Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani • Hacker News Board

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#131

Post by tedunangst » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

not2b wrote: post #103

adictator wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would anyone know they are baseless unless a proper investigation is conducted independently? What about the thousands of sworn affidavits? Surely, ALL of them can't be lying.

Of those affidavits that were brought to court, many of them were tossed for being hearsay (someone swore that they heard someone else say that a third party did something), or called out standard vote counting practices as being suspicious, or were otherwise irrelevant. In many cases Trump's people went to court saying "We're not alleging fraud" and instead tried to get rules changed to throw out votes in blue areas…

Fact check: the count for PA currently stands at 3.

https://www.citizensvoice.com/news/crime-emergencies/forty-f...

https://www.phillyvoice.com/voter-fraud-pennsylvania-trump-e...

https://www.dailylocal.com/news/chester-county-man-facing-tr...

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#132

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

HenryKissinger wrote: post #31

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as potentially hackable voting machines are used in elections, the anxiety about hacking will be there and will eventually be exploited by politicians. If we want to fix the issue, we really just need to move back to hand counting paper ballots.

For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. Does the future of voting not belong to online remote voting, like almost everything else? You can even buy a house from your phone now. In the future, we will know the results of the election as soon as the online polls close. The future is paperless.

> For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots.

I'm not. No one understands as well as technologists how often “novel technology” represents a regression from the tried and true, and how much the cry of “new” is used to sell defective crap.

> You can even buy a house from your phone now.

This is technically partially true in that a lot (not all) home purchase and finance paperwork can be done via electronically signed documents, and if you have a tolerance for extremely bad UI you can sign those on a phone. Typically, you’ll still need some wet signatures (notarized even) at the end of the process.

But that’s, even if it was completely accurate, a different problem domain than voting. (Both have concerns for assurance, but only one also has nonattribution as a critical goal.)

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#133

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

julienchastang wrote: post #89

bredren wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not what is happening. Time and time again the repeated phrase is there is no evidence of _widespread_ voter fraud.

Or "sufficient voter fraud that would change the outcome of an election".

Yeah, there's a tiny smattering of cases (the most memorable ones to me being Republican voters trying to counter supposed fraud with some fraud of their own) that get caught but nowhere near enough to impact elections. Much more prevalent though is intentional voter disenfranchisement keeping people from voting and gerrymandering.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#134

Post by tptacek » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

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 damage (there are some exceptions to (2) that aren't relevant here). Most defamation cases you hear about fall apart on (1) - they target non-falsifiable statements of opinion, which can't be defamation because they don't purport to relate an objective fact. What makes Dominion's cases terrifying is that they are chock full of purported facts, all of which are batshit, and have so devastated Dominion's reputation, in a reputation-intensive business, that it had to hire private security to protect its employees from death threats.

What makes the case challenging for Dominion is that they will almost certainly be treated as a public figure for the purposes of the case. The standard for defamation of a public figure is higher than that of a normal person; we add a condition (3): actual malice or negligence, meaning Dominion must show that Giuliani either intended to destroy Dominion's reputation by spreading facts he knew to be false, or that he was at least negligent, acting with reckless disregard for the truth.

The problem is that it's not totally clear whether Giuliani believed any of his crazy-talk. It may actually be the case that Giuliani is just off his rocker. If he himself was sold by the (false) facts he received from others, he is a more difficult defamation target.

Here's attorney Akiva Cohen analyzing the case a bit:

https://twitter.com/AkivaMCohen/status/1353700596407283721

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#135

Post by ncallaway » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #116

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…

The attack vector isn’t the tabulation, it’s the mail-in ballot sleeves. The identity of the voter is on the outer envelope which is separated from the ballot and destroyed after their signature is checked. An attacker could insert manufactured ballots to be tabulated after this process and there would be no way to know if they are legitimate or not - they’re anonymous now too so you can’t check with the voter and th…

The exact same criticism can be applied to regular in-person voting.

It's a criticism of the concept of anonymous ballots, not actually a criticism of mail in voting.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#136

Post by not2b » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #131

not2b wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of those affidavits that were brought to court, many of them were tossed for being hearsay (someone swore that they heard someone else say that a third party did something), or called out standard vote counting practices as being suspicious, or were otherwise irrelevant. In many cases Trump's people went to court saying "We're not alleging fraud" and instead tried to get rules changed to throw out votes in blue areas…

Fact check: the count for PA currently stands at 3. https://www.citizensvoice.com/news/crime-emergencies/forty-f... https://www.phillyvoice.com/voter-fraud-pennsylvania-trump-e... https://www.dailylocal.com/news/chester-county-man-facing-tr...

Thanks for the correction, but it doesn't change my point: the amount of actual fraud was too small to make a difference by four orders of magnitude.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#137

Post by isbadawi » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

walkedaway wrote: post #119

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

Completely agree. Let's hold our politicians accountable. https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019...

These aren't accusations of voter (or election) fraud in the same sense as was being claimed for 2020. From your second link:

> During the tour's stop Friday in Seattle, Clinton pointed to FBI Director Christopher Wray's warning last month that Russia continues to pose a "very significant counterintelligence threat" and that efforts to influence U.S. elections with "social media, fake news" and "propaganda" has "continued pretty much unabated."

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#138

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

NicoJuicy wrote: post #27

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as potentially hackable voting machines are used in elections, the anxiety about hacking will be there and will eventually be exploited by politicians. If we want to fix the issue, we really just need to move back to hand counting paper ballots.

That doesn't give anyone the right to say baseless claims and present them as facts on front of millions of people.

[deleted]

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#139

Post by nostromo » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #135

nostromo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attack vector isn’t the tabulation, it’s the mail-in ballot sleeves. The identity of the voter is on the outer envelope which is separated from the ballot and destroyed after their signature is checked. An attacker could insert manufactured ballots to be tabulated after this process and there would be no way to know if they are legitimate or not - they’re anonymous now too so you can’t check with the voter and th…

The exact same criticism can be applied to regular in-person voting. It's a criticism of the concept of anonymous ballots, not actually a criticism of mail in voting.

There are proposals on how to make the system more secure to this attack without eliminating anonymity. However I believe they would all eliminate same day registration.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#140

Post by useerup » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

adictator wrote: post #38

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

How would anyone know they are baseless unless a proper investigation is conducted independently? What about the thousands of sworn affidavits? Surely, ALL of them can't be lying.

Baseless means that there is no proof of the allegations. Dominion is under no obligation to prove the that the election was fair. Guiliani now have the opportunity through discovery to support his allegations, or at least the was in good faith. If he fails to do so he risk being on the hook for $1B+.

It is curious that of all his public allegations against Dominion, he never asserted those in court. He is a lawyer and is aware of the consequences of asserting false accusations or frivolous suits in court. No doubt he will point to Sidney Powell and claim he was in good faith.

Most of the claims he made were pretty outlandish, and IMO he (especially as a lawyer) should now better. This is going to be interesting.

He publicly claimed that the Dominion machines "switched votes" even after the hand-count in Georgia confirmed that the machine count had indeed been accurate.