Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani • Hacker News Board

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#261

Post by unanswered » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

HelloMcFly wrote: post #229

NDizzle wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#262

Post by jonas21 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #228

yesdocs wrote: post #8

I hope whatever happens with these lawsuits it chills the baseless accusations of voter fraud used to undermine voter confidence in our democracy

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…

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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#263

Post by pwinnski » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

worldsayshi wrote: post #210

pwinnski wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#264

Post by lern_too_spel » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #228

yesdocs wrote: post #8

I hope whatever happens with these lawsuits it chills the baseless accusations of voter fraud used to undermine voter confidence in our democracy

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…

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

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#265

Post by arminiusreturns » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

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?

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#266

Post by imperfectcats » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

teraflop wrote: post #254

tunesmith wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

> 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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#267

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

supergirl wrote: post #243

ncallaway wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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]

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#268

Post by woofcat » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #236

woofcat wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any important paperwork, or valuables you want held secure? I have some bars of precious metals, and contracts etc.

Guess I'm surprised at having a decent personal net worth but nothing irreplaceable other than personal mementos.

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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#269

Post by dukeofdoom » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #48

rpiguyshy wrote: post #14

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.

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?

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.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#270

Post by enraged_camel » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #219

dragonwriter wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.