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I hope whatever happens with these lawsuits it chills the baseless accusations of voter fraud used to undermine voter confidence in our democracy
by yesdocs 6y ago
I hope whatever happens with these lawsuits it chills the baseless accusations of voter fraud used to undermine voter confidence in our democracy
- tomp 6y agoWon’t baseless accusations of no voter fraud undermine the confidence even more? After all, is there any evidence for voter fraud in Russia?
- bredren 6y agoThis is not what is happening. Time and time again the repeated phrase is there is no evidence of _widespread_ voter fraud.
- julienchastang 6y agoOr "sufficient voter fraud that would change the outcome of an election".
- rtkwe 6y agoYeah, 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dragontamer 6y agoPresumably, the issue is baseless accusations in general. It doesn't matter what side a baseless claim happens: its bad either way. Dominion Voting Systems must prove that Rudy Giuliani was making up information to succeed in this court case. Unfortunately, defamation is surprisingly hard to win in the USA (which is why the US's Tabloid media can get so far with so many claims). Dominion Voting Systems is not a public figure however, its a company. That... probably makes it easier to win this case. Still, if Dominion's lawyers think that this case is worth pursuing (despite the difficulty of defamation / libel / slander), that doesn't bode well for Rudy.
- astrange 6y agoA company can be a public figure.
- ardy42 6y ago> Won’t baseless accusations of no voter fraud undermine the confidence even more? > After all, is there any evidence for voter fraud in Russia? The accusations of there being no voter fraud in the 2020 US election fraud aren't baseless: all the verification checks have passed, and for that to happen and fraud to have occurred would require a conspiracy of unbelievable scale and secrecy. Also, the claims that there is fraud are not just baseless, they're incoherent. While Russia may make baseless claims their elections are fair, there's more than enough evidence to disbelieve them (like how they disqualify and murder their political opponents).
- adictator 6y agoHow 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.
- onion2k 6y agoSurely, ALL of them can't be lying. Why not?
- adictator 6y agoCoz there is a significant risk of penalty, of jail time. That's what a sworn affidavit is, is it not?
- tunesmith 6y agoYou can create a sworn affidavit that says you suspected someone did something evil. It's a true statement that doesn't prove someone did something evil.
- purchaceallsus 6y agoDid you read the affidavits? They include statements of fact, not just "I felt it was wrong." They can therefore be disproven with material evidence. If they are disproven with material evidence then that person will go to jail.
- tunesmith 6y agoThis does not imply that "If the person does not go to jail, then the person was telling the truth."
- purchaceallsus 6y agoNo but it does make it less likely that they were lying, because of the penalty of jail time.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mbg721 6y agoDissent is only to be tolerated when it's politically convenient. Come on, man.
- bredren 6y agoI get a sense that these threads are getting worked over with automation.
- yesdocs 6y agoDissent when it’s politically convenient, is just dissent.
- arcticfox 6y agoWhat 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.
- phone8675309 6y agoLove it when corporations use lawsuits to chill speech
- tartoran 6y agoIt's their right to defend their reputation. If there is any proof against them let those come to light and if the machines are indeed not good let the company go belly up. But what if the allegations are lies? Shouldn't the originators of those lies take responsibility?
- phone8675309 6y agoOf course they should be able to sue if the can show actual damages, but then that’s not chilling speech. I took GP meaning that they want corporations to shut down anything they don’t like. That’s typically what’s meant by chilling speech.
- polishTar 6y agoLaws against defamation chill defamation.
- CydeWeys 6y agoThey have a good shot at being able to successfully show actual damages here, so it sounds like you're onboard with these lawsuits.
- adrr 6y agoPretty easy to show damages. Their employees are getting death threats. People are calling for dominion equipment to be disallowed from future elections.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- NDizzle 6y agoWhat's your response to the activities highlighted in this 1m21s video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNM3K0cH2tc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNM3K0cH2tc Non transparency. Bullies chasing out witnesses and poll watchers. Why?
- kreeben 6y agoI'm sure that if you bring this to court they'll settle any disputes we might have about it.
- azinman2 6y agoThere’s absolutely zero context to any of it. That is the opposite of evidence.
- rm999 6y agoI usually avoid commenting on political stuff, but my advice is to please find a better source for information than Scott Adams. He's a smart guy, but he is a strong proponent of "persuasion", i.e. changing people's minds is more valuable to him than presenting the facts accurately. This video is a classic example of his persuasion style, which is to make sloppy claims with flimsy evidence simply to make his opponents spend more time thinking about those claims. I know on HN we can do better than that. In his own words: https://www.businessinsider.com/dilbert-creator-scott-adams-explains-trumps-persuasion-style-2017-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/dilbert-creator-scott-adams-...
- NDizzle 6y agoAre you saying that I should track down and link each video of each of those individual situations that happened? And put it in a post on HN to be downvoted exactly as much as the Scott Adams video? Pardon me for getting the exact same results for like 1/80th the amount of work. Go ahead and dismiss all of those videos because they are in a supercut featuring Scott Adams. You do you.
- andrewprock 6y ago
- walkedaway 6y agoCompletely agree. Let's hold our politicians accountable. https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080 https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/05/06/hillary-clinton-warns-2020-democratic-candidates-stolen-election/1116477001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- isbadawi 6y agoThese 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."
- walkedaway 6y agoYes 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.
- isbadawi 6y agoIt'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.
- LaMarseillaise 6y agoUnfortunately, I think the numerous tangential and unsubstantiated comments in this very thread suggest that the strategy has been highly successful. While I imagine Dominion could win against Giuliani, he is only one person and this disinformation has been spread through many channels. I expect we will see it again. Edit: grammar.
- bonestamp2 6y agoOne of the things that makes this more complex is that we should be skeptical of any person, company or machine that handles election data and has the power to make any significant change to that data. So, I think the dissenters at least got the skepticism part right. The problem, of course, is that a healthy level of skepticism should only inform the investigation of facts, and then perhaps new legislation and oversight. Without the investigation, oversight or legislation... the skepticism is pointless. For example, it's unfortunate that gaming machines in Las Vegas have more oversight and regulations than voting machines. That doesn't necessarily there is a problem with voting machines, but it does mean we could do more to ensure there isn't a problem with them now or in the future. Dominion has not done anything to lose my trust, but when it comes our elections, we should have proper oversight over these machines (no matter who makes them since there are multiple suppliers for voting machines).
- simonh 6y ago> Without the investigation, oversight or legislation... the skepticism is pointless. Which is the tell that Trump didn’t believe his own claims of vote fraud. Bear in mind he pulled exactly the same stunt in 2016 claiming massive vote fraud but when he won never mentioned it again until 2020. If he’d actually believed there was vote fraud or a chance of it, he would have done something about it. Investigations, hearings, technical audits, best practices and standards. Statistical analysis to identify issues (as against the analyses that do happen that show insignificant fraud). He had 4 years to sort this out. You’d think it would be one if his top priorities. Of course none of that happened because the whole show is entirely performative. In fact doing anything about it would take his excuse away, because if he addressed vote security he couldn’t blame vote security issues on anyone else.
- underseacables 6y agoWhy is it baseless to challenge voter fraud concerns? If anything this will chill future concerns and people will not speak up. It sounds like you don’t want anyone to ever question a vote.
- ardy42 6y ago> Why is it baseless to challenge voter fraud concerns? If anything this will chill future concerns and people will not speak up. It sounds like you don’t want anyone to ever question a vote. For the same reason it's (probably) baseless for a coworker of yours to claim you've been embezzling millions from your employer for years. It's basically a false accusation.
- gspr 6y agoStop excusing the coupmakers.
- tw04 6y ago>Why is it baseless to challenge voter fraud concerns? It's not baseless to claim voter fraud when you have proof. It's baseless when you claim voter fraud without any actual proof. >If anything this will chill future concerns and people will not speak up. It sounds like you don’t want anyone to ever question a vote. It sounds like he expects the President of the United States to act with the integrity the office commands. Not ask/condone/allow his lawyer to lie on television (where he can make up any lie he wants) while admitting there was no fraud in court (where he's actually held legally accountable for his statements). https://www.salon.com/2020/11/18/judge-cancels-fraud-evidence-hearing-after-rudy-giuliani-admits-this-is-not-a-fraud-case-in-court_partner/ https://www.salon.com/2020/11/18/judge-cancels-fraud-evidenc...
- eplanit 6y agoYes, it's baseless allegations of collusion with Russia that we accept as the reason for undermining confidence in our democracy.
- JshWright 6y agoThe Mueller report clearly stated that Russia had active efforts to influence the 2016 election, the Trump campaign was aware of those efforts, and the Trump campaign expected to benefit from those efforts. Are you claiming that you're more informed than Robert Mueller?
- astrange 6y agoAnd so did the Senate intelligence report written by Republicans. The most interesting thing about Russiagate is that it's completely true!
- rat87 6y agoBecause it's not baseless? Trump colluded with Russia
- tunesmith 6y agoThe problem is it - not the lawsuit itself, but the public perception of it - could come back to bite the other side. There have been plenty of good reasons to suspect electronic voting in the past, at least in the absence of verifiable paper backups and regular random sampling recounts of those paper ballots. Which is still a pretty rare practice, isn't it? In the absence of those standards, it's still reasonable to have suspicion even if you don't have evidence; the entire problem is that you're kept from gathering the evidence. The biggest reason to doubt the "voter fraud" theories this time around is because of who is making the complaints, not because the voting companies (or the laws surrounding e-voting) are beyond reproach.
- atoav 6y agoAnother one of these issues that get easier once you have 3 major parties competing nationwide.
- roenxi 6y agoMore to the point - if there is actual voter fraud at some point it will need to announced, communicated and investigated. Electronic voting systems can be used to remove humans from the loop and that has real potential to undermine the election system. There needs to be a very high tolerance of criticism towards voting machines and the companies that make them. Ordinary standards of transparency are not enough, for example.
- triceratops 6y ago> There needs to be a very high tolerance of criticism towards voting machines and the companies that make them. There is. It's called the 1st Amendment. If the company is suing for defamation, that is also their right. Giuliani isn't some small fish being silenced by a defamation suit.
- teraflop 6y ago> the entire problem is that you're kept from gathering the evidence. Well, there's also the fact that the folks advancing these theories are insisting that they're being "kept from gathering the evidence", when in reality much of what they're saying is contradicted by evidence. For example, the instances cited in the lawsuit where Giuliani and others continued to insist that Dominion voting machines had changed the Georgia election outcome by flipping votes, even after the original results had been confirmed by a full hand recount.
- stefantalpalaru 6y ago> the baseless accusations of voter fraud used to undermine voter confidence in our democracy "This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distribution violations are observed with Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing states won by the Republican nominee. The results are robust to two-digit analysis, Monte Carlo simulations of p-values, broad or narrow swing state definitions, and when compared to distributions observed in 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections." - Detecting Anomalies in the 2020 US Presidential Election Votes with Benford’s Law, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626
- yters 6y agoIronically, a previous version of this company known as Diebold was used in the 2004 election, and Democrats claimed the electronic voting machines were used to commit voter fraud. Apparently, one could open up the vote ledger in MS Access and modify the votes without any kind of audit trail or password. Hopefully after the multiple rebrandings Dominion has gotten its security under better control :D See the leaked memos from Diebold here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~matth/lists/ https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~matth/lists/
- JshWright 6y agoYou clearly lack a fundamental understanding of the issues involved here... The voting process used by the Dominion machines involves a physical paper trail that is verified by the voter. Random sampling is done routinely comparing the electronically tabulated results against the paper audit log. In the case of Georgia, a full recount (by hand) was done on the paper ballots.
- yters 6y agoSeems trivial to 'randomly' sample a select subset of the votes. And that does nothing to guard against vote dumps. Non existent voters cannot validate their votes. Do you know where the Dominion validation process is clearly documented so it is easy to see whether it is easily subverted? I will bet the answer is no, and the software and hardware are all trade secrets and impossible for voters to verify :D. Sounds like a totally trustworthy system to me.
- JshWright 6y agoIt is not "Dominion's" process, it is the local board of election's process. All Dominion supplies are fancy printers and optical scanners. The verification process in Georgia involved physically counting all of the paper ballots. The Dominion machines were totally uninvolved in the hand-recount (and, unsurprisingly, the hand-recount found that the original machine tally was extremely accurate) Again, I think it's pretty clear you don't understand what role the machines actually play in the voting process.
- dionian 6y agoShutting people up is going to do the opposite. We need to debunk their claims piece by piece to convince the people that are somehow convinced by the evidence
- jackson1442 6y agoYou'd be surprised how few people are interested in evidence these days. More often than not, your Reuters/AP source will be shoved aside in favor of some page along the lines of reallycoolnews.blogspot.com. We've already seen this happen–when YouTube started putting labels on all COVID-19-related content, deniers were unsatisfied by the sources presented because they have been indoctrinated to believe nothing mainstream can be trusted.
- astrange 6y agoMost people don't actually believe things or care if they're consistent (and rightly so.) They just say stuff to hear themselves talk. The correct answer is to prevent them from saying things.
- netsharc 6y agoIt'd be like trying to talk to a 9/11-truther or a flat-earther, they'll have a refutation ready for all of your evidence, or they'll convince themselves your cited sources are part of the conspiracy.. They'll use any excuse to delude themselves that they're correct, because to admit otherwise is to admit that they were dumb enough to have been conned by a terrible conman. When they saw the morons attacking congress, they convinced themselves "people wearing helmets are Antifa, and all the attackers are Antifa plants...".
- gsich 6y agoVoting machines are inherently not trustworthy.
- ihsw 6y ago> baseless accusations of voter fraud used to undermine voter confidence You mean like the Russia hoax?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- CountDrewku 6y agoWhy would you want to do that? Voter fraud happens regularly. Probably not to the extent that the election flips but I see no issue with asking fraud claims to be looked into. There 0 good excuse to completely ignore fraud claims. IF you really want confidence in our system all claims of abuse should be taken seriously. Tossing them out and acting like fraud never happens is every bit as ridiculous as claiming the election was rife with it. The only way to determine they're "baseless" is to actually investigate them.
- nealmcb2 6y agoThe best overview of this mess is from Cory Doctorow, who notes that while the claims of fraud in this election are garbage, the voting machines, and especially overused Ballot-marking devices (BMDs), are also hugely problematic. Voting machines didn’t steal the election. But they’re a terrible technology. - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/03/voting-machines-election-steal-conspiracy-flaws/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/03/voting-mac... And worst of all is ES&S' threats against folks who point out those legitimate flaws, e.g. SMART Elections, a journalism and advocacy group in NY. ESS voting machine company sends threats https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2021/01/11/ess-voting-machine-company-sends-threats/ https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2021/01/11/ess-voting-machine-... What we need is evidence-based elections: Evidence-Based Elections: Create a Meaningful Paper Trail, then Audit Andrew W. Appel* & Philip B. Stark* Georgetown Law Technology Review 2020 https://georgetownlawtechreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/4.2-p523-541-Appel-Stark.pdf https://georgetownlawtechreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/... And though we have improving evidence for correct tabulations in the recent elections, many states still aren't doing a good job providing evidence for ballot eligibility or chain-of-custody. The best way to promote confidence in our democracy is to calmly stick to facts, not be swayed by politics, and work to make things better. For more on how we've done that in Colorado and elsewhere, see my page at http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/elections/corla/ http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/elections/corla/