bode well for Rudy.
| adictator wrote:
| How would anyone know they are baseless unless a proper
| investigation is conducted independently? What about the
| thousands of sworn affidavits? Surely, ALL of them can't be
| lying.
| [deleted]
| not2b wrote:
| Of those affidavits that were brought to court, many of them
| were tossed for being hearsay (someone swore that they heard
| someone else say that a third party did something), or called
| out standard vote counting practices as being suspicious, or
| were otherwise irrelevant. In many cases Trump's people went
| to court saying "We're not alleging fraud" and instead tried
| to get rules changed to throw out votes in blue areas.
| Evidence of actual fraud wasn't brought to court. Yes, there
| was some voter fraud; both Pennsylvania and Georgia found two
| voters each (yes, 2) who cast someone else's ballot (a
| deceased parent in some cases). But to flip an election you'd
| need thousands of people committing this kind of felony.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Fact check: the count for PA currently stands at 3.
|
| https://www.citizensvoice.com/news/crime-
| emergencies/forty-f...
|
| https://www.phillyvoice.com/voter-fraud-pennsylvania-
| trump-e...
|
| https://www.dailylocal.com/news/chester-county-man-facing-
| tr...
| not2b wrote:
| Thanks for the correction, but it doesn't change my
| point: the amount of actual fraud was too small to make a
| difference by four orders of magnitude.
| Maarten88 wrote:
| On top of that the fraud seems to actually have been
| committed mostly by the side that is accusing the other
| side of it.
|
| Which makes sense, when you hear from your news sources
| that the other party is committing massive fraud, that
| gives some people an excuse to do so too.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Which was Trump's original intention for claiming the
| other side was committing voter fraud even before 2016,
| to encourage his supporters to do it "too" for him. And
| it worked.
| p49k wrote:
| I've read some of them. No one is necessary lying, but most
| of the testimony is of the format "I think I saw somebody
| acting in a way that I felt was incompetent or malicious,
| even thought I was an outsider with little knowledge of the
| process" or "I witnessed abuse regarding over- or
| undercounting of votes" -- claims which were later easily
| disproven by the hand counts.
|
| I see no reason why all of them can't be wrong (not
| necessarily intentionally lying).
| tedunangst wrote:
| Don't forget "somebody was wearing a lot of rhinestones."
| That one was probably true. Not sure what the relation was
| to election integrity, but it was in the binder.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| From my understanding 1) many of those affidavits were just
| hear say with little corroborating evidence, extreme claims
| "The US government is fundamentally illegitimate" requires
| more extreme evidence than "I heard a guy who said they were
| a poll watch saw things go weird"
|
| 2) and other witnesses wildly embellished their credibility,
| Joshua Merritt, aka "Spider" aka "Spyder" was listed as a
| military intelligence expert, while what is able to be
| verified is that he enlisted in the training program but
| failed to complete the entry level material.
|
| The arguments have been made, the evidence has been examined,
| to say /no/ investigation has occurred is willfully
| misinformed at this point.
|
| 1)https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2020/12/04/evi
| d...
|
| 2)https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/sidney-
| powell-...
| ardy42 wrote:
| > How would anyone know they are baseless unless a proper
| investigation is conducted independently? What about the
| thousands of sworn affidavits? Surely, ALL of them can't be
| lying.
|
| Proper investigations _were_ conducted, and no serious issues
| found. The lawsuits were laughed out of court, even by
| Republican judges.
|
| Its surely possible that all those "sworn affidavits" can be
| wrong in some way: AFAIK, they were either bogus, irrelevant,
| or from people who didn't understand what they were seeing
| because they hadn't bothered to familiarize themselves with
| the vote counting process before they became election
| observers.
|
| The more pertinent question is: how could anyone still
| believe those lawsuits could have merit at this point? The
| sad answer is: _disinformation works_.
| useerup wrote:
| Baseless means that there is no proof of the allegations.
| Dominion is under no obligation to prove the that the
| election was fair. Guiliani now have the opportunity through
| discovery to support his allegations, or at least the was in
| good faith. If he fails to do so he risk being on the hook
| for $1B+.
|
| It _is_ curious that of all his public allegations against
| Dominion, he _never_ asserted those in court. He is a lawyer
| and is aware of the consequences of asserting false
| accusations or frivolous suits in court. No doubt he will
| point to Sidney Powell and claim _he_ was in good faith.
|
| Most of the claims he made were pretty outlandish, and IMO he
| (especially as a lawyer) should now better. This is going to
| be interesting.
|
| He publicly claimed that the Dominion machines "switched
| votes" even after the hand-count in Georgia confirmed that
| the machine count had indeed been accurate.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Surely, ALL of them can 't be lying._
|
| Why not?
| snakeboy wrote:
| More likely is that most if not all of them saw something
| innocuous, but constant screaming about corruption from
| certain public figures colored their recollection a bit.
|
| It's like when you hear a muffled audio recording but it's
| incomprehensible, and then you're told by a headline, "Can
| you believe Mr. X just said Y?". Then you listen again, and
| voila, you interpret the audio as Y. You've been primed to
| hear Y, so your brain hears it.
|
| When you've been primed by all your anti-establishment
| media sources to see fraud, then you think back to that
| time 3 weeks ago when you thought you overheard two
| coworkers at the mail-sorting center talking about "post-
| dating the ballots". Well, maybe they didn't say "ballots"
| exactly... But it was "post-date the fourth", and surely
| they meant "November 4th", right? I mean election day was
| the 3rd, and they weren't trying to count late ballots,
| were they? But what else could they have meant? And they
| sure looked suspicious when I came over and interrupted
| them. I mean they didn't mention ballots again that whole
| conversation because I guess they were worried I would tell
| someone.
|
| Reading through some of the affidavits and watching the
| interviews gives the impression that these are well-
| intentioned folks who just wanted to report something
| without understanding the context, and they've been primed
| for fraud. Unfortunately, they get picked up by politicians
| and media figures who have a clear pro vote-rigging agenda,
| and get made a martyr for the cause by plastering their
| face all over OANN, Project VERITAS, etc. It's depressing
| to watch.
|
| Edit: For fun, here's a tweet demonstrating the audio-
| priming example you can try for yourself! https://twitter.c
| om/BrianRoemmele/status/1086436669413183488
| adictator wrote:
| Coz there is a significant risk of penalty, of jail time.
| That's what a sworn affidavit is, is it not?
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Where was this risk aversion during the storming of the
| Capitol on January 6th?
|
| I think what you say is true of most people, but it seems
| very clear that we have a group which doesn't behave like
| most people.
| onion2k wrote:
| All that means is that there are thousands of people
| willing to risk jail time if they're shown to have lied.
| It says nothing about whether they lied or not.
|
| For what it's worth I imagine many of them think they're
| telling the truth, or at least are honestly putting their
| name to something they've been told and believe. That
| also doesn't mean they're right though.
| tunesmith wrote:
| You can create a sworn affidavit that says you suspected
| someone did something evil. It's a true statement that
| doesn't prove someone did something evil.
| purchaceallsus wrote:
| Did you read the affidavits? They include statements of
| fact, not just "I felt it was wrong." They can therefore
| be disproven with material evidence. If they are
| disproven with material evidence then that person will go
| to jail.
| xphilter wrote:
| No there's not. Especially if a lot of folks do it. At
| most, a judge gives them a stern talking to. No federal
| judge will order real jail time.
| whatsmyusername wrote:
| Nice astroturf
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Yeah, right. And surely Rudy wasn't actually farting in court
| without wearing a mask. Or dripping black slime down his face
| beside a dildo store. Or putting his hands down his pants in
| a hotel room in the Borat movie.
| dalbasal wrote:
| In this age of postmodernism, post-truth, peek-facebook or
| whatever we're calling it... A "proper investigation" can't
| be determined to be proper unless an investigation of the
| investigation takes place.
|
| At least in terms of convincing "everyone" of anything, it's
| turtles all the way down.
|
| This lawsuit will be an investigation of sorts. If they
| aren't baseless, dominion can't win.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Perhaps a more pertinent question comes from the perspective
| of realpolitik.
|
| Which is more damaging to US political institutions, having
| an illegitimate president or admitting that the election was
| stolen?
|
| I'd wager an admission of election changing fraud would make
| it almost impossible to recover any trust in political
| institutions. What would be the next steps from admitting
| that the election was fraudulent?
|
| Given the above, I'm not sure it matters. Of course that
| scenario is still possible, if evidence is produced. The
| institutional incentives align towards keeping the results as
| is. Proceeding from there, what can be done to restore trust?
|
| *Disclaimer, please do not misread this as an assertion of
| evidence existing, not existing or the validity of it.
| legerdemain wrote:
| The plan was enacted over the weekend... Only you never saw
| it.
|
| Biden, his cabinet, and tons of both Dem and Republican
| senators and other officials were arrested. Proof of their
| vast crimes was shown. They were court martialed and found
| guilty.
|
| However, it was decided this was too much for the American
| people to accept. Overturning the election and showing the
| crimes of these politicians could lead to Civil War.
|
| So an agreement was reached: Biden and other deep state
| elements wI'll be allowed to move freely and serve their
| terms. President Trump would "concede" and leave office.
| But this is all for appearances.
|
| Behind the scenes, Donald J. Trump is still President. This
| plan, known as SHADOWPREZ, was seen as a last resort. But
| it worked.
|
| Anything that happens in the next 4 years is actually
| President Trumps doing.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| That scenario has potential to be developed in to an
| interesting novel or movie.
| flukus wrote:
| Now Trump is the deep state.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Was this just creative writing or are you saying that
| that line of thought is out there and some nutcases
| actually believe it?
| legerdemain wrote:
| I've seen it (i.e., first-hand) in private groups on
| Facebook.
| mbg721 wrote:
| We don't have realpolitik, we have an establishment
| building a giant razor-wire fence around itself and
| screaming that any objection is racism and treason.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Clearly the steps being taken are not restoring trust in
| political institutions.
| mbg721 wrote:
| As I think you've gathered, I'm coming from the "the
| trust is already gone" side.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I wasn't inclined to reflexively trust gov, even before
| this debacle. That's neither here nor there. I try to
| keep my bias out of it. Otherwise, someone from the
| opposing spectrum will take it as an invite for a useless
| argument.
|
| What steps can practically be taken to restore trust for
| the average person, who might not be as cynical as
| myself?
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Nothing at this point.
|
| Nixon killed any real trust in the 70s generation that
| raised the 90s kids, and Bush v. Gore, the war in Iraq,
| and Obama era drone strikes on US citizens without trial
| have killed any real trust in the 90s kids who raised the
| current generation. The current adult generation is
| having that killed by what is going on right now.
|
| There's been three generations of general distrust (if
| not outright cynical belief that the government is
| _always_ lying), and that's not going to come back any
| time soon. I'm not sure there is anything that you can do
| beyond radical transparency and time.
| mbg721 wrote:
| It's not going to happen anytime soon in the US, but the
| thing that will win people over is a genuine common
| philosophy of some kind. We've spent the last 50 years
| doing a weird washed-out half- Christianity, and now half
| of us want the old Christianity-based system back, and
| the other half wants a tech-humanism that is anathema to
| the first half.
|
| If either side is genuine about their beliefs, a first
| step is probably enforcing single-issue bills in
| Congress.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's not going to happen anytime soon in the US, but
| the thing that will win people over is a genuine common
| philosophy of some kind. We've spent the last 50 years
| doing a weird washed-out half- Christianity, and now half
| of us want the old Christianity back
|
| "Christianity" isn't a unifying philosophy; even more
| recently than 50 years ago, the most dedicated
| evangelical/fundamentalist Protestant Christians were
| campaigning against the single largest Christian
| denomination in the country (Catholicism) as vigorously
| as against non-Christians, and many of our key religious
| freedom rulings were a result of Christian or Christian-
| adjacent groups (Jehovah's Witnesses figure particularly
| prominently here) resisting impositions by more dominant
| Christian groups. Kennedy got much the same kind of
| attacks for being an (actual) Catholic as were directed
| at Obama for being (supposedly) a Muslim.
|
| And if the short history in America were not enough, look
| at the troubled history of Christian-Christian relations
| in Europe and the Near East.
| mbg721 wrote:
| That's fair, I'm just struggling to define what the prior
| American mythos actually was, and I think Jesus factors
| in there somewhere, in name. As a Catholic myself, I know
| well that actual religious belief isn't the main driver.
| Maybe I'm wrong and there never was an American mythos,
| but there's a palpable sense of change that isn't just
| outright racism.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That's fair, I'm just struggling to define what the
| prior American mythos actually was
|
| The problem I think is that you are starting from the
| assumption that America had a uniting mythos that only
| recently fell apart, rather than America having had deep,
| vicious internal divides throughout its entire history
| that were sometimes temporary subordinated to even
| stronger shared opposition to external forces.
| mbg721 wrote:
| It wasn't always _this vicious_ , or this pervasive in
| its viciousness, in my lifetime.
| ardy42 wrote:
| >> The problem I think is that you are starting from the
| assumption that America had a uniting mythos that only
| recently fell apart, rather than America having had deep,
| vicious internal divides throughout its entire history
| that were sometimes temporary subordinated to even
| stronger shared opposition to external forces.
|
| > It wasn't always this vicious, or this pervasive in its
| viciousness, in my lifetime.
|
| In our & our parents lifetimes, we had the "even stronger
| shared opposition to external forces" of Cold War
| opposition to the Soviet Union to keep these divisions in
| check.
|
| America's divides have been terribly vicious in the past
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War), and
| some of the current things that divide us even have their
| roots in that era.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > we had the "even stronger shared opposition to external
| forces" of Cold War opposition to the Soviet Union to
| keep these divisions in check.
|
| And even then, the Civil Rights and Anti-War and other
| internal conflicts of the 1950s-1970s weren't
| insignificant.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| As much crazy that's happened recently, I can almost believe
| all of them could be lying. It is "MY TEAM OR YOU SHOULD
| DIE!" for some of these wackadoodles.
| [deleted]
| mbg721 wrote:
| Dissent is only to be tolerated when it's politically
| convenient. Come on, man.
| polishTar wrote:
| Dominion will argue defamation in court which will require
| them to prove ALL of the following: 1) a false statement
| purporting to be fact; 2) communication of that statement to
| a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence;
| and 4) harm caused to Dominion.
|
| If Dominion can prove those things to the satisfaction of a
| judge and jury, they _should_ win. Our justice system is
| _supposed_ to deter people from breaking the law.
| not2b wrote:
| And they have an extra burden: Dominion will probably be
| ruled to be a public figure, meaning that they will also
| need to prove that either Giuliani knew the statements were
| false or he showed "reckless disregard of the truth". But I
| think they should be able to do that.
| bredren wrote:
| I get a sense that these threads are getting worked over with
| automation.
| yesdocs wrote:
| Dissent when it's politically convenient, is just dissent.
| arcticfox wrote:
| What Giuliani was doing wasn't dissent, it wasn't a
| difference of opinion or anything remotely similar. It was
| straight up lying. Yes, defamation should be chilled.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Good, then prosecute him for the actual crimes he
| committed.
| pwinnski wrote:
| That's _exactly_ what this is. It 's a lawsuit filed by
| the injured party, alleging defamation. Now a court will
| hear the evidence and (probably) find Giuliani guilty,
| because he very clearly engaged in defamation.
| mbg721 wrote:
| If it stands up in court without any goofy procedural
| arguments, I'm happy with it. That's what courts are for.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Good, then prosecute him for the actual crimes he
| committed.
|
| This is a tort that he actually committed, not a crime,
| but otherwise that's what is happening. Not every
| violation of law is a "crime".
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'm confused; you seem to be arguing two opposite
| positions. You say that a civil defamation lawsuit by
| Dominion is suppressing dissent, and that Giuliani should
| be _criminally_ prosecuted for unspecified crimes. You do
| realize that the latter has a much larger chilling
| effect, right? It 's not consistent to argue against a
| civil case for being too chilling, and then argue for a
| criminal case over the same conduct.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _You say that a civil defamation lawsuit by Dominion is
| suppressing dissent, and that Giuliani should be
| criminally prosecuted for unspecified crimes_
|
| In case someone thinks this is splitting hairs, I fully
| support Dominion suing Giuliani for his alleged
| defamation. I would be somewhat horrified at the Attorney
| General attempting to put him in jail for it, _ceteris
| paribus_.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Lying about a company generally isn't a crime (except in
| restricted circumstances; there are probably scenarios
| where it could be a securities law issue, say), but a
| company is absolutely able to take a civil suit against
| someone who maliciously lies about it.
| throwaway23242 wrote:
| the irony of the downvotes proving your point is tasty
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's a bit worrying that total lies about a conspiracy
| between Dominion and (very much dead) Hugo Chavez to rig an
| election for Joe Biden is what gets classified as "dissent"
| these days. I'd normally use a different, eight letter word
| to describe that.
|
| Defamatory statements draw lawsuits. Nothing terribly new or
| worrying about that.
| ardy42 wrote:
| >> Dissent is only to be tolerated when it's politically
| convenient. Come on, man.
|
| > It's a bit worrying that total lies about a conspiracy
| between Dominion and (very much dead) Hugo Chavez to rig an
| election for Joe Biden is what gets classified as "dissent"
| these days.
|
| I'm not sure if you can really even call this a
| "classification." It's more of a false equivalency, either
| made in bad faith or through some sloppy bit of emotional
| reasoning.
|
| I'm seeing _a lot_ of this kind of thing now (another
| similar example is
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25898393). It's like
| some people are experiencing certain generalized feelings,
| then applying charged words to what triggered those
| feelings without understanding _either_ the words they used
| or the thing they 're commenting on.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > I'm not sure if you can really even call this a
| "classification."
|
| Probably not, I'm mostly responding snarkily to how
| deeply conspiracy theories have embedded themselves into
| the body politic.
|
| More important is the idea that a well formed[0]
| defamation lawsuit is something that requires public
| attention and redress. Attempting to call this defamation
| lawsuit something that is suppressing dissent smacks of a
| hamfisted attempt to make this lawsuit into something
| bigger than it actually is. Giuliani and his ideological
| cohort made a bunch of defamatory statements about a
| company, and predictably that company is suing for
| defamation. There's nothing terribly surprising or
| concerning about that.
|
| 0 - Defamation lawsuits _can_ be used to suppress speech,
| of course. This is exactly why many states now have anti-
| SLAPP laws on the books. That however does not seem to be
| an issue in this case, as this lawsuit is at least well
| formed.
| LaMarseillaise wrote:
| Unfortunately, I think the numerous tangential and
| unsubstantiated comments in this very thread suggest that the
| strategy has been highly successful. While I imagine Dominion
| could win against Giuliani, he is only one person and this
| disinformation has been spread through many channels. I expect
| we will see it again.
|
| Edit: grammar.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| One of the things that makes this more complex is that we
| should be skeptical of any person, company or machine that
| handles election data and has the power to make any
| significant change to that data.
|
| So, I think the dissenters at least got the skepticism part
| right. The problem, of course, is that a healthy level of
| skepticism should only inform the investigation of facts, and
| then perhaps new legislation and oversight. Without the
| investigation, oversight or legislation... the skepticism is
| pointless.
|
| For example, it's unfortunate that gaming machines in Las
| Vegas have more oversight and regulations than voting
| machines. That doesn't necessarily there is a problem with
| voting machines, but it does mean we could do more to ensure
| there isn't a problem with them now or in the future.
| Dominion has not done anything to lose my trust, but when it
| comes our elections, we should have proper oversight over
| these machines (no matter who makes them since there are
| multiple suppliers for voting machines).
| simonh wrote:
| > Without the investigation, oversight or legislation...
| the skepticism is pointless.
|
| Which is the tell that Trump didn't believe his own claims
| of vote fraud. Bear in mind he pulled exactly the same
| stunt in 2016 claiming massive vote fraud but when he won
| never mentioned it again until 2020.
|
| If he'd actually believed there was vote fraud or a chance
| of it, he would have done something about it.
| Investigations, hearings, technical audits, best practices
| and standards. Statistical analysis to identify issues (as
| against the analyses that do happen that show insignificant
| fraud). He had 4 years to sort this out. You'd think it
| would be one if his top priorities.
|
| Of course none of that happened because the whole show is
| entirely performative. In fact doing anything about it
| would take his excuse away, because if he addressed vote
| security he couldn't blame vote security issues on anyone
| else.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Love it when corporations use lawsuits to chill speech
| tartoran wrote:
| It's their right to defend their reputation. If there is any
| proof against them let those come to light and if the
| machines are indeed not good let the company go belly up. But
| what if the allegations are lies? Shouldn't the originators
| of those lies take responsibility?
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Of course they should be able to sue if the can show actual
| damages, but then that's not chilling speech.
|
| I took GP meaning that they want corporations to shut down
| anything they don't like. That's typically what's meant by
| chilling speech.
| polishTar wrote:
| Laws against defamation chill defamation.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| They have a good shot at being able to successfully show
| actual damages here, so it sounds like you're onboard
| with these lawsuits.
| [deleted]
| dionian wrote:
| Shutting people up is going to do the opposite. We need to
| debunk their claims piece by piece to convince the people that
| are somehow convinced by the evidence
| jackson1442 wrote:
| You'd be surprised how few people are interested in evidence
| these days. More often than not, your Reuters/AP source will
| be shoved aside in favor of some page along the lines of
| reallycoolnews.blogspot.com.
|
| We've already seen this happen-when YouTube started putting
| labels on all COVID-19-related content, deniers were
| unsatisfied by the sources presented because they have been
| indoctrinated to believe nothing mainstream can be trusted.
| NDizzle wrote:
| What's your response to the activities highlighted in this
| 1m21s video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNM3K0cH2tc
|
| Non transparency. Bullies chasing out witnesses and poll
| watchers.
|
| Why?
| azinman2 wrote:
| There's absolutely zero context to any of it. That is the
| opposite of evidence.
| rm999 wrote:
| I usually avoid commenting on political stuff, but my advice
| is to please find a better source for information than Scott
| Adams. He's a smart guy, but he is a strong proponent of
| "persuasion", i.e. changing people's minds is more valuable
| to him than presenting the facts accurately. This video is a
| classic example of his persuasion style, which is to make
| sloppy claims with flimsy evidence simply to make his
| opponents spend more time thinking about those claims. I know
| on HN we can do better than that.
|
| In his own words: https://www.businessinsider.com/dilbert-
| creator-scott-adams-...
| NDizzle wrote:
| Are you saying that I should track down and link each video
| of each of those individual situations that happened? And
| put it in a post on HN to be downvoted exactly as much as
| the Scott Adams video?
|
| Pardon me for getting the exact same results for like
| 1/80th the amount of work.
|
| Go ahead and dismiss all of those videos because they are
| in a supercut featuring Scott Adams. You do you.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Yes, you absolutely should.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| It's either that or find more credible evidence. Scott
| Adams isn't credible, period. While that doesn't make him
| de facto wrong on any argument, it means you cannot
| expect the recipients of your message to put the work in
| (that you've chosen not to) to validate whether _this
| time_ he 's operating in good faith.
| unanswered wrote:
| You're not responding to the argument at all. Scott
| Adams' credibility is irrelevant. The video was shown for
| the segments of it depicting actual events as they
| happened, not for the segments featuring Adams.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Your original comment is flagged and I can't see it so
| did not watch the video.
|
| I believe my comment is relevant to the one I replied to:
| I do not trust Scott Adams to present his content with
| any integrity at all, and so sending me a video he
| clipped together to make a point is not what I'd consider
| "good evidence". He does not act in good faith, he works
| backwards from a conclusion. If Steven Miller made a
| similar video about immigration I wouldn't trust it
| either without an in-depth review of the sources he
| relied on. I do not mean for this to be some ad hominen
| policy, I am not saying Adams and Miller are by default
| wrong because of who they are, but they don't deserve
| anyone's trust.
|
| If I have missed some nuance because I couldn't watch the
| Adams video for myself then you have my apologies for
| this misunderstanding.
| tw04 wrote:
| It's absolutely relevant. Adams is taking snippets of
| videos completely out of context to try to tell a story.
| He's known to do this. And just watching the start of the
| video that's exactly what he's doing here.
|
| Why would anyone waste their time tracking down the
| original videos when they already know, out of the gate,
| that he's taken things out of context? That's a waste of
| everyone's time, and EXACTLY why he's doing what he's
| doing. He knows most people won't bother to fact check
| his lies.
|
| The correct course of action is to tell everyone what he
| does, and until he proves he's changed his stripes and
| starts acting in good faith, to ignore him.
| andrewprock wrote:
| I think he's saying that people here won't be "persuaded"
| by Scott Adams sourced information, as he is well known
| as a self-described purveyor of exaggerated and
| misleading information.
| weaksauce wrote:
| It's like linking to project veritas. If I wanted to see
| some highly out of context and edited video to fit a
| narrative there are plenty of those around and none of
| them are all that compelling
| rtkwe wrote:
| Well without any details on where these clips are coming from
| it's impossible to know what's happening or if it's already
| been addressed.
|
| A number of the clips though look like they're from the
| Detroit counting at the TMC Center where some Republican
| observers weren't allowed back in after they left because the
| room was at capacity because they'd been replaced by other
| Republican observers. At no point were there only Democratic
| observers or a significant imbalance, both parties had
| observers that weren't able to reenter!
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/10/fac.
| ..
| kreeben wrote:
| I'm sure that if you bring this to court they'll settle any
| disputes we might have about it.
| underseacables wrote:
| Why is it baseless to challenge voter fraud concerns? If
| anything this will chill future concerns and people will not
| speak up. It sounds like you don't want anyone to ever question
| a vote.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Why is it baseless to challenge voter fraud concerns? If
| anything this will chill future concerns and people will not
| speak up. It sounds like you don't want anyone to ever
| question a vote.
|
| For the same reason it's (probably) baseless for a coworker
| of yours to claim you've been embezzling millions from your
| employer for years. It's basically a false accusation.
| gspr wrote:
| Stop excusing the coupmakers.
| walkedaway wrote:
| Completely agree. Let's hold our politicians accountable.
|
| https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019...
| isbadawi wrote:
| These aren't accusations of voter (or election) fraud in the
| same sense as was being claimed for 2020. From your second
| link:
|
| > During the tour's stop Friday in Seattle, Clinton pointed
| to FBI Director Christopher Wray's warning last month that
| Russia continues to pose a "very significant
| counterintelligence threat" and that efforts to influence
| U.S. elections with "social media, fake news" and
| "propaganda" has "continued pretty much unabated."
| walkedaway wrote:
| Yes she claims the election was stolen. Her words.
|
| The Capital Hill attack was partially a result of unchecked
| claims from Dems and left-leaning media claiming Trump was
| an illegitimate President. Somehow people here think that's
| ok while Rudy/Trump's claims are not. Smh.
| throwaway10923 wrote:
| the double standard is real
|
| also the downvotes for not toeing the blue team line are
| strong
| isbadawi wrote:
| It's fine to take issue with charged language like the
| word "stolen", which can be interpreted in different
| ways; maybe you interpret that as "I won the vote count
| but the votes were changed", but it could also be
| reasonably interpreted as "I lost the vote count but I'm
| concerned people were influenced to vote that way through
| nefarious means".
|
| I think there is a reasonable distinction between that
| statement and the specific claims of fraud we have been
| seeing for the last few months.
| [deleted]
| eplanit wrote:
| Yes, it's baseless allegations of collusion with Russia that we
| accept as the reason for undermining confidence in our
| democracy.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Subject makes it sound like TD bank is suing him
| perardi wrote:
| The US audience is not going to connect that "TD Bank" =
| "Toronto Dominion Bank".
| drogorbrn wrote:
| Not relevant to this topic, TD bank is one of the worst banking
| institution I have dealt with. Reading about them gives me
| nightmares.
| woofcat wrote:
| Odd, I find they're the best. Hold $5k in your chequing
| account and _everything_ is free! Even got myself a safe
| deposit box.
|
| BMO has something similar but it's $6,000. The rest (last
| time I checked) didn't really offer something like that.
| r00fus wrote:
| Honestly, who uses a safe deposit box these days? And what
| would one use it for?
| woofcat wrote:
| Any important paperwork, or valuables you want held
| secure?
|
| I have some bars of precious metals, and contracts etc.
| r00fus wrote:
| Guess I'm surprised at having a decent personal net worth
| but nothing irreplaceable other than personal mementos.
| woofcat wrote:
| Wills, marriage certificates, birth certificates, etc
| etc. All replaceable sure, however you almost never need
| to use them and if your home burns down you're going to
| hate that extra pain in the ass after the fact.
|
| I'm sure I could avoid using one, for instance getting a
| fire safe. However since the bank offers it for free, why
| not use it?
|
| Also, you have the option of offsite storage for any
| media backups. There is always the "Cloud" however
| sometimes it's nice to know your wedding photos are in a
| secure location.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Honestly, who uses a safe deposit box these days? And
| what would one use it for?
|
| Offsite storage of small, highly value items. Important
| documents especially (e.g.,.duplicate official copies of
| birth certificates and similar documents as offsite
| backup, because getting them from the source can be time
| consuming, and present chicken and egg problems.)
| mkipper wrote:
| They might be referring to the American division. From a
| quick glance, it seems like there isn't much in common
| between the two, including the perks you mentioned (e.g.
| the minimum checking balance only waives the checking
| account fee, but doesn't waive a premium credit card fee,
| provide a safety deposit box, etc).
| EricMausler wrote:
| I use TD and have never had a bad experience. Who do you bank
| with now? What made you switch?
| drogorbrn wrote:
| boa and chase. neither is great. perhaps I need to look at
| web only banks
| the_drunkard wrote:
| I think this is a good thing, hopefully it will bring to light
| any flaws that may exist in Dominion voting systems while testing
| whether any of these grandiose claims hold up to scrutiny.
|
| And folks, let's not act like this is the first time voting
| systems have been scrutinized.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Rudy has a YouTube channel, you can hear him make his allegations
| and judge if it amounts to defamation. Most of them seem to be
| carefully phrased.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/RudyWGiuliani/videos
|
| Of all the claims that stuck out to me is the suitcase video,
| since it time corresponds with a one sided spike of votes.
| unanswered wrote:
| I wish someone would honestly respond to the suitcase video,
| but I haven't seen any attempted defense of it yet. I would
| really prefer _not_ to believe Giuliani, and yet that video is
| pretty damn hard to get around.
|
| None of it matters, of course, because realpolitik, and the
| biggest sin of the viking cosplayers was believing that any of
| this evidence matters.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| _> I haven't seen any attempted defense of it yet_
|
| Ok but did you look?
|
| https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/georgia-election-
| officia...
| rglover wrote:
| Give him a call:
| https://twitter.com/rglover/status/1339311748726349824
|
| Ralph was in charge at State Farm Arena when those videos
| were filmed.
|
| Edit: yes, I called him and we spoke back in December for
| about 30-45 minutes. I originally called about the barriers
| blocking observers during the recount and then asked about
| the suitcases as well.
| krick wrote:
| That's a lot of footage. Can you point to some more specific
| example of these "carefully phrased allegations" to check out,
| if I'm mildly curious, but not _that_ interested to spend much
| time investigating?
| trhway wrote:
| With DVS being SolarWinds client who needs the suitcases :)
| rpiguyshy wrote:
| before donald trump was ever in office, i always believed that
| these voting machines are complete bullshit. our entire voting
| system is bullshit. and it would be easy to fix. these machines
| have been shown to be massively flawed and vulnerable to
| hacking/tinkering. again, this was my opinion _before_ donald
| trump was elected.
| david927 wrote:
| Here's a John Oliver special from a year ago that will terrify
| you:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0
| tartoran wrote:
| What are these based on? Are these just opinions?
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Voter machines being unreliable has seemed to be the
| prevailing opinion in hacker news and similar circles until
| now. Are they suddenly all okay because Giuliani has spread
| bs about them?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| They are as secure as they were before. But the lies are
| still lies.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Voting machines without a paper trail have been deemed
| unreliable, and still should be deemed unreliable. These
| machines are used to generate an authoritative paper
| ballot, which is exactly what critics have demanded.
|
| A prevailing opinion about apples doesn't apply to oranges.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I don't see the point of a voting machine with a paper
| trail. You get preliminary statistics a bit faster and
| you get people used to the idea of voting machines.
| sct202 wrote:
| If someone is going to manipulate the results, they now
| have to change both the paper results and the electronic
| results instead of just one or the other.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Then I suppose it's a good thing you aren't making
| decisions about voting machines!
|
| Instead of thinking of them as "voting machines with a
| paper trail," think of them as "reliable, trustworthy
| paper ballots that are made clean and uniform using a
| machine."
|
| The point is that the output is a paper ballot which can
| be (and often is) hand-counted for auditing and
| verification purposes. Paper ballots rule.
| dboreham wrote:
| The paper emulates a blockchain.
| throwaway23242 wrote:
| lots of dodgyness. ppl's judgement clouded by orange man bad.
|
| why does a municipal voting machine need a weighted race
| function?
|
| how is chain of custody maintained re usb keys?
|
| why are ballot images not being retained (happened in
| massachusetts r senate primary)
|
| why do they run on windows 10? lol
| duxup wrote:
| Does that have something to do with the article / lawsuit
| though?
|
| The lawsuit is about claims that are straight BS...
| [deleted]
| worldsayshi wrote:
| In a climate such as this it feels incredibly hard to get a
| nuanced understanding of the reliability of voting machines.
| That feels very problematic.
| corey_moncure wrote:
| I was a heavy Slashdot user before the takeover, and now Hacker
| News fills the hole in my browsing that Slashdot left. If
| you're like me, you'll remember the many articles about the
| vulnerability of Diebold voting machines. This has always been
| a concern, since at least the early '00s or before. I guess
| people have a very selective amnesia.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The original Diebold machines, at least, were purely
| electronic; they did _not_ leave an auditable paper trail
| like the Dominion machines do. So we 've fortunately learned
| a lot in the intervening decades and have fixed the glaring
| security flaws.
| tgb wrote:
| Modern machines differ from old ones is a very significant
| way: they give you a paper ballot that you - the voter - can
| verify before submitting.
| mountainboy wrote:
| I am not an expert but what I've read is that in the
| Dominion system, when a Ballot Marking Device is used, it
| generates a QR code representing the vote in addition to
| the human readable ballot. Next, the ballot reader machine
| reads the QR code, not the human readable portion.
|
| Assuming this is true, it would be simple to modify the
| printing software such that the QR code vote is different
| from the human readable vote.
|
| A recount, by running the paper ballots through the machine
| again, would come up with the same result as the first
| time.
|
| The only way to catch it would be to hand-count the paper
| ballots and compare the results to the machine counted
| votes.
|
| Really though, the QR code should be eliminated, so that
| the voter is able to personally verify what the machine
| will actually read.
| covidthrow wrote:
| And how many people do you think review that paper?
|
| Probably as many as review their grocery store receipts,
| I'd guess. Which is to say, practically none.
| wyldfire wrote:
| How would the machine predict which voters to deceive? I
| reviewed my printed ballot before submitting it. I'd
| guess it is probably more than "practically none". If
| 0.1% of voters did this, it would be 159633 ballots
| reviewed. If the tainted machines consistently changed
| these ballots to the same presidential candidate, ~80,000
| voters would have had an opportunity to detect a
| dishonest voting machine. What ratio of votes would need
| to change in order to change the outcome? And what ratio
| would the bad actors predict was necessary in advance of
| the election?
|
| But regardless of the above -- the design change to
| include printed ballots was a big improvement in security
| and voter confidence in the election.
| mountainboy wrote:
| Don't need to. The reading machines read a QR code
| generated by the ballot-marking-device. Or so I've seen
| experts testify.
|
| The QR code could mis-match the printed ballot on say 5%
| of the ballots and nobody would notice a thing.
|
| Need a recount? Ok, just run em through again, and
| they'll read the same (wrong) votes again, no problem.
|
| Only a hand count of the paper ballots would catch the
| mis-match.
|
| Did that actually happen? I don't know. But if the
| machines are truly reading a QR code, that seems a
| glaring flaw regardless.
| kingnothing wrote:
| Probably everyone. I voted on a Dominion machine this
| year. It prints out a full size piece of paper on thick
| stock with big font saying who you're voting for. You
| then have to carry that piece of paper to the ballot
| counting machine and stand in line for a minute before
| it's your turn to put your vote in the counter. The piece
| of paper isn't a receipt, it's your actual ballot. In the
| case of the elections this year, all of those were
| manually hand counted as well as being electronically
| counted and the counts were identical.
| mountainboy wrote:
| Did you notice if the ballot had a QR code on it? Did you
| scan the QR code, decipher its data structure and verify
| it matches your voting intent?
|
| Because according to what I saw presented in hearings,
| the reading machines actually read the QR code made by
| ballot-marking-device, not the human readable portion of
| the ballot.
|
| If true, that seems an obvious design flaw (to be nice)
| right there.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Dominion voting machines use human-readable printed ballots as
| a backup auditing mechanism. In all of the disputed states
| these paper ballots were hand counted (sometimes multiple
| times) and the original electronically reported results were
| confirmed.
|
| So how are these voting machines complete bullshit exactly?
| What do you think the mechanism of attack is, and do you have
| any sources other than just your speculation?
| chaganated wrote:
| They run on MS Windows, and an assorted pile of shitware a
| mile deep. Bullshit passed through an HP LaserJet is still
| bullshit.
|
| And why on earth does a voting machine require OggVorbis?
|
| https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/voting_system/files/.
| ..
| covidthrow wrote:
| Possibly for accessibility features for the blind?
| chaganated wrote:
| Braille is simpler, and does not require thousands of
| lines of code, which could obscure all sorts of malicious
| payload.
|
| I have a bridge to sell to anyone who thinks Dominion has
| actually audited any of these external dependencies.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Braille is also, famously, very expensive as a computer
| interface relative to audio (e.g.
| https://www.boundlessat.com/Blindness/Braille-
| Displays/Brail... ), plus not as many people can use it
| as can use audio.
| chaganated wrote:
| Why must everything involve the computer? It was on
| _paper_ when I was a kid, didn 't require an army of six-
| figure salaries, and things seemed to go far more
| smoothly.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| And it's _still_ on paper, just now with some electronic
| augmentation that makes vote counting instant and lowers
| the error rate.
|
| Do you not remember how problematic the purely paper
| voting systems were? How many errors were made in the
| voting and the counts and how _long_ it took to get the
| final results in close elections? Florida 2000 is a
| famous, widely-known example. The computers are clearly
| better.
| chaganated wrote:
| So, the people who can't get hole-punching and ballot
| layout right are going to "fix" things with two
| programming languages, three databases, and a dozen or so
| support libraries?
|
| Also, Florida 2000 is a strange example, considering the
| present drama. We've only gone from a simple controversy
| to a more complex one.
|
| Per Bruce Schneier:
|
| > _If you think technology can solve your security
| problems, then you don 't understand the problems, and
| you don't understand the technology._
| covidthrow wrote:
| If I give you $100 to put in my bank account, and you print
| off your own receipt that my $100 made it into the account,
| what exactly does that prove?
|
| Now let's pretend you don't even _give_ me that receipt, but
| you just keep it for your own accounting. I later find my
| $100 isn 't in my account. But hey, you have a receipt you
| printed that says you put it in my account.
|
| If you're honest, this system works. If I can't trust you,
| then the receipt is meaningless.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| This contrived scenario has almost nothing to do with how
| Dominion voting machines (and the verification audits
| therein) actually work.
| [deleted]
| lovecg wrote:
| If you then compare the total in your bank account to the
| sum of the receipts and it matches, then all is good.
| darkfirefly wrote:
| https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2027/voting-village-
| repor...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| This has the actual data for the hand recount.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/19/us/elections/.
| ..
|
| In Floyd county more than 2,000 votes switched sides out of
| roughly 40,000 votes. So it now has a real world demonstrated
| error rate of 0.5% which is not insignificant. For example, I
| would not trust a calculator with a 0.5% error to do my
| taxes. I wouldn't even us it on an exam.
| spankalee wrote:
| No votes switched sides. Missing votes were added to both
| sides because of missing memory cards, or because:
|
| > Floyd County officials discovered about 2,400 ballots
| that election workers neglected to rescan after a scanner
| failed and results could not be retrieved from memory
| cards. Officials attributed the error to "gross
| incompetence" on the part of the county's elections
| director.
| vernie wrote:
| It's too bad that you're using a brand new account and there's
| no evidence of you holding this position before 2017.
| ncallaway wrote:
| The good news is election security researchers mostly agree
| with you.
|
| The prevailing opinion of election security professionals is
| that State election systems should be designed assuming the
| machines are insecure and the process should be tolerant to
| that fault.
|
| That's why many states that use electronic voting or tabulation
| produce a voter verifiable paper trail. That means, when you're
| done voting the machine gives the voter a piece of paper that
| has their votes on it. The voter can check the paper to ensure
| it matches their votes, then deposits the paper record like a
| ballot.
|
| State's can then use Risk Limiting Audits to verify a necessary
| amount of randomly sampled ballots to ensure that the
| electronic count matches the voter verifiable paper ballots.
|
| So, if your concern is that the GA election was overturned by
| electronic tampering you would need to explain why the voter
| verifiable paper trail _extremely closely_ matched the
| electronic tabulation.
|
| This is a long-winded way of saying I agree with you. There are
| some states that use electronic voting or tabulation without a
| voter-verifiable paper trail and risk limiting audits.
| Fortunately, none of those states were "disputed" in this
| election. But those states should absolutely switch to these
| kinds of systems.
| supergirl wrote:
| checking a random sample is not enough for the US election
| system. in a few states it's decided by a few thousand votes
| [deleted]
| ncallaway wrote:
| > checking a random sample is not enough
|
| You can't say that without saying how large the sample is.
| Certainly, if the random sample size is "100% of all
| ballots" it would be enough.
|
| Risk Limiting Audits take that into account. There's a
| rigorously backed formula for determining how big the
| sample size needs to be based on the margin of victory. The
| closer the election, the more ballots are included in the
| sample.
|
| In fact, you're right that a _very_ narrow margin requires
| a random sample that ends up being very nearly or actually
| all votes.
|
| Georgia is a perfect example of this. Georgia applied a
| Risk Limiting Audit to the Presidential Election. Because
| the margin was so close, the RLA required them to sample
| every single ballot cast. The first "complete hand recount"
| of Georgia was actually a Risk Limiting Audit.
|
| Here is the GA SOS reporting out the results of that first
| statewide hand recount: https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/electi
| ons/historic_first_statew...
| unanswered wrote:
| Something that struck me about the Arizona hand recount
| numbers: most of the reporting precincts(? - I use this
| term in a general sense, I don't remember how the numbers
| were grouped) reported that hand counts in batches of
| about 1000 votes showed an accuracy of about 99%, i.e.,
| on the order of 5-10 ballots incorrectly counted (again,
| rough numbers from memory). But then some of the
| precincts reported "nope, we found 100% accuracy; no
| discrepancies", for the same batch sizes. That struck me
| as odd. There wasn't a spectrum where 0-10 or even 0-20
| were the outliers; it was bimodal around 5-10 and 0. Or
| whatever the actual numbers were, my point is bimodality
| with a mode at 0. That was odd.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think it's relatively common for errors caused by
| engineering processes to exhibit a pattern that isn't
| evenly distributed.
|
| As a made up example: maybe some precincts had scanners
| that worked 100% perfectly, and some had units that
| occasionally mis-scanned with a rhythm.
| nostromo wrote:
| The attack vector isn't the tabulation, it's the mail-in
| ballot sleeves.
|
| The identity of the voter is on the outer envelope which is
| separated from the ballot and destroyed after their signature
| is checked. An attacker could insert manufactured ballots to
| be tabulated after this process and there would be no way to
| know if they are legitimate or not - they're anonymous now
| too so you can't check with the voter and the voter can't
| verify their vote.
|
| You can recount the ballots all you want if this attack
| occurred, because the fake and real ballots would be
| indistinguishable and unauditable.
| ncallaway wrote:
| The exact same criticism can be applied to regular in-
| person voting.
|
| It's a criticism of the concept of anonymous ballots, not
| actually a criticism of mail in voting.
| nostromo wrote:
| There are proposals on how to make the system more secure
| to this attack without eliminating anonymity. However I
| believe they would all eliminate same day registration.
| pupdogg wrote:
| Maybe you have a real opportunity here to offer consultation
| services to Giuliani. Seriously!
| kreeben wrote:
| >> these machines have been shown to be massively flawed
|
| That statement goes against everything I've read about voting
| in the U.S.A. However, I don't think I have actually read
| everything. What did you read? Is there a link that I can
| follow?
| covidthrow wrote:
| And if Trump had won, I suspect most of these comments would be
| critical of the absolutely sub-par security of our voting
| infrastructure.
|
| But tribalism still rules, so lots of praise abounds about how
| well things went. Mostly because their opponent lost.
|
| Frankly, we need publicly auditable records. For some reason we
| can request practically any non-classified data from the
| government... but not fine grained, anonymous voting data.
|
| That nobody seems to think this is a problem is... well, not
| shocking. But when the party that Hacker News largely opposes
| wins in the future, I bet (hope) there will be calls to improve
| our infrastructure.
| chaganated wrote:
| They used mechanical voting machines when I was a kid, and I
| don't recall elections ever being this "buggy." Damn nerds.
| covidthrow wrote:
| For a bunch of people who raise hell about the dangers of
| using SMS for 2FA, I'm a little surprised at the cavalier
| dismissal of serious institutional and technological
| shortcomings in one of the most mission critical systems in
| the world.
|
| I think maybe that's psychological bias at play and not, say,
| actual affirmation that the system is resilient, let alone
| adequate. The number of downvotes I've gotten without a
| single reply is quite suggestive of this.
|
| Seriously disappointed in this community of some of the most
| enlightened technical and scientific minds in the world,
| right now...
| lokar wrote:
| I had that view for the older direct recording systems with no
| paper trail.
|
| But these seem to record on each machine for a quick count the
| night of, but then also produce a paper ballot for an audit.
| Much better. It would be even better if the paper ballot was
| easy for the voter to quickly validate.
|
| But as long as the machine is really just helping you mark a
| paper ballot, and it's the paper ballot that is "official" end
| the end, it seems much safer.
| mountainboy wrote:
| Except I've seen witnesses testify that on at least some
| systems, there is a non human readable QR code generated by
| the ballot-marking-device and it is the QR code that is
| actually read.
|
| Hopefully you can see the problem with that...
| cwkoss wrote:
| I've heard reports of cronyism and incompetence around Georgia's
| electronic voting going back several years (don't remember if
| Dominion was the company used back then). Slightly worried this
| precedent could not just be used against crackpots, but also
| legitimate voting security researchers and watchdogs.
| JakeTheAndroid wrote:
| Would security researchers or watchdogs go around and say
| things publicly without evidence to defend their claims?
| Because thats what opened up Rudy for this lawsuit. He made
| unsubstantiated claims that possibly damaged the reputation of
| the company.
|
| How would this be used against researchers or watchdogs in your
| opinion?
| cwkoss wrote:
| Voting Machine Company: "Our machines are 100% secure. The
| security consultant we paid to tell us that agrees."
|
| Researcher: "Your machines have USB ports exposed, can flash
| firmware, connected to the internet, don't produce an
| auditable paper trail, and I hacked into a machine
| personally. 100% secure is demonstrably false."
|
| Voting Machine Company: "Well, a third party verified that it
| is 100% secure so we're going to sue you (and probably not
| win) but it will cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of
| dollars to defend, unless you cease and desist."
| charonn0 wrote:
| Guiliani didn't say any of those things.
| charonn0 wrote:
| Legitimate researchers and watchdogs would produce their
| research and evidence to back up their claims.
|
| That is what makes them legitimate.
| yalogin wrote:
| Unfortunately this is not a good thing for Dominion in the long
| term. The cult made up lies and successfully convinced a large
| population its real and the whole party brass is in on the scam.
| However this is a terrible situation for Dominion.
|
| They are forced to sue to prove they are not in the wrong,
| however that will spun as choosing sides and they could be kicked
| out when the contract ends. For the cult, this company and the
| service they provide is just another cog that should be
| controlled and they will try to get some enabler in there.
| tptacek wrote:
| There is no good thing for Dominion in the long term. They
| have, in fact, suffered irreparable damage. The lawsuits here
| are not performative.
| patwolfe wrote:
| Yeah, isn't the reason they are suing that the lawsuits have
| caused long-term damage... not sure what the above poster was
| getting at with their comment.
| throwaway23242 wrote:
| was their headquarters in toronto really next door to a soros
| outfit's officespace?
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I mean why do you use voting machines anyway? Manual voting is
| perfectly adequate and much more transparent and
| understandable.
|
| If this leads to voting machines being pulled then at least
| something good came out of it?
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