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Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

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Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#321

Post by simonh »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #204
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…

If the court rules that the statements were false, but Giuliani is off his rocker and so Dominion doesn't get their billion, Dominion might still find that an acceptable outcome. They need their reputation at least as much as they need the money; a court ruling that the claims were factually wrong would go a long way toward restoring their reputation.

All the claims if significant vote fraud were thrown out by courts up and down the land, including the Supreme Court and yet still a huge mob of nutters stormed the Capitol. A mere court finding isn’t going to stop Dominion employees getting death threats.

It needs to be clearly and forcefully demonstrated that knowingly and recklessly and maliciously lying to the public with the intention of causing harm to a company or individual like this carries heavy consequences.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#322

Post by webdevatlurk »

vhold wrote: post #314
javajosh wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"[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.

One way to demonstrate nobody had heard of them: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=d...

The breakdown of interest by subregion is... unsurprising.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#323

Post by lern_too_spel »

pdonis wrote: post #316
ChrisLomont wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, hand filled out ballots are a mess, often illegible, the hanging chad fiasco, etc. With electronic voting, the voter can (should?) see on a screen exactly what they did, and the machine can make multiple exact copies in electronic and paper formats of that exact result. There is far less ambiguity in the physical record once this has been done.

I agree that if the electronic voting machine is just helping you print out an easily legible copy of your ballot, which you then verify for correctness and take to another machine to have it scanned for counting, that's a good thing, for the reasons you give. Not only does it help with auditability since the physical record is more standardized, it also probably reduces the error rate of automated counting. What I'm…

It is the way it is done for all Dominion voting machines, which replaced Diebold AccuVote machines (which did not leave a paper trail) in Georgia in 2019.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#324

Post by rglover »

pupdogg wrote: post #111

The article states that at one point in time, at a voluntary hearing in Michigan, Dominion CEO said "It is technologically impossible to see votes being counted in real-time or to flip them". I think that everybody here is fairly technically inclined so what are your guys thoughts on this? My personal opinion is that using the term "technologically impossible" in this instance was not a good idea. If @antirez is read…

This isn't for a Dominion machine but it's for an old Sequoia machine (which I believe that company was acquired by Dominion): https://file.wikileaks.org/file/advantage-insecurities-2008.....

It's certainly technically possible (which of course it is, if you control the software and access to the machine, you can do what you want).

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#325

Post by elihu »

seanalltogether wrote: post #43

I remember a lot of accusation about Diebold voting back in the 2000s, and concerns about lack of auditability. My understanding is that newer systems now let you vote at a machine, but it spits out a receipt that the voter can verify and the county can hold on to for the sake of audits and recounts. Is this standard now, or on a state by state basis?

It looks like the current holdouts (allowing electronic voting with no voter-verified paper trail) are Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.

https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#326

Post by rconti »

rwmj wrote: post #317
ChrisLomont wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, hand filled out ballots are a mess, often illegible, the hanging chad fiasco, etc. With electronic voting, the voter can (should?) see on a screen exactly what they did, and the machine can make multiple exact copies in electronic and paper formats of that exact result. There is far less ambiguity in the physical record once this has been done.

The UK has paper-only ballots and none of this stuff is a problem. (There are no "hanging chads" because ballots are marked by the voter with a pen or pencil on a piece of paper). The polls close at 10pm, the votes are counted overnight by volunteers, and the winner takes office the next morning. It always baffles me that the US system is so complicated.

You're telling me out of millions of ballots, none of the pen or pencil markings could be unclear?

The reality is, there are always ballots that fall in a grey area. That's being exploited to sow doubt in the uncertainty of an entire election.

Hell, same thing happened during Brexit:

> The first stage will see all ballot papers - though not actual votes - counted, a process known as verification.

> Any ballots which are later rejected are included in these verified ballots.

I submit it COULD happen there, too. Votes being counted by local authorities, making judgement calls, and the plan being to announce the preliminary results if the election is "clear" that night.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36044026

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#327

Post by ibejoeb »

ashtonkem wrote: post #192
javajosh wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"[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.

Jurisprudence includes the concept of a "Limited Purpose Public Figure", which typically includes anyone or anything that is part of a prominent matter of public interest. It is not a requirement that this person or group be prominent before hand. Unfortunately this occasionally has the effect of making some plaintiffs a LPPF by the very nature of the allegedly defamatory statements made against them, but that's how…

> Unfortunately this occasionally has the effect of making some plaintiffs a LPPF

I wouldn't call it unfortunate. If you don't want to be a public figure, one thing of which to steer clear is certainly the business of operating voting systems in the US presidential election. This is clearly public interest.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#329

Post by pilotneko »

athenot wrote: post #307
pdonis wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their machines do generate a paper trail Not the same kind of paper trail that exists when a voter fills out a paper ballot. If I fill out a paper ballot, that ballot is independent evidence of the votes I intended to cast, because I filled it out directly, with no machine in the middle. So that paper ballot is a useful auditing mechanism for checking on machine-generated vote counts. If I electronically cast votes…

Since I voted in Georgia on these machines, the process is the following: - get ID validated & ability to vote - get an initialized smart card - insert in polling machine, fill out stuff - submit, get printout from printer - scan printout into a machine - return smart card At the polling places I was at (we had a runoff), the staff + signage was emphasizing to check results on printout. The printing and the scanning…

A very similar process in Tennessee. I'm not sure if the machine was made by Dominion, but I had a chance to review the printout before scanning. The printout appeared to pass through the scanner and into a locked container beneath, presumably for actual paper audits.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#330

Post by rglover »

throwawaygh wrote: post #320
pupdogg wrote: post #111

The article states that at one point in time, at a voluntary hearing in Michigan, Dominion CEO said "It is technologically impossible to see votes being counted in real-time or to flip them". I think that everybody here is fairly technically inclined so what are your guys thoughts on this? My personal opinion is that using the term "technologically impossible" in this instance was not a good idea. If @antirez is read…

> It is technologically impossible to see votes being counted in real-time or to flip them Dominion machines aren't on the internet. Dominion doesn't have centralized access to all of their machines. Could they eg send out an army of technicians to every voting location and use some insane side-channel attack to physically read and flip bits from across the street? Sure. But by that logic it's also "not impossible" f…

Eric Coomer (on many of Dominion's patents) mentions that there's a cellular modem in the machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2529&v=YLIS68YfMYU&feature=y...

So it's not just a LAN connection that would be isolated to the network in the voting place (what you'd expect).

They also reported sending out updates to the machines in some precincts after certification, just before the election: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/georgia-election-ma... (not sure of the current veracity of this but bookmarked it as it was interesting).

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