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Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

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Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#552

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…

Between server logs disappearing, servers themselves disappearing, USB devices being plugged into voting machines throughout election night, voting machines being connected to the internet, quick destruction of paper ballots, routing of vote data through multiple foreign countries, Dominion refusing to allow inspection of source code, and Dominion apparently being controlled by Chinese companies: Why do you assume he's lying?

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think their argument was particularly strong, and even if it was, disenfranchising 6 million voters who voted in good faith per their individual US Constitutional right would never be a sensical remedy for an error in procedure by officials.

> I don’t think their argument was particularly strong The lower court seemed to indicate they were going to win on it before it was dismissed on procedure. > disenfranchising 6 million voters who voted in good faith per their individual US Constitutional right would never be a sensical remedy for an error in procedure by officials. The problem is that once the election has been conducted in violation of the law, tha…

The alternative is, sue before the election, so that the election is held with the correct procedure. You had months. Don't sue after the election.

And don't ask for state legislators to pick the winner, either. Voters weren't voting for presidential electors when they voted for state legislators.

And don't say "you don't actually know who won". Yes, we do in fact know perfectly well who won. What you perhaps mean is "we don't know who would have won under what the rules should have been." Well, perhaps, but we know who won under what the rules were. You don't want that set of rules? Sue before the election. You had months.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#554
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you take the printout from one machine and insert it into another to be scanned? I agree that would satisfy auditability, since you can look at the printout and make sure it's correct. Were these Dominion voting machines?

I don't know which company makes them, but the machines at my polling site in Washington DC are like this. You fill in your ballot on the machine, which has clear visual feedback as you go along and helps with procedural things like "pick up to 2".

When you're done, the machine prints a paper ballot and asks you to inspect it. You then click OK on the machine, take the ballot from your booth over to a separate counting machine, and deposit it there.

It's really quite pleasant, there is a strong audit trail, and the machines afford a wide variety of assistive options (large font, headphone jack for audio, different languages, etc)

Also I had the option to get a printed ballot and fill it out witih a pen if I wanted to.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laches isn't a "punt". Laches is, the courts don't like being used as a machine for your lawsuit to hold the public hostage. You don't get to see grounds for suing, do nothing, then once the results of the lawsuit will do maximum damage to the public, then sue. The courts are not interested in letting you use them for, essentially, blackmail. If you knew months before the election that the rules were being changed, w…

I used the wrong word, but it remains that the judges didn't normally rule on the actual arguments of the case, which were ridiculous in their own right.

Strong disagree. The judges dismissed mainly (totally) on two grounds - laches, and failure to state a legal case. If you're just whining, the court isn't going to hear you. Get out of here with that stuff and stop wasting our time, says the court. They aren't your chance to stand up and rant about stuff.

And laches is, you didn't like the rules? Sue before the election; you had plenty of time. You wait until after? No, we're not going to let you hold the election hostage. Suing after looks like you didn't like the results you got under the rules, but you didn't have a problem with the rules going in. Why should the courts let you throw out everybody's vote because you didn't like the results? Why do you not think that is ridiculous?

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#557
Allowing a private company to used closed-source proprietary systems for democratic elections, and then allowing that company to sue people which call into question the validity of those systems, is peak Americanism. But of course, once Giuliani is inevitably sentenced with defamation, there will be articles everywhere saying how once again, democracy has triumphed. War is peace.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#558
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still super relevant to note that whereever they were in court Rudy et al were very careful to say we're not alleging or prosecuting fraud here because they could be hit with perjury for lying to the court. When not under the treat of perjury is when the election was a fraud.

As far as I know he only said that in the Pennsylvania case, because they had quite a strong argument there that the rules changes made in Pennsylvania violated their state constitution, and then given limited time/resources they went with the argument there that was easier to prove. But that was one of the cases dismissed over procedure. The courts essentially said they should have complained about it before the ele…

>As far as I know he only said that in the Pennsylvania case

Not only him but also other Trump lawyers on separate occasions in Pennsylvania. See for example https://www.newsweek.com/trump-campaign-lawyer-tells-pa-judg...

There was a similar story in Arizona: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-cries-election-fraud-in-c...

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The machine count of mail-in ballots is checked by a hand count audit. For instance, in Georgia every ballot was recounted by humans to confirm the accuracy of the machine count.

The hand count didn't address any of the risks people were actually worried about. It could not have caught either of the types of fraud I mentioned above, for example. Read the interview I posted with Philip Stark, Berkeley Math Dean who is probably the leading expert on election auditing having designed the procedures for conducting risk-limiting audits in many states. He explains this in detail.

Debating with the left on this is like debating with a brick wall. You try to have a logical conversation about the basic security aspects involved here and they respond by calling you a conspiracy theorist and change the underlying subject.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As to (3), Ken and others have also pointed out, Rudy or Sydney Powel being lawyers have a duty to know this sort of thing so there's a chance that they'll be found to have actual malice even without a finding that Rudy was knowingly lying.

Serious Question: Why is everyone assuming they're lying? And why doesn't anyone want to prove Biden won? From my perspective, the accusations he made were completely dodged by Dominion and by Democrats (since their guy was labeled the winner by the media). I'm not aware of any individual claim that was debunked via substantiating evidence. They refused to answer, refused to report it in the media, and ran full speed…

As a general rule of thumb, if you make an extraordinary claim, the burden lies on your to provide proof if you want to be believed. Claiming that there was widespread election fraud, including by the companies making some of the devices, is an extraordinary claim. It doesn't appear there's been any proof provided to back up those extraordinary claims. As such, they can, and should, be ignored.
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