Dominion Voting Systems sues pro-Trump lawyer, seeking more than $1.3B | Hacker News Reader

Dominion Voting Systems sues pro-Trump lawyer, seeking more than $1.3B

washingtonpost.com

59 pointssahin111 comments

I'm really struggling to have empathy with people who blame Dominion for changing votes in the 2020 General Election.

There was a hand recount in Georgia, was there not? And the numbers agreed with what had been counted by Dominion?

If you accept that the hand recount matched (within a reasonable margin of error) the count from the Dominion machines, what exactly is the rest of their objection or concern?

Honestly, can someone explain this to me?

The simplest explanation is the right one. The losing party does not accept their loss and will promote any idea that can invalidate the outcome. The judgement of dozens of court cases has been that none of these ideas have any merit.

> The simplest explanation is the right one. [...]

Occam's actual razor is that the simplest explanation of competing theories is most likely the right one.

Occam's actual razor is Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate ("Never posit plurality without necessity").

Touché, mea culpa, et alia!

The story I heard is that most of these lawsuits are not being judged as BS on the merits (though some have). The majority are being thrown out using a variety of legal doctrines such as laches or standing. This is not necessarily unusual as court proceedings go, but the unfortunate side effect of doing this is that the ardent faithful will now have a lost-cause narrative to fall back on when everything else has been mowed clear.

I would prefer more of these cases to actually be tried so that they can be obliterated on the merits. Each case that is thrown out on a technicality is another tiny lilypad to stand on, and each case that is actually refuted is the removal of that pad.

For Georgia, provided all the totals were a perfect match between initially published machine counts and hand counts, and the hand count methodology was transparent and trustworthy, this is enough to satisfy me. The only other attack vector I can think of would be smuggling in pre-filled ballots, and that's likely unfalsifiable with current election procedures (which I'd like to see improved, but until then we have to live with it).

As for why things haven't settled overall, maybe other states don't follow the same procedures as Georgia. Did all disputed states perform hand counts?

Georgia has a poll book. Do you know what a poll book is, and how it works? When a ballot is received, the name of the person is entered into a poll book. Therefore, when you see a poll book and a pile of ballots, you can check that the counts are the same. Entering data into the poll book is therefore one of the most critical parts of an election, and is the part that is critically observed by election watchers.

You cannot merely smuggle in pre-filled ballots, as the ballot counts would not match the poll book counts.

You would also need to explain how poll books were falsely updated.

If someone smuggled in fake ballots, AND somehow managed to falsify the poll book, it would be possible to use the poll book to ASK people if they voted. You could then find people who say they did not vote, but there is a record of them voting.

It is therefore trivially falsifiable with current election procedures.

Or is there something you think I'm missing?

Here is the critical moment where the woman in Michigan argues with a Republican, claiming without evidence that the poll book is off, when it was literally trivial to check it. (Look for the tweet with "Holy smokes the sequel is even better!")

https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1334311448340795396

A poll book is typically used at a polling location. However, with absentee ballots, it works a little differently. In previous elections, to get an absentee ballot, you needed to request one, which had the equivalent effect to a poll book in that there was a record or paper trail that you were voting absentee. However, in many states in the 2020 election, no such request for an absentee ballot was required. In fact, some states just mailed you an absentee ballot without having to request one. This is where the poll book methodology you laid out breaks down. Suddenly your poll book is the entire voter roll.

The envelope has a name and signature.

The ballot is inside the envelope.

You verify the name is a valid voter, and you keep the envelope.

The envelope, with the signature on it, becomes the poll book.

1) Someone smuggles in completed ballots. There will not be any envelopes, and their illegal acts will be detectable.

2) Someone smuggles in completed ballots and fake envelopes. The name on the envelope can be compared to voter registrations, and you can go to a voter and ask if they in fact voted. Then the illegal acts will be detectable.

What am I missing?

The first thing that happens is the ballot is separated from the envelope. This is to protect the secrecy of the voter's choice. What is supposed to happen is that the signature on the envelope is matched with one on file (usually with the DMV or equivalent), but this rule was relaxed in Georgia in March 2020. This is the only point in the process where a mailed in absentee ballot can be verified. After this point it becomes a "naked ballot" and is not tied to the voter's identity [0]

So to summarize: the only verification method was a name and a signature and the signature verification was rendered useless as a result of relaxed rule changes. Not that a signature verification is a reliable verification method, but this means the only verification mechanism in place other than a voter registration lookup was effectively removed. This means you could have voted absentee on someone else's behalf as long as a) you knew their name and that they were a registered voter, and b) could scribble on an envelope.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/technology/georgia-recoun...

The envelope is retained. There was an audit performed on the signatures. They can count the number of envelopes vs the number of ballots. They can AND DID contact people to see if they voted. And most importantly, they can ensure one person didn't vote twice.

Inventing a ballot, forging a signature, and making sure you didn't vote for someone else who would later vote themselves... 11,800 times?

I'm sorry, but you need to provide evidence for that happening. Or evidence of how it COULD happen.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-warn...

Someone tested this ironclad verification process and their signature was accepted eight times. [0]

[0]: https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/victor...

1) that's a different process, not the process followed for the specific signature audit

2) even that casual process caught 11% of the fraud

3) where is evidence of ANY sizable signature fraud? Your article indicates we should have caught about 11% of it, even without the more strict signature audit.

4) you still haven't answered how you find 11,800 people whose signatures you can fake, and be sure they won't ALSO vote at a later date, which would be detected.

We done yet?

No?

Prove it in court.

Or just accept the outcome of this election, and get started trying to improve security for the next election.

> When a ballot is received, the name of the person is entered into a poll book. Therefore, when you see a poll book and a pile of ballots, you can check that the counts are the same. Entering data into the poll book is therefore one of the most critical parts of an election, and is the part that is critically observed by election watchers. You cannot merely smuggle in pre-filled ballots, as the ballot counts would not match the poll book counts.

"When a ballot is received, the name of the person is entered into a poll book."

I'm not familiar with the exact mechanics of this. From where does the ballot originate, where/how is the ballot "received", and what is the procedure for entering it into the poll book?

And, is this process identical (in design, and confirmed practice) for all states and polling stations?

> You would also need to explain how poll books were falsely updated.

Technically, I do not. Fraud (some fraud, not necessarily massive fraud) occurred in physical reality, or it did not. My personal opinion on the matter, or lack of an explanation, is orthogonal to events that occurred in physical reality. The burden of evidence is on the one who asserts the claim. And, that which occurred in physical; reality, is that which occurred, regardless of whether we have "proof" of it. Reality itself, and human measurements/opinions/"facts" about reality, are distinct entities. Related, but different.

> If someone smuggled in fake ballots, AND somehow managed to falsify the poll book, it would be possible to use the poll book to ASK people if they voted.

It may be "possible", but is it practical? How difficult would it be? Is the current approach perfectly optimal, or could it be improved?

> You could then find people who say they did not vote, but there is a record of them voting.

We "could", but would we? Did we spot check any ballots? How much evidence do we have that demonstrates or suggests that there precisely zero anomalies anywhere in the system (and how hard did we look)?

> It is therefore trivially falsifiable with current election procedures.

Only if your premises are flawless.

> Or is there something you think I'm missing?

The above questions. Also, it's probably worth pointing out that neither of us (or a combination of us) are guaranteed to have 100% comprehensive knowledge of all possible points of failure.

> Here is the critical moment where the woman in Michigan argues with a Republican, claiming without evidence that the poll book is off, when it was literally trivial to check it. (Look for the tweet with "Holy smokes the sequel is even better!")

Do any comprehensive conclusions logically (and inevitably) follow from this event, or might the significance of it be more related to the notion of rhetorical/heuristic influence?

I have a bit of an issue with the manner in which we approach this whole situation from an educational perspective. As a society, we've surely spent many tens or hundreds of person-hours participating in meme wars about this topic. If this sort of non-productive (and socially destructive) behavior was going on anywhere we worked, I would expect that someone was assemble a FAQ or Wiki of some sort that laid out the details - fully comprehensive, and fully accurate (across all states), in a format that is approachable by all employees.

Does such a resource exist for the election process?

It's honestly worth going through election monitoring training in your state to find the answers to these questions.

> And, is this process identical (in design, and confirmed practice) for all states

No, of course not. The elections are run, independently, by each State. By design, the rules are different. Because we are a Federal government, made of multiple States. This is on purpose.

> Reality itself, and human measurements/opinions/"facts" about reality, are distinct entities. Related, but different.

Yes, and it is only rational to have beliefs based on evidence. And we live in a system of laws expressing how that evidence is to be gathered, evaluated, and decided upon.

This week, a ton of people rejected that process, because they FEEL like they can't trust it, proposing nothing to replace it instead.

> It may be "possible", but is it practical?

Voting irregularities are investigated, yes.

> Is the current approach perfectly optimal, or could it be improved?

Perfect is the enemy of good.

And we're discussing THIS election. I welcome a different discussion about improving the process for future elections.

> Did we spot check any ballots?

Yes. Please inform yourself. The information is available.

> How much evidence do we have that demonstrates or suggests that there precisely zero anomalies anywhere in the system

You can't prove a negative. Literally, you cannot.

We mitigate the risks. We look for evidence of wrong-doing. And when we can't find it, we look harder. We think about designing a process that is as good as possible, we enact laws, and we move on.

> Only if your premises are flawless.

I propose a method to gather evidence and evaluate it. A system of laws. We have that. We do that. It is not flawless. It is what we have. Improving that system by proposing better processes and laws is wonderful. Rejecting that process by violently storming the Capitol building, smearing feces on the wall, and murdering a police officer, is not wonderful.

> The above questions.

I don't think you asked any interesting questions. You asked questions that indicate you have not invested much time in researching them, and you asked epistemological questions. Neither were very constructive, for the current election, in my opinion.

> Also, it's probably worth pointing out that neither of us (or a combination of us) are guaranteed to have 100% comprehensive knowledge of all possible points of failure.

I don't propose that I do. I propose that we have a system of laws, and courts, and checks and balances, and a Fourth Estate (the media), to helps us evaluate possible points of failure and prosecute wrong-doing.

> Do any comprehensive conclusions logically (and inevitably) follow from this event,

She doesn't know what she's talking about. That is a logical conclusion.

> I would expect that someone was assemble a FAQ or Wiki of some sort that laid out the details

There are literally hundreds of books, hundreds of web pages, hundreds of explanations, millions of hours of explanation.

Here's a 31 minute long video from Georgia alone:

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/04/953321408/georgia-election-of...

> It's honestly worth going through election monitoring training in your state to find the answers to these questions.

If that was the path one had to take to learn such things at your work, would you be as cool as a cucumber with it as you are with the running of your countries sacred democracy?

>> And, is this process identical (in design, and confirmed practice) for all states

> No, of course not. The elections are run, independently, by each State. By design, the rules are different. Because we are a Federal government, made of multiple States. This is on purpose.

Is it also on purpose that one (presumably) has to go through the election monitoring training in each state in order to "educate themselves" on each state's procedures, if they happen to be the type of personality that doesn't take a faith based approach to system integrity? And that just tells you what is supposed to happen, not what does happen.

> Yes, and it is only rational to have beliefs based on evidence. And we live in a system of laws expressing how that evidence is to be gathered, evaluated, and decided upon.

This is a funny comment, but I suspect your mind will refuse to see it - look how many people believe(s) (beginning the morning after the election) that there is/was no(!) evidence of election fraud. Of course this is silly - how does one know that evidence does not exist in physical reality if you haven't even looked for it? Yes I realize this is simply propaganda, but I am referring to how even intelligent people believe such things irrationally without evidence. But of course, they have no idea they are irrational, so therefore continue to believe that "rationalism" is the only tool you need in your kit.

> This week, a ton of people rejected that process, because they FEEL like they can't trust it, proposing nothing to replace it instead.

Technically, neither you nor any of the other know what percentage of the mob "rejected that process" - although, you did only say "a ton", and indeed, surely at least one ton/tonne of human mass of the crowd believes what you say.

> Voting irregularities are investigated, yes.

Gosh this sort of comment drives me up the wall. All it takes to satisfy this assertion is precisely two historic instances of voting irregularities being investigated.

And then there's this:

>>>> If someone smuggled in fake ballots, AND somehow managed to falsify the poll book, it would be possible to use the poll book to ASK people if they voted.

>>> It may be "possible", but is it practical? How difficult would it be? Is the current approach perfectly optimal, or could it be improved?

> Perfect is the enemy of good. And we're discussing THIS election. I welcome a different discussion about improving the process for future elections.

You declare something to be impossible to be fraudulent, and then when I point out the blatantly obvious hole in the plan, you discard it with a catch phrase, and then rhetorically dodge the uncomfortable fact that the system is not actually imperfect as you represent.

It's funny, when a thread is about a technical topic here on HN, however trivial the magnitude of the topic is, people here tend to be very pedantic about what is technically correct. But change the topic to democracy (our "sacred institution" as we were told repeatedly in the last few days), which is "rather important", concerns for the details go right out the window, and attention to detail is not only not important, but shamed. Even funnier, just four years ago, the culture was the polar opposite of this. Funny that eh!

I'll leave it at that, except for this one important thing:

>> I have a bit of an issue with the manner in which we approach this whole situation from an educational perspective. As a society, we've surely spent many tens or hundreds of person-hours participating in meme wars about this topic. If this sort of non-productive (and socially destructive) behavior was going on anywhere we worked, I would expect that someone was assemble a FAQ or Wiki of some sort that laid out the details - fully comprehensive, and fully accurate (across all states), in a format that is approachable by all employees. Does such a resource exist for the election process?

> There are literally hundreds of books, hundreds of web pages, hundreds of explanations, millions of hours of explanation. Here's a 31 minute long video from Georgia alone

Imagine if you started a new job and needed to learn the precise functioning of 50 distinct but extremely similar processes, and someone referred you to something like the above. Once again, it reminds me of one of my favourite parables:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

I don't know why I even bother writing these things, maybe I find it therapeutic, or maybe it is so some day in the future I have evidence to point to when the next Capitol-style blowup happens. People's behavior can easily be characterized as being purely based on their imaginations, and mainstream normies will accept that without question (without evidence(!)) - but if it isn't actually true inphysical reality, well sometimes this has a way of biting you in the ass.

You're missing the issue - this is not about the legitimacy of any particular system, it's just about lies and misinformation.

The claims of widespread election fraud have no material basis, it's entirely an issue of political theatre.

If you just lie, lie, lie on Twitter, FB, wherever ... then a certain number of people will believe it's true.

Especially if segments of the press back you.

So the normative rules of 'spin and narrative creation' which politicians and the press are all guilty of, has been escalated to 'total fabrication of facts'.

There's no real foundation in real facts, which makes any of these issues impossible to navigate from that perspective.

No amount of fidelity, auditing or recounts will placate a group who's objective is to reject whatever reality doesn't suit them. 'Evidence' is pointless if someone can reject it out of hand.

Consider how important 'integrity' is, in all of our systems, and how badly it falls apart when we stop doing our jobs with integrity. That includes us.

> which politicians and the press are all guilty of,

This attitude is a contributing factor. It is letting people off the hook for regurgitating fabricated stories, by giving the impression that nobody is telling the truth anyway.

There are several politicians and media outlets who are truthful and backing their claims with evidence (and retracting statements found to be untrue). But since some other people are liars, apparently everyone is a liar. So you might as well believe what you want.

No, the press has always been narrative-driven, and much more so in the last five years or so.

It's entirely possible to paint different variations of reality withing the bounds of the same facts and the press does it all day long.

Yes, the press is generally factual (I didn't imply otherwise), but bent quite strongly in one direction or another.

Editorial choices abound, and most coverage is editorialized, it's not remotely straight news, there's a lot of opinion.

Words have power, and the kinds of words, images news outlets decide to show, which is an editorial choice, have quite a lot of impact.

It is very unhealthy to use any 'one source' for news in the US right now for this reason, unfortunately, there are no sources (outside of straight news from the wire) wherein one could not risk being in a bubble.

The President and some enablers, using 'direct media' (i.e. Twitter) have chosen to outright lie, which as I mentioned has 'taken it to another level' - and some in the press have chosen not to call him out on it, tip-toeing up to the line of outright falsehoods themselves, while being careful to not necessarily engage in straight up lies.

And of course, some outlets have more credibility than others.

FYI, I absolutely read your statement as claiming that all politicians and media outlets are now guilty of "'total fabrication of facts'." I appreciate the clarification, but that sentiment is widespread, so I accepted it at face value.

> It is very unhealthy to use any 'one source' for news in the US right now for this reason,

Strongly disagree here and feel like this attitude is also part of the problem. It's much better to get your news from a single source who employ a large number of fact-checkers and are willing to issue retractions, than it is to get it from a "variety" of sources repeating the same claims with absolutely no independent verification of the facts.

Multiple sources reporting something does not make it credible if the sources in question aren't performing independent verification. Many "news" sites today engage in circular references where they say, "blah is reporting...", then another site picks that up and reports that "multiple sites are reporting..." And none of them bother with independent verification. This is often exploited to spread hoaxes.

Right, like when I see yet another news article which questions Dominion voting machines in Georgia, that is hard evidence to me that they do not care about representing an honest picture of what has been evaluated.

There was a hand recount.

The impact of this has absolutely not filtered through to many "news" sites.

> There are several politicians and media outlets who are truthful and backing their claims with evidence (and retracting statements found to be untrue)

I feel like retracting untrue statements, while good, isn't as effective of a reconciliation process as it used to be. As an example, I remember early days of the Trump presidency, the Washington Post ran an article about Russia having hacked the US Electrical grid in Vermont. It turns out later that the story was totally overblown, and basically there was one compromised computer that wasn't connected to the grid. In the old days of newspaper, my parents would sit around reading every page, and if there was a retraction or alteration, it would be published in and seen. However that isn't how it works anymore. People don't sit around leafing through the Washington Post website anymore (and even if they did I have no idea if they publicize modifications to old articles), they get them sprayed via the firehose of social media. The only reason my parents know the Vermont Electrical Grid wasn't compromised by Russia is because we read two different versions of the same article and discussed it at the dinner table, having a rather noisy argument about what the article said.

I really don't know what the answer is, but I don't find plain retraction sufficient anymore, unless they're really, really publicizing them, which no one does.

The aim of this isn't to raise legitimate concerns, it's to produce distrust. Lots of people will have heard about Dominion via dodgy Facebook news or endlessly-forwarded stuff on WhatsApp or whatever; fewer will have read about, or understood, the recounts.

Nothing establishes trust like accusing those of making such claims, legitimate or not, of sedition.

Make claims all you want.

Violently storming the capitol to interfere with an election is sedition; "Rebelling against the authority of the state."

I mean, your thoughts are a rational way of thinking about this. Rationally, you might think that if you are concerned about a vote tally machine, you could do a hand recount, and if it matched, then clearly the proposed fraud couldn't be taking place at the vote tally level. That's a very normal way of thinking through things. And I don't actually blame anyone who has concerns about election security or vote tallying, it's a natural and important thing to worry about.

But let me suggest this: The modal person who has "concerns" about the election right now is a Republican who was told by the Republican president and Republican senators and congressmen that evil Democrats stole the election and that's why they won. It is mostly about retroactive justification of a feeling like Republicans -- or Trump, in specific -- should have won but didn't. This comes after a year long campaign of saying the news was fake, the polling was fake, Joe Biden is low energy, Hunter Biden did something horrible, 90% of OANN respondents say Trump won the debate, etc etc etc.

And here I'm talking about reasonable, regular Republicans out there in the world. The modal person you hear yelling ONLINE about this stuff literally believes that the Democratic Party is an international child sex and murder ring run by Hillary Clinton and Barry Soetero (a Muslim Atheist who was born in Kenya) who gain superpowers by chemically extracting hormones from the dead kids they murder in the basement of a pizza place in DC.

The legal partner of the lawyer being sued here believes that the vice president should be executed for refusing to overturn the election, that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is a pedophile and a child murderer, and that Jeffrey Epstein is still alive. The lady who got shot to death the other day is an avid follower and retweeter of this person: she died for the cause she loved, foolishly believing internet grifters who claim everything is a communist plot. The Viking guy who stormed the house floor believes he is a spiritual interpreter for a movement that says JFK Jr. is secretly alive and a middle-aged dude in a bowler hat who teamed up with Trump to execute all the Democrats who killed his father. I wish I was joking, all of this accurately reflects what we're talking about here. These are the people whose position we're trying to understand.

They don't think Dominion is an election company that changed some votes or whatever, they think Dominion is a communist front run by Cuba and China and the dead former president of Venezuela and Canada (which is just China, they both start with "C", suspicious???) and Hunter Biden. Dominion's entire reason for existing is electing communists like Joe Biden. They believe that not a single Democrat won anywhere in the country, that majority-black areas of the south and majority-Latino areas of LA that vote 85% Democratic are actually Trump strongholds if not for the fraud. Don't pay any mind for why they didn't sue in the other 43 states or why they didn't try to overturn any house elections.

This is like understanding why John Hinckley shot Reagan. Literally, he did it because he believed Jodie Foster was sending him psychic messages that she wanted to be with him if only he'd make a grand gesture. But I don't think we can do much if our objective is to try to convince him that he was wrong about that, because he wasn't engaging in a rational analysis of the evidence to begin with.

Your frothing at the mouth hyperbole aside... I'm not a Republican, I'm not even an American, and I see a lot of issues with how this election was conducted. Maybe you don't, or don't want to. Maybe the end justifies the means. But when the shoe is on the other foot, remember this garbage you just posted to HN before you start crying foul.

If I was an American I'd want to be confident in the election process. I don't know how one remains confident with videos of election observers being removed from counting areas to rousing applause, videos of counting areas being blocked off from observers using cardboard and other opaque barriers, video of ballots being counted after election observers had gone home for the night, hundreds of witnesses reporting irregularities, etc.

The country I'm from isn't perfect when it comes to elections, either. But given its immense power in the world, I'm greatly concerned with what I've observed in the United States.

I'd like to discuss each objection, one at a time. Sound good?

1) Dominion voting machines changed counts.

No, they did not. There was a hand recount in Georgia, and the counts matched within a reasonable degree.

Are we done with that objection yet???

If not, please walk me through how we have not definitively resolved this issue.

And that's my point - people KEEP RAISING THIS ISSUE. That means they are not listening to reason. It is unreasonable to mention Dominion Voting Machines in regard to Georgia. The issue has been settled. Continuing to raise it is proof of bad faith, rejecting clear evidence, without any new evidence that would make us re-evaluate the issue.

If you care to move on to one next issue, may I recommend "video of ballots being counted after election observers had gone home for the night", which is very related to this first issue, and has similarly been resolved, and it's also unreasonable to keep raising it, for reasons I'd be glad to discuss.

Ok, let's start with this forensic analysis of an actual Dominion voting machine that was used in the 2020 presidential election in Michigan. [0]

[0]: https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20423772-antrim-cou...

How about the courts do it, instead?

And if not the courts, maybe Congress needs an Election Commission to investigate election irregularity claims?

How about more funding for election security?

Oh, that's right, Mitch McConnell wouldn't bring those bills before the Senate. [1]

[1] https://www.courthousenews.com/mcconnell-under-fire-for-bloc...

And yet the mainstream media has cast him as the voice of reason in all of this mess. Hmm.

It's important to reward good behavior.

If you'd like to see more divisiveness, just watch to see what McConnell says in the next 112 days.

I am confident the shoe will not be on the other foot because I am not a conspiracy theorist and I do not believe in conspiracy theories. And also I have worked elections before so I understand the basics of how they work. I am also not an American.

You are mostly referring to actual nonsense which was discussed and debunked in great detail in the over 100 post-election lawsuits that these doofuses lost. States (red and blue) and state officials responded to all of the criticisms in clear and convincing detail. Most of these boil down to the Republican party encouraging unqualified people to serve as poll watchers without training, and then whenever they didn't understand routine election processes they jumped to the conclusion there was a vast conspiracy against them. You obviously were able to internalize the criticisms via osmosis or via your choice of media diet, but somehow were able to avoid either being able to refute the criticisms from first principles or actually seeking evidence for them.

One special note: Most of the observers removed were violating obvious and reasonable rules -- many of them were COVID deniers who felt if they couldn't breathe maskless on poll workers their first amendment rights were being suppressed. At the time, many were yelling "STOP THE COUNT", because the message of the night from the president on down was that it was illegal to count votes after polls closed.

I used ZERO hyperbole in my original comment. I didn't even add any new information. All the stuff I said is documented in great detail in the lawsuit itself. It's not hyperbole to say the people being sued believe any of this. If there is something you believe is not literally true, let me know and I'll provide a source, but again the vast majority of this is directly documented in the suit that is the subject of this thread.

The shoe was on the other foot in 2016. Many on the left claimed election fraud, including the Green Party filing lawsuits demanding recounts. Their disputes were with the same states in dispute in 2020 (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin). [0]

The courts dismissed their lawsuits for lack of standing, not on the merits of their case.

In 2019, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobishar and Ron Wyden wrote a letter to Congress warning about vulnerabilities with three voting machine vendors, one of which being Dominion. They point out the same things that Sidney Pollock did in her complaint. [1]

[0]: https://www.freep.com/story/news/nation/2016/12/06/election-... [1]: https://www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/letters/warren-klobu...

Frothing? Surely, you jest. This is the most level-headed and accurate description of the situation I've seen on this site.

The Dominion claim isn't the only one in Georgia. In fact, most of the lawsuits, two of which are ongoing, are regarding the changes the Georgia Secretary of State made in March 2020 to relax signature matching and ballot curing rules for absentee ballots. Since the Secretary of State is not a part of the legislature, this relaxation is alleged to be unconstitutional.

You can find a breakdown of the lawsuits here. [0]

There was a hand recount in Georgia. But if the dispute is over the ballots themselves and their veracity, then a recount does little to resolve it. The Georgia Governor has since called for a signature audit, but limited it to Cobb county. Most of the witness affidavits regarding signatures not being verified came out of Fulton county.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related...

I still don't understand. How does this place the blame on Dominion? It seems like they did their thing right.

I was answering the other posters question as to why the recount on it's own didn't just resolve the dispute.

However, there was a forensic analysis done of a Dominion voting machine in Michigan with some disturbing findings. You can read the report here. [0]

> While the allowable election error rate established by the Federal Election Commission (FEC.gov) guidelines is 1 in 250,000 ballots (.0008 percent), ASOG’s forensic analysis observed an error rate of 68.05 percent, which is a significant and fatal error in security and election integrity.

> In the ASOG audit, all log entries for the 2020 election cycle were found missing in the Dominion equipment they analyzed—meanwhile voter adjudication logs for previous years exist. Removal of these log files violates state laws and prevents a meaningful audit, even if the Secretary of State’s office wanted to conduct its own audit.

> The ASOG audit also discovered software changes on Oct. 23, 2020, and then again on Nov. 5, 2020, just after the election. In accordance with the Help America Vote Act, this violates the 90-day Safe Harbor period which prohibits changes to election systems, without these systems undergoing recertification.

[0]: https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20423772-antrim-cou...

That audit was performed by Russell James Ramsland Jr. who does not have a good track record of reporting on numbers.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/russell-ja...

And again -

Georgia did a hand recount. And the numbers agreed.

At least in Georgia, can you explain to me how the issue of Dominion Changing Votes, is not 100% resolved?

Ah, yes, reject evidence using an ad hominem. I'm sure you'll convince others with that tact. Dominion has yet to dispute any of the findings in this report, despite the Michigan judiciary giving them an opportunity to do so before its release in December. But this is exactly the nature of the discourse:

Group A: Group B has no evidence, they're trying to undermine the integrity of our electoral process, etc.

Group B: Here's some evidence. Maybe we should investigate? Just to make sure everything is on the up and up?

Group A: Your evidence is from person X, which my news source has already conveniently done their best to discredit. My news source has already debunked your claims as well. Group B has no evidence, undermining integrity, etc.

Sadly Georgia has not yet ordered a forensic analysis of their voting machines. However, in that report I linked to, there was an exceptionally high ballot rejection rate for that Dominion voting machine in Michigan requiring ballot adjudication. When you have a state like Georgia, which just relaxed rules regarding signature verification and ballot curing, this poses a real problem in verifying the chain of custody.

I do not trust an accountant who makes blatant accounting mistakes.

I do not trust the testimony of someone who has falsified evidence, or processed it incorrectly.

Neither of those are an ad hominem attack of a factual claim. They show that someone is incapable or unwilling to provide evidence that should be considered. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and if the evidence presented makes demonstrably false claims, then we're done with that evidence, and should frown upon the person who presented it. They should lose credibility.

If you want to find another accountant, offer up someone else's testimony, show an untainted evidentiary chain, in support of a factual claim, I will gladly consider it.

I am not either "Group" in your scenario, by the way.

I accept that the Constitution of the United States enacts Laws, and Checks and Balances. I accept that we have Courts to make determinations of fact. We are a nation of laws.

I am not in and of myself rejecting claims, and satisfied with that as the conclusion of my interest in the matter.

I am informing you, I will accept the outcomes of the courts. I accepted them when I disagreed with their outcomes in the past, and I expect others to do likewise. Not that I think each outcome is Just, but that the long arm of history bends towards Justice. When I am upset enough, I petition my representatives to change the law, or to impeach officers of government. We are a nation of laws.

WHY would Georgia order a forensic analysis of counting machines, when a hand recount has agreed, within a reasonable degree? It's nonsense.

Is there a paper trail for voting machines? Yes. Voters are responsible for checking the paper record. The paper record has been checked against the electronic record. Aren't we done?

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and if the evidence presented makes demonstrably false claims, then we're done with that evidence, and should frown upon the person who presented it.

In a court of law, all claims and evidence are evaluated on their own merits. election/voter fraud as a claim is hardly extraordinary. People are charged and convicted of such crimes every election cycle. In a civil matter, a case is decided based on the preponderance of the evidence, not on the extraordinary nature of it.

I, too, will accept the outcome of the courts. What other recourse is there? But that doesn't mean the conversation is over. You can walk away. You can't shut people up. Well, you can try, and some actively are as we speak, but I vehemently oppose such efforts.

> all claims and evidence are evaluated on their own merits

That is demonstrably not true.

There is a legal definition of what an expert witness is, and their testimony has more weight.

> election/voter fraud as a claim is hardly extraordinary.

On the scale being claimed, enough to overturn multiple States' General Elections, yes it, is an extraordinary claim.

> People are charged and convicted of such crimes every election cycle

No, people are not "charged and convicted" of ELECTION FRAUD every election cycle. Some small number of people have been convicted of VOTER FRAUD. Please do not conflate the two, as the scope of their impact is completely different.

> You can't shut people up.

I literally ASKED why people are still raising one specific objection.

No one has attempted an actual defense of that specific objection. They have moved the goalposts to other objections.

It is unreasonable to bring up objections to Dominion voting machines in Georgia in the 2020 election. Anyone who does so should shut the hell up, or offer new evidence.

Ad hominem is a logical fallacy for Aristotelian argumentation.

For common-law legal fact-finding, calling the source's reputation into question is extremely fair. Aristotelian argumentation is grounded on premises both sides can accept; in legal examination, people lie and distort all the time.

Sorry, I'm just reading it again [1], why in the name of all things holy would you ever take this guy seriously?

This is embarrassing. I would not want to remind people this guy was on my side, let alone present his evidence at the vanguard of my case.

[1] https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020...

Let me ask it differently -

Has Russell James Ramsland Jr issued an apology and an update on his completely bullshit "more than 100%" audit?

No?

Wouldn't an honest person issue a retraction?

The report you linked to has been disputed by a lot of respected people: professors, the Michigan State Department, non-profits on fair elections, the former acting director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Voting System Testing and Certification Program[0], and even Krebs, Trump's former chief of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency[1]. The last affidavit written by the author of that report was also disproven and had entirely wrong numbers[2].

[0] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-r... [1] https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-michigan-voter-...

Then they should conduct their own forensic analysis of this image of a Dominion voting machine in Michigan. Until then, their dispute is opinion. A lot of these "fact checks" blur into the realm of opinion, not facts. If you can point me to a counter forensic analysis of this image, including counter findings that adjudication audit logs were not deleted for the 2020 election, then I'd be happy to read it.

A lot of smart people dispute this election. Doesn't make it fact, either.

Krebs called this the "most secure election in history". Seems legit.

> A lot of smart people dispute this election. Doesn't make it fact, either.

Our Constitution empowers the Courts to make determinations of fact.

That process has happened. Repeatedly.

What more do you want to happen?

There are still lawsuits ongoing in the courts. You keep saying 60 of them, it's 54. You're so quick to question someone else's accounting skills earlier...

There are ten lawsuits ongoing, not zero, ten. That process hasn't happened, it is still happening. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related...

> You keep saying 60 of them, it's 54. You're so quick to question someone else's accounting skills earlier...

Could you go ahead and read the first sentence of that link you just sent me?

The one that says,

"After the 2020 United States presidential election, the campaign for incumbent President Donald Trump and others filed 60 lawsuits..."

If you could go ahead and read the first sentence of the link you sent me, that would be really great.

This bit is more than a little disingenuous, and I would honestly expect better.

The first problem is that there is no cite for said FEC guidelines, and I'm unable to find any documentation corroborating that number (though that could easily be a failing on my end). There is a reference later on to [0], but it quotes a different number:

> According to the NCSL, Michigan requires testing by a federally accredited laboratory for voting systems. In section 4.1.1 of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) Accuracy Requirements 1. *All systems shall achieve a report total error rate of no more than one in 125,000.*

The second problem is that there are two different and incompatible definitions of "error rate" in play here, and Ramsland conflates the two. This makes the comparison he attempts to draw nonsensical.

The VVSG have a very specific definition of "report total error rate" ([0], starting PDF page 87) (paraphrased to try to save space):

> a. All systems shall achieve a report total error rate of no more than one in 125,000 (8×10–6).

> b. Given a set of vote data reports, the observed cumulative report total error rate shall be calculated as follows.

> i. Define a “report item” as any one of the numeric values (totals or counts) that must appear in any of the vote data reports.

> ii. For each report item, compute the “report item error” as the absolute value of the difference between the correct value and the reported value.

> iii. Compute the “report total error” as the sum of all of the report item errors from all of the reports.

> iv. Compute the “report total volume” as the sum of all of the correct values for all of the report items that are supposed to appear in the reports.

> v. Compute the observed cumulative report total error rate as the ratio of the report total error to the report total volume.

For comparison, this is how Ramsland calculated the 68.05% error rate:

> 1. We reviewed the Tabulation logs in their entirety for 11/6/2020.

> * The election logs for Antrim County consist of 15,676 total lines or events. Of the 15,676 there were a total of 10,667 critical errors/warnings or a 68.05% error rate.

This is an entirely different number that can't be used to determine whether a voting machine satisfies the error requirements.

The third problem is that the VVSG error numbers here are being misused. From the first paragraph of Section 4.1.1 ([0], PDF page 87) (emphasis added):

> The following requirements are intended to allow tolerance for unpreventable hardware-related errors that occur rarely and randomly as a result of physical phenomena. They are not intended to allow tolerance of software faults that result in systematic miscounting of votes.

According to Ramsland (emphasis added):

> Most of the errors were related to configuration errors that could result in overall tabulation errors or adjudication

Certainly doesn't sound like "unpreventable hardware-related errors" to me...

----

A cite here would have been very helpful. I looked through what appears to be the text of the Help America Vote Act [1], and I found no reference to a 90-day Safe Harbor period. I haven't found any other reference to such a thing, though I wouldn't be surprised if I were looking in the wrong place.

In any case, the reason I want such a site is that I suspect there might be differing definitions of "changes to election systems" that Ramsland might be taking advantage of, similar to the first point you quoted.

[0]: https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/eac_assets/1/28/VVSG...

Point to a single court case in the US regarding this election year where evidence was presented in court and judged.

Every single case was dismissed on procedural grounds.

Edit: At least with this lawsuit we will finally see some evidence.

> Every single case was dismissed on procedural grounds.

So, the procedures should have been followed.

This is such a simple thing to say, and easy to understand. Except you seem to not accept that. Why not?

And the Supreme Court case, they said, even if they'd listened to the case, there would have been no remedy. Meaning, it would have been pointless to listen, but they think by law they should have listened.

This says to me that the people filing these cases do not understand the procedures, do not understand the possible remedies, were not acting in good faith.

Why doesn't it say that to you?

Maybe there isn't actually a procedure for this situation? If the highest court in the land says even if the claims turn out to be true there is still no remedy to be had. In other words, even if the election was provably stolen, they won't overturn the result. So what procedure should have been followed?

You're accusing attorneys of not acting in good faith or sheer incompetence for not having a firm understanding of an entirely novel legal scenario. The Texas case was, according to reports, hotly debated in private by SCOTUS before they made their decision. Shame you weren't there to educate them on proper procedure.

Yes, I am accusing attorneys of not acting in good faith.

One of them literally called for the execution of the Vice President of the United States. [1]

Another called for "trial by combat." [2]

How tolerant am I supposed to be?

> Maybe there isn't actually a procedure for this situation?

For the 60 court cases? Yes, there are.

> If the highest court in the land says even if the claims turn out to be true there is still no remedy to be had.

Actually, that was the dissenting opinion. The decision was that the petition lacked standing.

> In other words, even if the election was provably stolen

They had 60 chances to prove it was stolen.

I have little sympathy for someone who believes that somehow 60 different court cases were simultaneously wrongly decided.

Move on to changing the laws, winning the next election. This one is decided.

> Shame you weren't there to educate them on proper procedure.

I think they came to the right decision. You're the one who wants to educate them.

[1] : https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-allies-attack-lin-wood...

[2] : https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/watch-giuliani-deman...

> Another called for "trial by combat."

Giuliani used the words "trial by combat" but it's not an accurate description of what he was calling for. There's a lot to blame Giuliani (and others) for here, but let's try to be precise.

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

That seems the other way around. In that case, the context made it clear that what could be notionally defended as an expression of frustration was in fact a call to act.

In this case, out of context, "let's have trial by combat" seems worse than when placed in the context that marks it as clearly metaphorical - he had just explained what he meant by it.

It's absolutely heated rhetoric, and one example of many - on the part of Giuliani, Trump, and others - that together built a context that led to violence.

It is absolutely appropriate to blame them for that.

That doesn't make labeling it a call for "trial by combat" a good representation of what happened in that moment.

Procedure for voting fraud is to punish the guilty (harshly; it's a federal crime) and correct the exploit. It's never been to toss legitimate votes for suspicion of illegitimacy. If anything, the system is biased heavily to enfranchise voters at the boundary of legitimacy, because claims of illegitimacy were historically used to keep undesirable classes of people from exercising their rights.

> Maybe there isn't actually a procedure for this situation?

There is, for at least the vast majority of the issues.

E.g., for the allegedly not-legislatively-authorized election-process issues that have been the center of many of the challenges, the process is to challenge the change when you have notice of the process before the election, the failure, despite knowledge of the facts motivating the challenges, to do that in favor of doing post-election and often post-certification challenges is the source of both laches and mootness dismissals of those claims.

> Point to a single court case in the US regarding this election year where evidence was presented in court and judged.

Kind of depends on what precisely you mean by "presented in court and judged", but the evidence was evaluated by judges and found wanting:

Bowyer v. Ducey, in Arizona [0]:

> The various affidavits and expert reports are largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections. Because the Complaint is grounded in these fraud allegations, the Complaint shall be dismissed.

> Plaintiffs first “describe specific violations of Arizona law” to support their fraud claims. In doing so, they attach declarations from poll watchers that observed election officials during the November General Election. As Intervenor-Defendant Maricopa County points out, these are the only declarants offered by Plaintiffs with first-hand observation of the election administration. But these four declarants do not allege fraud at all... These objections to the manner in which Arizona officials administered the election cannot serve to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona because they fail to present evidence that supports the underlying fraud claim.

> The sheer unreliability of the information underlying Mr. Briggs’ “analysis” of Mr. Braynard’s “data” cannot plausibly serve as a basis to overturn a presidential election, much less support plausible fraud claims against these Defendants.

> To lend support to this theory [of voting machines being hacked], Plaintiffs offer expert Russell Ramsland, Jr., who asserts there was “an improbable, and possibly impossible spike in processed votes” in Maricopa and Pima Counties at 8:46 p.m. on November 3, 2020... Thus, the Court finds that while this “spike” could be explained by an illicit hacking of voting machinery in Arizona, the spike is “not only compatible with, but indeed was more likely explained by, lawful, unchoreographed” reporting of early ballot tabulation in those counties.

----

King v. Whitmer, in Michigan [1]:

> The Court may deny Plaintiffs’ motion for injunctive relief for the reasons discussed above. Nevertheless, the Court will proceed to analyze the merits of their claims.

> Plaintiffs attempt to establish an Equal Protection claim based on the theory that Defendants engaged in “several schemes” to, among other things, “destroy,” “discard,” and “switch” votes for President Trump, thereby “devalu[ing] Republican votes” and “diluting” the influence of their individual votes.

> But, to be perfectly clear, Plaintiffs’ equal protection claim is not supported by any allegation that Defendants’ alleged schemes caused votes for President Trump to be changed to votes for Vice President Biden.

> But of course, “[a] belief [from a sworn affidavit] is not evidence” and falls far short of what is required to obtain any relief, much less the extraordinary relief Plaintiffs request.

> With nothing but speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden, Plaintiffs’ equal protection claim fails.

----

Law v. Whitmer, in Nevada [2]:

> The Court nonetheless considers the totality of the evidence provided by Contestants in reaching and ruling upon the merits of their claims.

> Contestants offered Mr. Baselice to opine on the incidence of illegal voting in the 2020 General Election based on a phone survey of voters.

> The Court questions Mr. Baselice's methodology because he was unable to identify the source of the data for his survey and conducted no quality control of the data he received.

> Contestants offered Mr. Kamzol to opine that significant illegal voting occurred in Nevada during the 2020 General Election, based on his analysis of various commercially available databases of voters.

> The Court questions Mr. Kamzol's methodology because he had little to no information or supervision over the origins of his data, the manner in which it had been matched, and what the rate of false positives would be. Additionally, there was little or no verification of his numbers.

> As reflected herein, the Court finds that the expert testimony provided by Contestants was of little to no value. The Court did not exclude consideration of this evidence, which it could have, but gave it very little weight.

----

There's more, but I hope I've made my point: evidence was considered in more than one case, and was found to be insufficient to rule in the plaintiffs' favor.

----

> Every single case was dismissed on procedural grounds.

At least based on my reading of the ruling, this is wrong. Law v. Whitmer was dismissed due to the presented evidence being insufficient:

> CONCLUSION

> The Contestants failed to meet their burden to provide credible and relevant evidence to substantiate any of the grounds set forth in NRS 293.410 to contest the November 3, 2020 General Election

----

[0]: https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/...

[1]: https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/...

[2]: https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/...

Edit: Remove unnecessary "emphasis added"

Edit 2: Add section pointing out Law v. Whitmer was not dismissed on procedural grounds

Good job. You cherry picked three lawsuits. Here's all 54. [0]

Oh, and by the way, if a judge dismisses a case on procedural, jurisdictional or standing and then goes on to provide an opinion of the claims/evidence presented in a complaint -- it doesn't mean that the adjudication was based upon the merits of the case. So the claim that most of the dismissed cases were for procedural, jurisdictional or standing reasons still stands. A judge is required to evaluate the evidence in a light most favorable to the plaintiff. Most of these cases didn't get that far.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related...

You're replying to points I never made nor implied.

The claim I was addressing:

> Point to a single court case in the US regarding this election year where evidence was presented in court and judged.

The cases I listed are cases where 1) evidence was (arguably) presented in court, in the form of affidavits/expert opinions/reports/testimony attached to the complaint, and 2) judged to be insufficient for one reason or another.

The fact that other lawsuits were dismissed solely on procedural or jurisdictional grounds is irrelevant for the purposes of addressing that specific claim.

Law v. Whitmer, in particular, does not appear to have been dismissed on procedural grounds, and is sufficient on its own to prove both the claim I originally addressed and the other part of GGP's comment incorrect:

> CONCLUSION

> The Contestants failed to meet their burden to provide credible and relevant evidence to substantiate any of the grounds set forth in NRS 293.410 to contest the November 3, 2020 General Election

"Cherry-picking" is also meaningless here, as I made no extrapolation about post-election lawsuits in general based on those 3 cases.

----

> Oh, and by the way, if a judge dismisses a case on procedural, jurisdictional or standing and then goes on to provide an opinion of the claims/evidence presented in a complaint -- it doesn't mean that the adjudication was based upon the merits of the case.

Well, sure, but it also doesn't mean that the ruling was not based on upon the merits of the case either. A case can be dismissed for multiple reasons, after all; for example, King v. Whitmer was dismissed partially on standing grounds and because the judge found that the plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on the merits (not strictly a final ruling on the merits, but based upon the merits nonetheless).

In addition, the line between "procedural dismissal" and "ruling upon the merits" can get a bit hazy if the dismissal relies upon evaluation of evidence provided by the complainant. For example, Rule 9(b) requires federal fraud claims to be pled with particularity. If the provided evidence fails to satisfy Rule 9(b), then the case can be dismissed. Does this count as a procedural dismissal (not meeting the requirements of a rule), or a ruling based upon the merits of the case (insufficient evidence)?

----

And also note that I said:

> Kind of depends on what precisely you mean by "presented in court and judged"

The commenter I replied to didn't give a precise definition of "presented in court and judged", so I worked off what I hope is a reasonable interpretation of the phrase.

A judge providing an opinion is not adjudication. And "presenting in court" is not the same as "the judge read the complaint and here's what they think about it before dismissing it for non-meritorious reasons".

What is "adjudication" and "presenting in court", then?

> A judge providing an opinion is not adjudication.

If it is a tangential opinion (not supporting one of the decisive grounds for an action), sure. If it is a opinion that is part of the basis for a grounds of dismissal that inherently asks whether, even before considering how the other side might challenge it, the evidence could ever support the plaintiff winning, it absolutely is adjudication.

The difference is important because the last can be (and has been in some of the cases at issue) part of the analysis when dismissing for failure to state a claim.

That...depends. “Failure to state a claim” is one of the bases that is being described as procedural, but it can involve not just a analysis of whether the plaintiff has recited the legal elements of an actual offense, but whether the evidence the plaintiff has identified that they can present would be sufficient, before considering any potential counterevidence, to make a prima facie case for facts that would justify the claim stated. Where that analysis is conducted, and it is concluded in the negative requiring dismissal, while the basis may be characterized as “procedural”, it includes exactly a decision about the merits of the case.

That is what has occurred in several of the cases at issue where failure to state a claim was one of the grounds for dismissal.

> Point to a single court case in the US regarding this election year where evidence was presented in court and judged.

Bowyer v. Ducey (while it was also dismissed for a variety of reasons including standing, abstention in the face of overlapping parallel state court claims, mootness, and laches, the analysis in the ruling leading to dismissal for failure to state a claim included a finding that the offered evidence was a combination of unreliable and irrelevant to the claims.)

Plus there are at least four cases that proceeded to trial.

> Every single case was dismissed on procedural grounds.

That's both false (not every single election-related case has been dismissed), and beside the point (as, to the extent that “failure to state a claim” is procedural—arguably that and standing are not, really—it often still involves reviewing the proffered evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff as to whether it could sustain a prima facie case.)

On one side, a grifter taking cynical advantage of baseless, war-media-stoked fears of Venezuela in addition to numerous other baseless and racist conspiracy theories. On the other side, a secretive foreign firm that makes millions foisting unaudited closed-source voting machines on clueless municipalities.

Frankly, I hope they both lose.

Secretive foreign firm? Aren’t they Canadian? Not that Canada isn’t foreign but it’s basically impossible to read what you wrote without a hateful, distrusting tone that assumes non Americans are bad. And how are they secretive in any way that’s relevant to their ability to build and maintain verifiable machines?

There are many aspects of government that non-Americans are prohibited from participating in. It has nothing to do with all non-Americans being bad and all Americans being good, but it's a decent first-level screening method. Kind of like requiring a college degree in a job listing.

They were founded in Toronto but they are American.

The notion that there's any degree of shadiness about them is completely unwarranted. The company and tech are perfectly legit.

If there are any 'issues' at all with the election, it's more rooted in the fact that the US can't very easily identify people, doesn't know who is dead, who is alive, and who are actual residents.

If you dig into the 'voter roll purging' issue in Georgia, it reveals that much of the problems derive from the grey areas there.

That said, the elections are clean and fair, these ambiguities don't provide necessary for widespread fraud.

They have a US HQ in Denver, but it's absurd to say that they are American:

"Dominion Voting Systems Corp (Canada) owns 100% of Dominion Voting Systems, Inc (US Subsidiary)."

Source: https://votingsystems.cdn.sos.ca.gov/dominion-voting/part-2....

They are entirely based and operated out of America. That makes them American.

Apple, Cisco etc. might very well have >50% ownership from non-American sources, that doesn't make them 'not American'.

The outrage hyperbole over Dominion is completely fabricated, there's no basis it.

Their machines + system have the level of integrity necessary for satisfying the use case they are used for.

The possible 'loopholes' relate to who is using the ballots and machines, not the ballots or machines themselves.

I like Canadians and I like Canada. I am hateful and distrusting of closed-source voting machines. Perhaps it was wrong to appeal to the tired old "let's have ruinous economic sanctions on most foreign nations" prejudice that so many public officials pretend to have... At some level it would be nice if the people administering elections in a particular jurisdiction were subject to the laws of that jurisdiction.

Voting machines are inherently a challenge to verify. Even if the voter herself compiles source code and loads the resulting object into the machine before voting, it's impossible for her to verify the hardware is actually using that object. The paper ballots produced by these machines have marks next to candidates, but they also have an opaque bar code and that's what gets scanned when votes are "recounted". On top of all this, considering the design and code of these machines to be commercial secrets ensures error and distrust.

> Voting machines are inherently a challenge to verify.

Count a subset of the ballots by hand, if they match, then your confidence in the system increases. Continue verification until confidence in the system reaches acceptable levels.

The voting machines that I've used recently are systems that automatically count paper ballots as they are submitted. There's a clear chain of custody with these, and these results have a 100% audit trail. Not only that, but these systems work in tandem to identify errors in either system.

The likelihood of discovering some injected irregularity is pretty high. Especially since we have systems in place for automatic hand-recounts in tight races. So if the system were going to nefariously alter the election outcome, it would have to be done at such a magnitude as to exceed the threshold for automatic hand-recounts, but be small enough to not be discovered. Plus, candidates can request a manual recount, further increasing the reliability of the system.

As with all systems where reliability is paramount: it's important to lean on redundancy in the system, rather than try to make a single component as reliable as possible.

The only way machines should be used is part of an end to end verifiable voting system (either cryptographic or public ledger), where a machine running different code still wouldn't be able to flip votes. Alas the time to push for this is before an election, not afterwards when one doesn't like the specific outcome.

I agree completely.

They're an American company (Premier) spun out of an American company (Diebold) that was bought by an American competitor (ES&S) that was then spun out of ES&S due to anti-trust concerns and bought by a Canadian company (Dominion).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Election_Solutions

People should distrust foreign interference in elections. It’s supposedly illegal in the US.

Historically, “interference” has broadly included things like providing financial support to candidates, running news stories about candidates (or running news stations in the US, at all), and so on.

The lifting of these restrictions led directly to Fox News (which is an Australian company), which has long been a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. All of this happens despite the fact that it would be illegal for the Republican Party to take campaign donations from Australians.

We need to reinstate media ownership laws in the US.

Media ownership laws could take many forms. I'd prefer those of the form "the same firm can't own all the TV channels in any particular market" to those of the form "France 24 is not allowed".

The only player coming out of this looking good seems to be Texas, which said "no thanks" to their sales pitch (after a security audit) and avoided the whole mess.

I wanted to think well of Texas, but then I found they are one of four states (out of fifty!) who don't have paper trails for all machines used in the state.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voting...

Yikes, that is dumb.

I think it is worth noting that late night comedians (John Oliver, etc) had an absolute field day with the voting machine fraud meme after the 2006 election.

I think it's really interesting how you can completely flip people's reaction to a scenario by flipping one variable, and the people perceive themselves to be perfectly logical. The human mind is such a mystery.

The main complaint in 2006 was that there was no auditable paper trail. The 2020 machines all had an auditable paper trail.

Is it surprising that people switch their viewpoint after their major concern was satisfied?

This. I remember when they were completely automated, you just tapped the crappy 00s era touch-pad, and hoped it managed to submit the results the way you wanted. Then they added that stupid little receipt printer that told you what was submitted, so at least if there was a fuckup, you were informed of it.

Now, they are scantrons. You fill out a big paper ballot, and the machine counts it. It's exactly the system I want in place.

Some areas are moving back to the crappy 00’s touchscreens. They don’t connect to the internet and I’ve heard election officials claim they’re “unhackable”.

It seems unlikely they’ll replace mail in ballot scantrons any time soon, but with mail-in ballots you have increased vectors for fraud and stuff like the recent political interference with the US Postal Service.

One step forward, two steps back, I guess.

Disclaimers:

Since I mentioned mail-in ballot fraud, and the 2020 election just happened: I have heard of no credible evidence of widespread fraud during the 2020 election or Georgia runoff.

Electronic machines might be able to serve a useful purpose: I think the best option involves most people voting in person on paper ballots, despite universal access to mail-in ballots, and universal access to machines that print filled-out ballots for people with accessibility issues. Machines that print scantrons for everyone might be a net win if they reduce adjudication, and if people actually double check that the printout matches their intended vote. Alternatively, people could scan their own ballot at the polling place, and confirm it scans correctly. Either way, the paper ballot must be the authoritative record.

Once you’ve lived the reality of how convenient, accessible, and secure mail-in ballots are, there’s no reason to bother with polling stations

Did all machines in all states have an auditable paper trail, and were all subject to a software/binaries/distribution/internet connectivity audit, including administrator backend access to data?

Is this documented anywhere on some authoritative site?

> Is it surprising that people switch their viewpoint after their major concern was satisfied?

No, however, an (un)observed change in viewpoint does not necessarily represent satisfaction, or prove that all shortcomings have in fact been remedied.

John Oliver was only hired on the daily show in July 2006. 2006 was a year full of evidence and disclosures of voting machine security issues. Do you have a bias?

> I think it's really interesting how you can completely flip people's reaction to a scenario by flipping one variable, and the people perceive themselves to be perfectly logical. The human mind is such a mystery.

> John Oliver was only hired on the daily show in July 2006. 2006 was a year full of evidence and disclosures of voting machine security issues.

Is his date of hire relevant to this conversation?

> Do you have a bias?

Not only do I have bias, but I suspect I also suffer from shortcomings in knowledge as well as precision in my thinking.

Do you suffer at all from these three things, or anything else that I may have overlooked? If no, how did you obtain that knowledge?

Why does this comment (the one to which I am replying) have a score of "0" instead of "-1"?

Is this a glitch in the matrix? A bug in the code?

A direct link to the court filing: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.225699/...

Reading it was entertaining.

That’s good stuff. Now if only consequences would come about for everyone else involved in the attempt to overthrow our democracy.

Lot of links to various crazy media outlets and tweets in there citing Sidney Powell and pushing conspiracy theories. I mostly skimmed, but I think my "favorite" was a tweet that said "Dominion comes from Venezuela and Venezuela is like a Swedish colony. What Sweden or rather what someone controls..." I really don't know what to make of that

> Poulos said he would like the case to go to trial rather than settle.

Damn straight.

As an aside, I wish settlements were public record.

In this case, I'd assume the whole point is to go to trial. They're not actually going to recover anything like their real damages from the lawyer, so their best avenue is to very publicly demonstrate that they were lied about.

Lawsuit is fully justified. Their reputation was (needlessly) destroyed. I don't think you could ever get a Dominion machine approved in the current political climate for the foreseeable future. They'll likely need a rebrand to survive.

This is exactly why defamation is a thing. If this doesn't end up with a ruling for Dominion, I'm not sure who has a case.

On one hand Trump and his team deserve to lose this case.

On the other hand, I hope it doesn’t silence future complaints.

Protecting against defamation is important but it is more important that those who think they have genuine complaints about an election process aren’t scared into silence.

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