Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani • Hacker News Board

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#151

Post by mbg721 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

aww_dang wrote: post #148

adictator wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#152

Post by aww_dang » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

mbg721 wrote: post #151

aww_dang wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Clearly the steps being taken are not restoring trust in political institutions.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#153

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

chaganated wrote: post #108

covidthrow wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly for accessibility features for the blind?

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.

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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#154

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

covidthrow wrote: post #93

CydeWeys wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 tru…

This contrived scenario has almost nothing to do with how Dominion voting machines (and the verification audits therein) actually work.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#155

Post by Kim_Bruning » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

HenryKissinger wrote: post #31

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#156

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #10

ashtonkem wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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...

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#157

Post by chaganated » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #153

chaganated wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#158

Post by usefulcat » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

justinzollars wrote: post #63

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…

> 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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#159

Post by javajosh » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #134

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 damag…

"[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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#160

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

phone8675309 wrote: post #74

tartoran wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

They have a good shot at being able to successfully show actual damages here, so it sounds like you're onboard with these lawsuits.