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Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

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Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#531

Post by newacct583 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #346
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 seem to be spinning this out as a campaign, so I doubt Giuliani is the end point. I also doubt Trump is the end point.

Dominion, as an operating business, has effectively been destroyed. No bipartisan election committee is going to buy their stuff anymore when it is an article of unshakable faith among one of the two parties that their machines fraudulently stole an election.

So now their owners[1] need to figure out how to get whatever value they can. This isn't a "campaign", it's just a business effort. They've been transformed into something like an IP holding company, where the IP is the damage suffered by the original outfit. They'll sue everyone they can.

(They'll also probably manage to recoup some value by selling what's left of the company to someone else who then rebrands them and tries to sell back into the markets that have been poisoned. Something very similar happened with Diebold a decade ago, which was then sold to ES&S and thence to, yes, Dominion.)

[1] No idea how they're structured, but per wikipedia they're a private corporation.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#532

Post by xerxespoy »

wvenable wrote: post #434
xerxespoy wrote: post #373

Be great for threads like these if HN had both: 1) A block function so we could cut the massively-upvoted, one-sided comments and get to the impartial or contrary information buried underneath them. 2) A "unfade" button to see the massively-downvoted comments. I've generally found when threads take on this imbalanced and highly-polarised state, the stuff on the top isn't the cream.

I see no reason to provide additional support for threads with limited value to the HN community. If you want to discuss politics or general news there are plenty of sites for that.

Agree such threads presently have limited value, hence suggestions granting readers greater dominion over them. Sans, excessive polarisation remains a risk for any topic.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#533

Post by dragonwriter »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #438
dragonwriter wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I know he only said that in the Pennsylvania case They specifically either did not make or withdrew fraud allegations in many cases. It's true that the PA case is the only one where Giuliani was stupid enough to repeatedly invoke fraud in arguments despite it not being in the allegations or evidence in that case, thereby getting questioned by the judge on that point, and thus being forced to admit his arg…

> They specifically either did not make or withdrew fraud allegations in many cases. The general point being that they did make and did not withdraw fraud allegations in other cases. > A number of the election cases went to trial (6 out of 54 tracked on Wikipedia reached a final verdict after trial, and 1 is listed as trial ongoing, though that may be out of date) Which implies that the large majority of them didn't,…

> The general point being that they did make and did not withdraw fraud allegations in other cases.

So, here’s a challenge. Find one case where:

(1) Trump or his campaign alleges electoral fraud, and (2) The case (or specifically the fraud claim, if these are separate) was dismissed other than voluntarily by the plaintiff, and the grounds for that dismissal do not include any that require an evaluation of the merits of the case based on the allegations and proferred evidence. Notably, this means that you can’t include any case/claim dismissed for failure to state a claim, or that was dismissed voluntarily by Trump or his campaign.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#534

Post by mbg721 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #370
mbg721 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it stands up in court without any goofy procedural arguments, I'm happy with it. That's what courts are for.

Out of curiosity, what is and is not a “goofy procedural argument” in this case?

I would consider something like "the statute applies to telegrams sent within a state, so there is no standing" to be a goofy procedural argument.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#535

Post by wlesieutre »

unanswered wrote: post #444
wlesieutre wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must have missed the part of the video where media and observers were barred from the room, rather than simply having left. Could you give me a timestamp? With the whole thing being on camera and knowing that no secret ballot suitcases were smuggled in, are we to believe that in the absence of observers they somehow rigged the counting machines to mis-scan these ballots, even though the hand recount for Fulton only…

The observers are not there to make sure the ballot scanners are working. They're there to audit the portion of the process which can never ever be re-audited: the provenance of secret ballots. Of course if you re-count the same ballots over again you'll come up with something roughly the same. This "hand recount had identical* results" mantra to reinforce the core idea "the election has been independently verified"…

If that’s the issue with the video, then why does everyone’s main concern about it seem to be that they came from a box under a table? There’s certainly an implication that these were fake ballots that had been snuck in surreptitiously, given that its origin was clearly shown in the same video but had been cut out.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it. But then why is it called “SuitcaseGate”? Does “StandardContainerOfAbsenteeBallotsGate” not have the same deliberately made implication?

Beyond that, I don’t disagree that poll observers are important. But the ballots at this point had already been removed from both of their envelopes and stacked for scanning, while the observers were all present. If there was a flawed provenance to them, the observers observed it. At the point where those ballots were taken out of the box and scanned (again, all on camera) they’re nothing but pieces of paper with some bubbles filled in.

There’s no name. There’s no date. There’s no voter address. There’s no signature. Just ballots. Any questions of their provenance could only have been addressed earlier when they were taken out of their envelopes under the supervision of the election observers.

So with no observers present, they were pulled back out of the boxes and fed through the scanner. What did the observers need to observe that wasn’t captured on the surveillance tape? What part of this unobserved scanning process can’t be confirmed by a recount of the same ballots?

> Leaving a semi-public place such as an arena or an office building for the night has the result of not being permitted back in until the next public opening. Your arguments have turned to disingenuity and open trolling.

The Mitchell Harrison affidavit linked by another commenter specifically explains that he and Trevin McKoy came back that night and were escorted into the building. Counting had stopped before they arrived, but the point stands you’re bullshitting about it “having the result of not being permitted back in until the next public opening.”

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#536

Post by Pxtl »

tartoran wrote: post #403
mhh__ wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised of Rudy goes scorched earth and drags Trump in, but maybe get off the Qoolaid if you think Dominion are the conspiracy here...

I bet we're gonna see a fight between Giuliani and Trump now. Sick of this whole tantrum, peeps, let's move on. We have a pandemic to tackle, we have a shitty economy, we have shitty buggy software, we have corps creating walled gardens threatening the existence of the internet as we knew it, etcetera. Let's look towards the future even if the climate change seems too daunting, we may find a solution for that too.

I wonder if that isn't figuring into a republican strategy: let's get the public so exhausted with our nonsense that the Democrats won't want to hold us to account for fears of irritating the battle-fatigued public.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#537

Post by ashtonkem »

mbg721 wrote: post #534
ashtonkem wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what is and is not a “goofy procedural argument” in this case?

I would consider something like "the statute applies to telegrams sent within a state, so there is no standing" to be a goofy procedural argument.

Applying the actual text of a law is a goofy procedural argument?

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#538

Post by worldsayshi »

pwinnski wrote: post #263
worldsayshi wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe you misunderstood me. I meant that paper votes are superior so why bother complicating the process with machines. It gives reasons to not trust or understand the process. Most democracies work fine without voting machines.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#539

Post by dragonwriter »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #494
Pxtl wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

googles wiseenergy . Oh look it's the successor to WindpowerFacts.info, run by a climate change denier. I'm so ready to trust his opinion on legal matters.

You think those are fake links to stanford law on his site? The sources are of equal validity regardless of the messenger.

> You think those are fake links to stanford law on his site? The sources are of equal validity regardless of the messenger.

At least the links I checked (the only thing linked is the title of each case) were to the complaints, so they aren’t sources for the data in the table about the outcomes or grounds for the outcomes.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#540

Post by dstola »

ardy42 wrote: post #476
dstola wrote: post #376

Instead of filing massive law suits, why doesn't Dominion attempt to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that the machines were _not_ biased with technical evidence. I feel that open sourcing their code would definitely do the trick. It is kinda baffling that something as important as an election is ran on closed-source proprietary codebase.

> Instead of filing massive law suits, why doesn't Dominion attempt to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that the machines were _not_ biased with technical evidence. All right dstola: For the purposes of argument, I accuse you of being a thief who has embezzled millions of dollars from some company you've worked for. Instead of suing me for defamation for my lie, why don't you just prove beyond a shadow of a doubt…

> Maybe you could open source your bank account data, and all your movements to show that you couldn't have opened any secret accounts? That's a ridiculous ask.

Actually, maybe not open source, but otherwise that is exactly what would happen should I be suspect of being a thief. No reason why dominion cannot show their source code to professional investigators to get their name cleared right? If they are so vocal about being innocent, why not do it?

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