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Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

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Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#731
post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Outside of the context of this lawsuit; why should the burden of proof be on Dominion when the claims are made against them by the Trump Campaign? To extend your line of reasoning, if accused of a crime should you have to prove you didn’t do it? Or should the burden be on the accuser/prosecution?

I replied to this on multiple other comments in this thread. (they may be flagged or dead so may not be visible unless you have your settings set to show dead)

"Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply here since it's not a specific individual being accused of a crime. This is a PUBLIC process within a constitutional republic (which means we use a public process known as an election to decide who makes decisions), and I believe the results of aforementioned PUBLIC process should be PUBLICLY verifiable. That isn't an unfair statement.

Think about it, how do you know that Biden won? Considering you cannot prove that Biden won, and I cannot prove he didn't win, I'd say we have a pretty broken process.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what can be done to restore trust? given the foregoing, are you sure you want people to trust the government?

It would be nice if people could trust the outcome of the election. More specifically, it would be nice if establishment media and political figures didn't respond to this distrust with castigation. Distrusting government would still make sense for me personally. It would be idyllic if people looked towards decentralization, localism and private solutions. Trust in their local institutions or community, while drastic…

> It would be nice if people could trust the outcome of the election.

Well I don’t know, in 2017 a professor asked us if democracy was in crisis and I thought “its never been healthier”. For the first time I can remember, people were actually trying to hold the President accountable for something. Now it is true that most of that was driven by the fact that they didn’t like who the President happened to be at the time, so maybe we can get that to work in our favor again.

> More specifically, it would be nice if establishment media and political figures didn't respond to this distrust with castigation.

Well on the one hand I agree with that, but on the other hand this is the result of some complicated interactions (no matter how you view the facts on the ground). If their distrust is actually motivated and harmful then I’m sure its not an act for those establishment types to castigate it. On the other hand such activity is sure to increase distrust. So we’re stuck again.

> Distrusting government would still make sense for me personally. It would be idyllic if people looked towards decentralization, localism and private solutions. Trust in their local institutions or community, while drastically reducing the purview of the federal government. That's just my personal preference. I'm not sure it is applicable in the widespread, pragmatic sense.

I agree generally

> Some kind of political figure reaching across the aisle, recognizing the concerns of those who feel disenfranchised looks like the pragmatic solution that isn't happening. Instead I see actions and accusations that are predictably creating more division.

I agree

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#733
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here's the UK rules on spoilt ballots [1]. Here's [2] an article showing that such removed ballots sometimes get a larger share than a candidate, and that the rate is larger than the close state elections the US just had. Here's [3] some UK elections where 2.9% of all ballots were discarded because they were filled out wrong. So I don't think the UK evidence shows what you claim it does. The smallest UK spoilt ballot…

All of those spoilt ballot examples are where the proportion of spoiled ballots is high because voters are protesting. They don’t combat the claim that inadvertently spoiled ballots are rare, nor that spoiled ballots open to the possibility of fraud.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#734

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…

> And why doesn't anyone want to prove Biden won?

I think plenty of people do. Although I think a better goal would be to investigate errors and fraud and determine if the election results are accurate to a reasonable enough degree. (That is, don't go in with a foregone conclusion of who won or whether there was significant fraud or not.)

>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 in the opposite direction.

Here's one of the big accusations against Dominon in the Antrim County case[1]:

>We reviewed the Tabulation logs in their entirety for 11/6/2020. The election logs for Antrim County consist of 15,676 total lines or events. Of the 15,676 there were a total of 10,667 critical errors/warnings or a 68.05% error rate.

>The allowable election error rate established by the Federal Election Commission guidelines is of 1 in 250,000 ballots (.0008%). We observed an error rate of 68.05%. This demonstrated a significant and fatal error in security and election integrity.

Ryan Macias, former acting director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Voting System Testing and Certification Program said[2]

>But that “is based on a lack of understanding of the voting system,” Macias wrote.

> Macias told us in a phone interview that the “errors” described in the report are, essentially, entries of alerts from tabulation event logs — and that they don’t mean that something went wrong.

So this "68.05% error rate" I think is certainly debunked as not comparable to .0008%. You can't compare what percent of a program's log lines are warning logs to ballot errors. Also there's a math error, 1/250,000 is .0004% , not .0008% .

[1] https://www.9and10news.com/content/uploads/2020/12/Antrim_Mi...

[2] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-r...

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#735
post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

With "mountains of evidence of fraud", and more than one person alone who could have pulled this off, that means there was a conspiracy. Let's say there were a hundred people minimum in this conspiracy. When someone tells me how the election was stolen, I just ask them to name two of the conspirators. Just two, any two. Conspiracy is so much easier to prove in the courts than the actual crime. But all I get are blank…

If the alleged fraud did take place (and I'm not sure if it did or didn't), it was likely only a handful of string-pullers and lots of useful-idiots. There was so much emotion in this election cycle (based around hatred of Trump and people not realizing that different groups of people have different values), that they didn't have to look too hard to find the useful-idiots willing to help. A very well-orchestrated and strategic plan utilizing division and caps on information to those people could have pulled it off, all while minimizing loose ends.

It's in everyone's best interest to make sure this doesn't ever happen. I think in the short term it (at the very least) needs to be discussed to make more people aware. You need to keep in mind that a majority of the population is blind to many of the relevant FACTS that exist, thanks to the corrupt state of our mass media. The next-steps should be to see what actions can be taken to add transparency, decentralization, and public verification for elections moving forward. And we need to begin holding ALL politicians accountable when they lie or abuse their office for political or personal gains.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#736
post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"And why doesn't anyone want to prove Biden won?" There's an election process with many layers of oversight, that's the 'proof'. Just because there are what might appear to be opaque elements to us plebes, doesn't mean there is any material lack of integrity. Most tellingly: Giuliani himself did not argue fraud in court - because he could be disbarred for introducing garbage in that process. If the Giuliani/Trump cas…

> There's an election process with many layers of oversight, that's the 'proof'.

In what world do you live in where this statement constitutes as proof.

> Just because there are what might appear to be opaque elements to us plebes, doesn't mean there is any material lack of integrity.

This is extremely naive. Politicians take shits just like you and me, power is an illusion.

I believe I've touched on most of your other points in my other replies. (may need to have HN settings set to showdead=yes to view them)

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#737
post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ID verification disenfranchises How so? How many eligible voters don't already have government issued IDs?

The most common government-issued ID is a driver's license, to the point that it can sometimes be hard to get a government ID that isn't a driver's license. So anyone who can't drive has an uphill battle--predominantly blind people, as well as poor people who live in the inner city where car ownership is infeasibly expensive. Another commonish case is tribal reservations, where tribal documentation is usually suffici…

> it can sometimes be hard to get a government ID that isn't a driver's license

As far as I know every state will issue a picture ID, similar to a driver's license but which doesn't confer driving privileges. to someone who doesn't drive.

If the argument is that people who can't drive will find it more difficult to make it to the office that gives out government issued IDs, the obvious solutions are (1) put more of those offices in places like inner cities, convenient to public transportation, and (2) have the political activists who spend so much time complaining about disenfranchisement do some actual work instead and provide people transportation to and from the offices.

> the state might not consider a tribal ID sufficient to vote

The solution to that is obvious too: either fix the state law or fix the tribal ID requirements so they meet existing state law.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#738
post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The accusations in the article you linked are fact-based and mostly related to security. They're not comparable to the lunacy people are inventing about Dominion.

Yeah, I wasn't taking a position wrt to Dominion. I am saying it would be good to have much more confidence in the voting system than we have. From any political persuasion.

We have nonpartisan security researchers, as well as election experts from both sides, who say the election was secure. No state is totally leaving it up to machines. There are paper ballots as well as "sanity checks" throughout the process.

The voting machines may have vulnerabilities, but there is bipartisan consensus that it wouldn't be possible to change election results without raising an alarm.

For one thing, you couldn't predict which counties/states to tamper with ahead of time.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

They had four years to do something about this apparently pressing, urgent, critical threat to democracy.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#740
post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is little if any actual evidence of voter fraud, but plenty of evidence that making voting harder (via voter ID validation, biometric markings, etc) simply disenfranchises voters. It's easy to say that software can just be hacked, but just because its a possibility doesn't give you the right to invalidate an election.

This is a cop-out. Other countries seem to be able to have voter identification, the US should be capable of it, too. Start by making the identity card free-as-in-beer, bonus points for not requiring a permanent address.

I don't present ID in the UK when I vote. I show my polling card (which they send me in the mail as a registered voter), state my name and address and receive my ballot.
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