4 ms·

Dominion, as an operating business, has effectively been destroyed. No bipartisan election committee is going to buy their stuff anymore when it is an article

Dominion, as an operating business, has effectively been destroyed. No bipartisan election committee is going to buy their stuff anymore when it is an article of unshakable faith among one of the two parties that their machines fraudulently stole an election. So now their owners[1] need to figure out how to get whatever value they can. This isn't a "campaign", it's just a business effort. They've been transformed into something like an IP holding company, where the IP is the damage suffered by the original outfit. They'll sue everyone they can. (They'll also probably manage to recoup some value by selling what's left of the company to someone else who then rebrands them and tries to sell back into the markets that have been poisoned. Something very similar happened with Diebold a decade ago, which was then sold to ES&S and thence to, yes, Dominion.) [1] No idea how they're structured, but per wikipedia they're a private corporation.

sidlls 6y ago
Now if only all the other electronic voting machine companies would be similarly destroyed. There's no good reason to not have publicly counted paper ballots. Other developed countries don't seem to have problems running their elections that way.
- etchalon 6y ago
  Many of the machines, if not most, had paper ballot backups in addition to the electronic counts. When audited, the paper counts matched the machine counts. So the issue isn't "electronic voting" vs. "paper ballots".
  - sidlls 6y ago
    No, that's pretty much the issue. Voting isn't a technology problem; it's a funding and people problem like most political issues. Other countries--large, developed countries--don't take days to hand-count paper ballots, and the tallies don't need people blathering about audits and statistics for voters to have confidence in them. The fact that it takes as long as it does in the US and there is still a fear that it's not secure or that it's suspicious--no matter how wrong that fear may be--is a problem. And it's not a "dumb normies need more education about statistics" problem. It's a problem created by forcing a "solution" that is unnecessary (paper ballots, counted by hand work fine) and unnecessarily complicated.
    - Paradigma11 6y ago
      The way i see it voting machines mostly act as input validation to prevent faulty votes. US ballots can be quite complicated, it seems. The process still generates an auditable paper trail that is regarded as truth. Afaik there also have not been discrepances between the electronic and paper counts. If people dont understand that printed paper ballots cant be changed by an air gapped electronic system you wont gain their trust anyway.
      - sidlls 6y ago
        The point is that the electronic machines aren’t necessary to have secure and trusted elections. Our ballots are more complicated because the counting technology is. Electronic voting is unnecessary and unnecessarily complicated. Your response to this is basically “they’re too dumb to to understand and so don’t matter anyway.”
        Paradigma11 6y ago
        Afaik the ballots are complicated because you also have tons of stuff like sheriffs, judges.. on it. And sometimes a confusing ballot is better for one party to suppress the vote of certain populations. "Your response to this is basically “they’re too dumb to to understand and so don’t matter anyway.”" No, my response is that a pure paper ballot system wont change a thing and would just shift the conspiracy theories to other parts of the system.
        sidlls 6y ago
        The ballots may have more votes, but they aren't more complicated: they're lists of choices next to which a person makes a mark indicating a preference. The "complexity" there is still not a technology problem, it's a people and process problem.

sidlls 6y ago

Now if only all the other electronic voting machine companies would be similarly destroyed. There's no good reason to not have publicly counted paper ballots. Other developed countries don't seem to have problems running their elections that way.

etchalon 6y ago
Many of the machines, if not most, had paper ballot backups in addition to the electronic counts. When audited, the paper counts matched the machine counts. So the issue isn't "electronic voting" vs. "paper ballots".
- sidlls 6y ago
  No, that's pretty much the issue. Voting isn't a technology problem; it's a funding and people problem like most political issues. Other countries--large, developed countries--don't take days to hand-count paper ballots, and the tallies don't need people blathering about audits and statistics for voters to have confidence in them. The fact that it takes as long as it does in the US and there is still a fear that it's not secure or that it's suspicious--no matter how wrong that fear may be--is a problem. And it's not a "dumb normies need more education about statistics" problem. It's a problem created by forcing a "solution" that is unnecessary (paper ballots, counted by hand work fine) and unnecessarily complicated.
  - Paradigma11 6y ago
    The way i see it voting machines mostly act as input validation to prevent faulty votes. US ballots can be quite complicated, it seems. The process still generates an auditable paper trail that is regarded as truth. Afaik there also have not been discrepances between the electronic and paper counts. If people dont understand that printed paper ballots cant be changed by an air gapped electronic system you wont gain their trust anyway.
    - sidlls 6y ago
      The point is that the electronic machines aren’t necessary to have secure and trusted elections. Our ballots are more complicated because the counting technology is. Electronic voting is unnecessary and unnecessarily complicated. Your response to this is basically “they’re too dumb to to understand and so don’t matter anyway.”
      - Paradigma11 6y ago
        Afaik the ballots are complicated because you also have tons of stuff like sheriffs, judges.. on it. And sometimes a confusing ballot is better for one party to suppress the vote of certain populations. "Your response to this is basically “they’re too dumb to to understand and so don’t matter anyway.”" No, my response is that a pure paper ballot system wont change a thing and would just shift the conspiracy theories to other parts of the system.
        sidlls 6y ago
        The ballots may have more votes, but they aren't more complicated: they're lists of choices next to which a person makes a mark indicating a preference. The "complexity" there is still not a technology problem, it's a people and process problem.