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Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

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Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#161

Post by CydeWeys »

chaganated wrote: post #157
CydeWeys wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Braille is also, famously, very expensive as a computer interface relative to audio (e.g. https://www.boundlessat.com/Blindness/Braille-Displays/Brail... ), plus not as many people can use it as can use audio.

Why must everything involve the computer? It was on paper when I was a kid, didn't require an army of six-figure salaries, and things seemed to go far more smoothly.

And it's still on paper, just now with some electronic augmentation that makes vote counting instant and lowers the error rate.

Do you not remember how problematic the purely paper voting systems were? How many errors were made in the voting and the counts and how long it took to get the final results in close elections? Florida 2000 is a famous, widely-known example. The computers are clearly better.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#162

Post by lokar »

rpiguyshy wrote: post #14

before donald trump was ever in office, i always believed that these voting machines are complete bullshit. our entire voting system is bullshit. and it would be easy to fix. these machines have been shown to be massively flawed and vulnerable to hacking/tinkering. again, this was my opinion before donald trump was elected.

I had that view for the older direct recording systems with no paper trail.

But these seem to record on each machine for a quick count the night of, but then also produce a paper ballot for an audit. Much better. It would be even better if the paper ballot was easy for the voter to quickly validate.

But as long as the machine is really just helping you mark a paper ballot, and it's the paper ballot that is "official" end the end, it seems much safer.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#163

Post by rtkwe »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #155
HenryKissinger wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Once you know how the sausage is made, sometimes you don't want to eat sausages. I actually do think that digital voting is theoretically possible, if done cautiously and in an open source manner. (it needs to be fully open source to be verifiable at all) A remaining problem is that -in an election system- every voter needs to be able to check and perceive that the election was honest. That could still be a bit trick…

One big barrier to online voting is that you don't want people to be able to be forced to show their votes which makes any kind of verification immensely difficult (you have to accomodate people needing to show a fake verification) because otherwise you leave things open to voter intimidation and vote buying.

Another is that by going online you instantly open the attack surface up massively. Currently to steal an election you have to physically move a large number of people to a broad set of voting sites or send in a lot of forged mail votes. Those both require physically doing something in the US where an online system lets anyone in the world potentiall attack the system.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#164

Post by isbadawi »

walkedaway wrote: post #143
isbadawi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "cont…

Yes she claims the election was stolen. Her words. The Capital Hill attack was partially a result of unchecked claims from Dems and left-leaning media claiming Trump was an illegitimate President. Somehow people here think that's ok while Rudy/Trump's claims are not. Smh.

It's fine to take issue with charged language like the word "stolen", which can be interpreted in different ways; maybe you interpret that as "I won the vote count but the votes were changed", but it could also be reasonably interpreted as "I lost the vote count but I'm concerned people were influenced to vote that way through nefarious means".

I think there is a reasonable distinction between that statement and the specific claims of fraud we have been seeing for the last few months.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#165

Post by CydeWeys »

reaperducer wrote: post #115
corrys wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hand counting can be manipulated too [0], so the idea that we can just move back to it and save our democracy is not accurate (or at least not a complete solution). In other words, dishonest politicians will find ways to exploit our fears even if we use paper ballots. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02613...

No one ever claimed that hand-counting is perfect. Is isn't. For example, all of the Chicago ballot boxes that famously ended up in Lake Michigan in the middle of the last century. But hand-counting works because it's virtually impossible to coordinate fraud widespread enough to actually make a difference. Whereas, if your entire voting system is computerized and all the computers are linked together, causing widespr…

Good thing hand counting can be (and is) used with the Dominion voting machines to verify the electronic result, then.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#166

Post by gamblor956 »

r00fus wrote: post #150
tartoran wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All allegations against Dominion voting machines were pretty much disproved by subsequent manual vote courting. Again, the machines leave a paper trail that allows manual counting for verification. That makes simple handcounting without any assistance more prone to errors and less paper trail as well.

In what world would manual counting have less paper trail? What is for sure - with voting machines, there is less validation. Hand counting means - all ballots are counted always (by volunteers with all parties invited) - whereas voting machines means a spot-test (in some states), and only a full manual count is when a recount is demanded. All this to say - I think Dominion did a thorough job - but this all only happ…

Voting by hand takes days, which is why it is only done automatically for close elections.

However, a losing candidate may request a recount after the election. In most states, if the margin is outside of a stated threshold, that candidate must pay for the recount. If there is a discrepancy between the two counts, then a hand recount is performed.

If an election isn't close, then the respective Secretary of State will audit (by hand) a random selection of precincts to verify vote totals match, but this is a security check and generally takes place weeks after the election.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#167

Post by chaganated »

CydeWeys wrote: post #161
chaganated wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why must everything involve the computer? It was on paper when I was a kid, didn't require an army of six-figure salaries, and things seemed to go far more smoothly.

And it's still on paper, just now with some electronic augmentation that makes vote counting instant and lowers the error rate. Do you not remember how problematic the purely paper voting systems were? How many errors were made in the voting and the counts and how long it took to get the final results in close elections? Florida 2000 is a famous, widely-known example. The computers are clearly better.

So, the people who can't get hole-punching and ballot layout right are going to "fix" things with two programming languages, three databases, and a dozen or so support libraries?

Also, Florida 2000 is a strange example, considering the present drama. We've only gone from a simple controversy to a more complex one.

Per Bruce Schneier:

> If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems, and you don't understand the technology.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#168

Post by pwinnski »

mbg721 wrote: post #106
arcticfox wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Giuliani was doing wasn't dissent, it wasn't a difference of opinion or anything remotely similar. It was straight up lying. Yes, defamation should be chilled.

Good, then prosecute him for the actual crimes he committed.

That's exactly what this is. It's a lawsuit filed by the injured party, alleging defamation. Now a court will hear the evidence and (probably) find Giuliani guilty, because he very clearly engaged in defamation.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#169

Post by mypalmike »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #10
ashtonkem wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be much more worried about the absolutely insane nonsense that Giuliani and his ilk have been spewing. That is far more damaging to voting machine research than this lawsuit.

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.

Nothing can "fix the issue" when the issue is primarily that some candidates will not accept a losing outcome.

Had this election been entirely hand-counted, the same claims of fraud would have arisen. When a candidate declares in advance of an election that he can only lose if there is fraud, you can be sure he will act in bad faith if he loses.

Incredulity was all he needed to claim fraud - the numerous conspiracy theories explaining the fraud would inevitably surface after the fact. If it's not Dominion voting machines, it's dead voters, boxes of ballots showing up, and hand wavy claims of the opposition being in charge of the counting and abusing that role.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#170

Post by mbg721 »

aww_dang wrote: post #152
mbg721 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have realpolitik, we have an establishment building a giant razor-wire fence around itself and screaming that any objection is racism and treason.

Clearly the steps being taken are not restoring trust in political institutions.

As I think you've gathered, I'm coming from the "the trust is already gone" side.
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