Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani • Hacker News Board

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#661

Post by ineedasername » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

qwerty12345678 wrote: post #588

RHSeeger wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're referring to Hitchens's Razor, which I believe is a flawed mindset that's used selectively as it suits people. The situation here is that the proof is very well hidden, and therefore the situation has been rendered un-falsifiable. This is now essentially a Russell's Teapot[1] statement. I'd say when people start storming the US Capitol, it's time to stop ignoring the underlying issue. Why are you so afraid of…

This doesn't come down to Hitchen's razor, or any other etiquette of debate or rhetoric. It is simple innocence until proven guilty. Asserting fraud is making an accusation that crimes occurred, and the burden of proof is not on the accused.

The idea that the proof is too well hidden is itself un-falsifiable, as any amount of effort to find proof, if it doesn't exist, can simply be dismissed as "well it's just too well hidden".

If you are starting from an assumption of guilt, then sure: any lack of evidence will always appear to be evidence that is well hidden. If you assume guilt then it is practically axiomatic that lack of evidence really means it's well hidden.

Storming the Capitol does not change the burden of proof. The underlying issues have also been addressed in a few dozen failed court cases. By all means examine the evidence, but actually have some: saying you can't because it's too well hidden is not a rational approach.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#662

Post by leric » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:20 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #509

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the claims if significant vote fraud were thrown out by courts up and down the land, including the Supreme Court I don’t believe that is true. As far as I know, there weren’t really any claims of voter fraud from Trump’s legal team.

The claim is that voter laws were changed by Secretaries of State rather than the legislatures as is required by the constitution. Secretaries of State changing voter laws is unconstitutional. Read the constitution. It’s crystal clear. That happened. It’s a fact.

This is what censorship looks like in hackernews

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#663

Post by someonehere » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:20 AM UTC

https://www.cnet.com/news/lawmakers-turn-to-hackers-at-def-c...

It’s possible. If you DDG “voting machines defcon“ you’ll get articles of various manufacturers who have had voting machines broken into by DEFCON attendees. You can buy old voting machines on eBay.

There’s plenty of evidence out there that ethical hackers proved machines can be tampered with. If ethical hackers can prove it’s possible, is it possible that votes could have been manipulated?

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#664

Post by standardUser » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #605

voxl wrote: 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.

"Start by making the identity card free-as-in-beer..."

The people putting forward voter ID laws usually do the opposite. They want to make obtaining an ID more difficult and make that ID a requirement to vote. If we just say "getting and ID should be easy" but don't actually make it easy, and then we increase voter ID requirements, we are disenfranchising voters.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#665

Post by throwaway32871 » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #639

qwerty12345678 wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you bring up technical backgrounds, how do you feel about the voting machines having logs erased for 2020 but not 2016? And would you be against analyzing all election machine logs related to server-activity/internet-usage/usb-activity/code-execution-activity/etc? If you really claim that they were bullshitting , why is everyone so afraid to release that data? And not question why it was deleted? Giuliani was j…

How about you show me a single credible source that backs up your claim the logs were deleted? Quit being dishonest, or worse spreading ignorance by accident.

It's too difficult to decide credibility with the limited information we have and so the best thing to do is to look at opposing arguments to see which thing makes the most sense logically. In that respect, here is (I believe) the report which shows the numbers put out by the machine are not reliable, at least, and also gives evidence that 2020 log files were deleted whereas 2016 log files were not: https://www.9and10news.com/content/uploads/2020/12/Antrim_Mi...

Next, we know the state's mouthpiece will try to refute that handily, so we take a look at such an article, from Michigan itself:

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/14/m...

In particular, pay attention to the confounding of two separate issues to discredit the above forensic report:

> The group previously claimed there were six precincts with more than 120% turnout in the state's election. But its data was incorrect, according to publicly available turnout numbers.

"The group" did not make such claims or at least I could not find any, it was the affiant who did and he is management at the company. I could not actually find the source material on this so I am trusting the article.

Anyway, what is important is what was NOT refuted in the article.

Because, quite possibly, there is where efforts should be focused. These pieces of presumably factual evidence should be refuted by an adversarial party but are not and are just left to be memory holed.

I have not yet found anything specifically refuting the forensics report above. Simply news articles confounding things in what appears to be an effort to discredit findings. Not that I've looked too hard, mind you.

So I'm still wondering... why are 2020 logs missing while 2016 logs remain? Why do the machines give different numbers for the same votes?

These are important questions. Do not think we'll get an answer though.

And for the record, I always found Bush's Diebold election fishy.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#666

Post by aw1621107 » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:26 AM UTC

bdowling wrote: post #643

dragonwriter wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The courts didn’t “entertain” them because of standing. Cases weren’t thrown out on merits. No court has actually heard evidence. This is false on several levels. One, several cases went through trial to a verdict. Second, of those that did not, several were thrown out on grounds that while perhaps “procedural”, include as part of their standards review of the actual and proferred evidence in the light most favorab…

> When cases are, as many of the Trump & allied cases were, thrown out for this reason, the court is making a finding on the merits ... That's not the way lawyers use the term "on the merits". See, e.g., [0]. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/on_the_merits

From the last sentence of that link (emphasis added):

> The distinction between decisions that rest on the merits rather than on procedural grounds is important because a decision on the merits is considered final and is thus bound by res judicata... Decisions that do not rest on the merits, however, are not bound by res judicata because the claims were not properly heard. Thus, these claims may be brought forth in a subsequent case, excluding dismissals due to a failure to state a claim.

In addition, from Federated Department Stores, Inc. v. Moitie [0]:

> The dismissal for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) is a "judgment on the merits." See Angel v. Bullington, 330 U. S. 183, 330 U. S. 190 (1947); Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678 (1946).

[0]: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/452/394/

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#667

Post by throwaway32871 » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:26 AM UTC

boulos wrote: post #601

qwerty12345678 wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're referring to Hitchens's Razor, which I believe is a flawed mindset that's used selectively as it suits people. The situation here is that the proof is very well hidden, and therefore the situation has been rendered un-falsifiable. This is now essentially a Russell's Teapot[1] statement. I'd say when people start storming the US Capitol, it's time to stop ignoring the underlying issue. Why are you so afraid of…

Russell’s teapot doesn’t fit in this case. Paper ballots exist. Many were manually recounted (whether by optical scanner or by hand). Are there actually claims of miscounted votes that you feel were miscounted or incorrectly treated that you feel are verifiable? (And haven’t already been refuted via evidence)

Just FYI, some machines work as follows:

   * Scan in ballot
   * If there is an error in the ballot, send for adjudication
   * Original ballot gets lost (destroyed?)

In one case, there is a clip of an official saying that they had a 60% adjudication rate which is concerning. Basically saying that 60% of votes were decided by people other than the voters.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#668

Post by luxuryballs » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

enkid wrote: post #573

qwerty12345678 wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have any evidence of any of this? If so, why was this not presented in any of the 60 court cases?

You can look up each case and see what the rulings were, in some cases the lawsuits were dismissed before evidence could be presented. I have seen other people claim this and get buried which confuses me, is it just not ok to talk about the idea that there was election fraud which has been noticed but not confirmed? It should be OK to talk about this, especially in a democracy.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#669

Post by luxuryballs » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:28 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #645

ahupp wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source doesn't really help here, because even if I can see the source I don't have a way to verify what was running. It's more important to just not rely on software for the critical path, and make sure there's an auditable paper trail.

Verifying what software is actually running is orthogonal to having that software be open for the public to inspect. You can have closed source software and still have a problem verifying what is running.

What he means is that it doesn’t matter what source code is published and open it only matters what is compiled and deployed to the machine last.

Re: Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani

#670

Post by luxuryballs » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:29 AM UTC

mmazing wrote: post #513

chrisco255 wrote: post #469

I think it's nuts for a modern democracy to allow for anything but open source software being used to count paper ballots with chain-of-custody records, voter ID validation, biometric markings, and redacted ballots being published on the web for all to view and count independently. Software systems can easily be hacked, and it isn't easy to inspect and tell. A vote is a one time, one sided transaction. It's not as ea…

It's terrible to see some of the disinformation that is out there regarding open source software. Time and time again open source is shown to be the way to go, and you still hear lies about how it's not safe. I can already hear the politicians going on about how "being open source" lets "anyone put their own back door in! BE AFRAID!"

Open source is good but there would need to also be some way to confirm that the last deployed binary was actually that source code, which with physical access to the machine you could always change. I don’t think computers should be used for this at all.