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The 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

The 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 ago
Another one of these issues that get easier once you have 3 major parties competing nationwide.
roenxi 6y ago
More 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.
- imperfectcats 6y ago
  > the fact that the folks advancing Too many arguments boil down to people, and motives, not facts. It is a bad idea to put the short term desire to see a foe vanquished over the long term cost of bad laws and policy. Laws are not perfect, and I'm not convinced we want the basis of democracy to be closed source voting machines, or that even if we do, the checks and balances as they stand are currently 100% correct.
- tunesmith 6y ago
  Well sure, if we're going to conflate arguments in good faith with arguments in bad faith, we won't really get anywhere... the point is that without doing manual recounts it's hard to gather evidence of possible flaws in an electronic count, and you can't always count on the recount happening. In contrast, Georgia's recount did happen, so they were able to gather evidence, and didn't find any... so yes, of course that's a different thing entirely.
jonas21 6y ago
But that's the thing about Dominion -- their machines do generate a paper trail, and this paper trail was audited. One of the big pushes to secure this election compared to previous ones was to use as many voting machines with auditable paper trails as possible.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > their machines do generate a paper trail Not the same kind of paper trail that exists when a voter fills out a paper ballot. If I fill out a paper ballot, that ballot is independent evidence of the votes I intended to cast, because I filled it out directly, with no machine in the middle. So that paper ballot is a useful auditing mechanism for checking on machine-generated vote counts. If I electronically cast votes on a machine, and the machine prints out a paper record of my ballot, unless I, the voter, leave some record that I inspected that piece of paper and agree that it reflects the votes I intended to cast, it's useless as an auditing mechanism. As far as I can tell, no such voter inspection record is made with electronic voting machines.
  - athenot 6y ago
    Since I voted in Georgia on these machines, the process is the following: - get ID validated & ability to vote - get an initialized smart card - insert in polling machine, fill out stuff - submit, get printout from printer - scan printout into a machine - return smart card At the polling places I was at (we had a runoff), the staff + signage was emphasizing to check results on printout. The printing and the scanning felt terribly wasteful but as it turned out, it became a precious way to audit. The bonus is that the printout is normalized, not some person's handwriting that could be subject to misinterpretation.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      So you take the printout from one machine and insert it into another to be scanned? I agree that would satisfy auditability, since you can look at the printout and make sure it's correct. Were these Dominion voting machines?
lern_too_spel 6y ago
These machines create an auditable paper trail, replacing a system that did not in Georgia. The conspiracy theorists claimed that the electronic votes were modified in Venezuela. The validation of the paper ballots showed that this had not happened. https://statescoop.com/georgia-buys-new-voting-machines-with-paper-trails/ https://statescoop.com/georgia-buys-new-voting-machines-with... https://apnews.com/article/5a76e11db8e64f7ca32197f2934a86df https://apnews.com/article/5a76e11db8e64f7ca32197f2934a86df
triceratops 6y ago
> The problem is it - not the lawsuit itself, but the public perception of it - could come back to bite the other side. That's a valid concern when you're dealing with a good-faith actor. But if voting machines are open-source (which I heartily support), they'll move on to baselessly discrediting something else to shape public perception. The problem isn't the technology per se. The problem is we're not dealing with a good-faith actor.
- AnHonestComment 6y ago
  No, the problem is the technology as such: Voting is a system that needs to be simple, transparent, and auditable. The technical solutions are 0/3 and an example of “over engineering” leading to a poor quality solution. Our current voting system is well below international standards — and it’s because of the technology.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    First off, like all the other comments have said already, the systems in question were auditable. They printed out a paper receipt and they verified those by a hand-count. Second, considering who we're dealing with, it fundamentally doesn't matter. They aren't actually arguing for more secure elections, they're looking for any reason to throw out the results because they lost. If systems were up to "international standards" (I don't know what those are, can you be more specific?) they'll just say they're "liberal commie standards that you can't trust, and we need American standards" or some nonsense like that. By all means have more secure elections. Just know that it won't do anything in a scenario where the loser claims any result other than their victory is "rigged".
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Even if voting machine software is open source, there's no way to verify that's actually the code running on any given machine
cma 6y ago
Those things in the past helped push for paper receipts. In every contested state there were paper receipts this time. We should expand that to everywhere that uses electronic voting, but we don't have to lie about irregularities to do it.

atoav 6y ago

Another one of these issues that get easier once you have 3 major parties competing nationwide.

roenxi 6y ago

More 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.

imperfectcats 6y ago
> the fact that the folks advancing Too many arguments boil down to people, and motives, not facts. It is a bad idea to put the short term desire to see a foe vanquished over the long term cost of bad laws and policy. Laws are not perfect, and I'm not convinced we want the basis of democracy to be closed source voting machines, or that even if we do, the checks and balances as they stand are currently 100% correct.
tunesmith 6y ago
Well sure, if we're going to conflate arguments in good faith with arguments in bad faith, we won't really get anywhere... the point is that without doing manual recounts it's hard to gather evidence of possible flaws in an electronic count, and you can't always count on the recount happening. In contrast, Georgia's recount did happen, so they were able to gather evidence, and didn't find any... so yes, of course that's a different thing entirely.

jonas21 6y ago

But that's the thing about Dominion -- their machines do generate a paper trail, and this paper trail was audited. One of the big pushes to secure this election compared to previous ones was to use as many voting machines with auditable paper trails as possible.

pdonis 6y ago
> their machines do generate a paper trail Not the same kind of paper trail that exists when a voter fills out a paper ballot. If I fill out a paper ballot, that ballot is independent evidence of the votes I intended to cast, because I filled it out directly, with no machine in the middle. So that paper ballot is a useful auditing mechanism for checking on machine-generated vote counts. If I electronically cast votes on a machine, and the machine prints out a paper record of my ballot, unless I, the voter, leave some record that I inspected that piece of paper and agree that it reflects the votes I intended to cast, it's useless as an auditing mechanism. As far as I can tell, no such voter inspection record is made with electronic voting machines.
- athenot 6y ago
  Since I voted in Georgia on these machines, the process is the following: - get ID validated & ability to vote - get an initialized smart card - insert in polling machine, fill out stuff - submit, get printout from printer - scan printout into a machine - return smart card At the polling places I was at (we had a runoff), the staff + signage was emphasizing to check results on printout. The printing and the scanning felt terribly wasteful but as it turned out, it became a precious way to audit. The bonus is that the printout is normalized, not some person's handwriting that could be subject to misinterpretation.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    So you take the printout from one machine and insert it into another to be scanned? I agree that would satisfy auditability, since you can look at the printout and make sure it's correct. Were these Dominion voting machines?

lern_too_spel 6y ago

These machines create an auditable paper trail, replacing a system that did not in Georgia. The conspiracy theorists claimed that the electronic votes were modified in Venezuela. The validation of the paper ballots showed that this had not happened. https://statescoop.com/georgia-buys-new-voting-machines-with-paper-trails/ https://statescoop.com/georgia-buys-new-voting-machines-with... https://apnews.com/article/5a76e11db8e64f7ca32197f2934a86df https://apnews.com/article/5a76e11db8e64f7ca32197f2934a86df

triceratops 6y ago

> The problem is it - not the lawsuit itself, but the public perception of it - could come back to bite the other side. That's a valid concern when you're dealing with a good-faith actor. But if voting machines are open-source (which I heartily support), they'll move on to baselessly discrediting something else to shape public perception. The problem isn't the technology per se. The problem is we're not dealing with a good-faith actor.

AnHonestComment 6y ago
No, the problem is the technology as such: Voting is a system that needs to be simple, transparent, and auditable. The technical solutions are 0/3 and an example of “over engineering” leading to a poor quality solution. Our current voting system is well below international standards — and it’s because of the technology.
- triceratops 6y ago
  First off, like all the other comments have said already, the systems in question were auditable. They printed out a paper receipt and they verified those by a hand-count. Second, considering who we're dealing with, it fundamentally doesn't matter. They aren't actually arguing for more secure elections, they're looking for any reason to throw out the results because they lost. If systems were up to "international standards" (I don't know what those are, can you be more specific?) they'll just say they're "liberal commie standards that you can't trust, and we need American standards" or some nonsense like that. By all means have more secure elections. Just know that it won't do anything in a scenario where the loser claims any result other than their victory is "rigged".
HideousKojima 6y ago
Even if voting machine software is open source, there's no way to verify that's actually the code running on any given machine

cma 6y ago

Those things in the past helped push for paper receipts. In every contested state there were paper receipts this time. We should expand that to everywhere that uses electronic voting, but we don't have to lie about irregularities to do it.