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Half of America's Voting Machines Are Now Owned by a MAGA Oligarch

198 points by mdhb 1y ago

Hikikomori 1y ago
With the amount of crime done by the current administration it seems they're pretty sure they're going to win future elections, if they're even held.
- beeflet 1y ago
  like what
nullorempty 1y ago
I'd think the feds or individual states should own the machines...
- mystraline 1y ago
  I had some friends who worked in CISA. Had, cause they were fired, RIF'd, early retirement, etc. They have been gutted. During the Biden campaign, there were a few people doing rudimentary data gathering and election machine investigations. After they announced to their bosses, order came from the top to cease all voting machine research and destroy what they did. We dont know why the order to cease and destroy was issued. But, yeah. A guess was that the existing players bribe both parties, and bribe was called in. If you want to snoop more, go look at what Defcon's Election village is doing. Quite a few of those findings were damning.
  - OrvalWintermute 1y ago
    voting machine security was such a joke as shown by many, and J. Alex Halderman most recently
    - Ancapistani 1y ago
      The ones in my precinct had exposed USB ports accessible to the voter while behind the privacy curtain. There was a lockable door to cover them, but they were left open. When I pointed it out I was told that it was policy and they couldn't lock them. They didn't even have a key.
- wahern 1y ago
  I think it's sloppy wording and rhetoric by the article author. AFAIU most jurisdictions do purchase and own their machines, as opposed to leasing.
  - consumer451 1y ago
    But we live in the age where it's normal to buy something, and yet not really own it. The most egregious example has to be the F-35. Does the local gov "buying" a voting machine give them total visibility into the software? I am genuinely curious.
    - wahern 1y ago
      > Does the local gov "buying" a voting machine give them total visibility into the software? I am genuinely curious. No, it doesn't. But there's a wide variety of machines, from comparatively simple, tested-and-true Scantrons to the fancy touch screen Dominion machines with conceptually easier-to-hack software and processes, and plenty of nuance across the board. But I think the author's language is still sloppy, if not downright misleading. Also, IIRC the purchaser of Dominion has publicly committed to ensuring paper trails for everything, which at least 8 or so years ago was a popular criticism of Dominion machines--what paper receipts it did (or could optionally) produce didn't necessarily provide robust accounting of the overall tabulation system. Beyond being a Trump supporter (which alone says very little about any specific individual), there's no reason to think the new owner would be worse for election integrity than the status quo, and arguably some reason to believe integrity might improve. Only time will tell whether he improves the transparency and integrity of Dominion's products. Though I'm more than a little skeptical, not because of nefarious motives, but just because Dominion's position in the marketplace os providing fancy voting tech. The easiest way to improve integrity might be to just shutdown Dominion's entire voting machine product lineup and tell everybody to move to Scantron paper ballots with hand audits, like California does.
lawlessone 1y ago
I think this is bad but.. given the money required it seems like it with always be one or the other that owns these? Maybe governments should own the machines (people would still complain) disclosure, i am biased and think everyone should use paper.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  You're right, there is absolutely no reason to use voting machines. Elections in other countries work perfectly fine with paper ballots.
  - bell-cot 1y ago
    IIR, the US's huge push to (computerized) machine voting was after the 2000 election, when Florida's Democrats demonstrated just how badly they could screw up with paper ballots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Palm_Beach_County's_butterfly_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia... And of course, the magic cure for "we f*cked up at the simple job of doing X" is always "let's try to do something far more complex than X instead".
  - ekr____ 1y ago
    Other countries tend to have only one or two contests, which makes counting easier. In the US, it's very common to have 10s of contests on a ballot, and it's much more efficient to count via optical scan. You can still have high confidence in this case if you do a risk-limiting audit.
    - School-Cotton 1y ago
      > In the US, it's very common to have 10s of contests on a ballot, and it's much more efficient to count via optical scan. Then hire 100x the number of poll workers as are needed in other countries. The cost is still trivial relative to the importance.
      - 1y ago
Ancapistani 1y ago
The fact that a single company has this much potential influence on US elections is the real issue here. The party affiliation of the owner is irrelevant to that. If you're upset about this today - you should be, but you should have been upset about it last week, last year, and for the past decade or so.
- aredox 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - Ancapistani 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - atmavatar 1y ago
      Hillary Clinton refused to concede on election night. The Associated Press didn't call the election until 2:29 AM EST, publishing their primary story at 2:43 AM EST. See: https://www.ap.org/the-definitive-source/behind-the-news/calling-the-presidential-race-state-by-state/ https://www.ap.org/the-definitive-source/behind-the-news/cal... See: https://apnews.com/article/fb2e92a47f054019a2589ace78d20836 https://apnews.com/article/fb2e92a47f054019a2589ace78d20836 Based on the former link, Hillary gave her concession call to Trump at 2:50 AM EST. She gave her public concession speech several hours later. See: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/clinton-concedes-to-trump-we-owe-him-an-open-mind-231118 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/clinton-concedes-to-t... I'm rather curious what more you expected. In Gore's case, we had a razor thin electoral result that hinged on a single state with less than a 550 vote margin against 5.96 million votes cast, or 0.009%. We can argue about how many recounts there should have been, but it makes perfect sense there'd be some contention when the entire election came down to so few votes. To his credit, he conceded the day after the Supreme Court made their ruling, exhausting his final legal recourse. See: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/dec/14/uselections2000.usa12 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/dec/14/uselections200... You may notice a distinct absence of attacks on the US capitol during the certification of either the 2000 or 2016 elections. You'll also do well to note that Bill Clinton in 2000 and Obama in 2016 dutifully aided their Republican successors getting up to speed with their office on the way in, sharply contrasting Trump's treatment of Biden's incoming administration. And, to this day, Trump still hasn't publicly conceded his 2020 loss. Quite the opposite - on multiple occasions, he's voiced the opinion that he should be allowed to run again in 2028 to make up for his "stolen" second term. There are still plenty of Republican members of Congress as well as many state-level Republicans who maintain the 2020 election was stolen. You would have a hard time finding a single elected Democrat at either the federal or state level who would claim any presidential elections were stolen from their party's candidates. There is no good faith argument to be made that both parties are the same in this regard.
tzm 1y ago
> This is investigative journalism with no bosses, no advertisers, no filters.. just the raw truth about power and those it crushes. Hard to take this statement serious when all the headlines in this substack echo leftwing bias. At least be intellectually honest about your intent.
- jibal 1y ago
  Do you seriously think your comment is intellectually honest?
stronglikedan 1y ago
[flagged]
- aredox 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - platevoltage 1y ago
    This poster didn't invent the "facts". The "facts" get invented elsewhere, and they just repeat them.
  - delaminator 1y ago
    No-one is truly neutral in this scenario. The previous owners Staple Street Capital are headed up by a bunch of guys from The Carlyle Group. Harvey Schwartz, CEO of the Carlyle Group was a big Biden guy.
    - aredox 1y ago
      Oh yeah, and that's why the Democrats were able to win full control of Congress, the Senate and the presidency... Wait
      - delaminator 1y ago
        Ignoring your snark, there has been more than one election under Dominion.
- metamet 1y ago
  What Facebook meme did you learn that from? Staple Street Capital's leadership is full of--get this--capitalists who have donated to both parties.
- jibal 1y ago
  Whataboutism is a fallacy ... and that never was the case.
dannyobrien 1y ago
Can somebody point out the "MAGA Oligarch" link here? Scott Leiendecker is a former Republican election official, and the linked article says the company is "repped by" (presumably a PR agency?) that uses Trumpian imagery, but that seems to be the extent of the connection. (I know that already might seem a lot to some people, but I was wondering if there was anything to justify the title beyond that.)
lokar 1y ago
IMO the answer has always been: - vote marking machines (eg it marks a voter readable ballot that is the official record). You get fast preliminary results and improved voter accessibility but still have very high tamper resistance. - risk limiting audits in all jurisdictions
- whimsicalism 1y ago
  - a national id that is easy for any US citizen to acquire (and a separate, similar id for all legal residents)
  - ezfe 1y ago
    drive by opinions aren't really helpful, we're talking about the technical voting machines, not election policy
    - whimsicalism 1y ago
      I think it is obviously on topic for this article specifically highlighting this problem and doubt I'm being downvoted due to some neutral criterion separating 'machine' from 'policy'. > See, the SAVE Act got a lot of attention in the media because it will take away eligible Americans’ ability to vote because it requires in-person registration with specific documentary proof of citizenship (like a passport or State ID + birth certificate) that millions of citizens lack. State ID alone is not enough. 47 states don’t print “U.S. citizen” anywhere on them.
      - Spooky23 1y ago
        No, it’s a rabbit hole argument that appeals to people who are ignorant of the reality of identity or are fine with disenfranchising people. Given the context that the federal government is currently rounding up US persons and detaining or exiling them without due process, it’s a doubly asinine argument.
        1y ago
OrvalWintermute 1y ago
If there was no fraud, and all the recent elections were secure then this wouldn’t matter. My contention has always been that until we see the basis of identity secured like Estonia/CAC/PIV/Passports through strong identity proofing and robust processes, we are not ready to talk about the Pandora’s box that is voting machines.
- aredox 1y ago
  [flagged]
- zahlman 1y ago
  This kind of federal identification is a non-starter in US politics due to the history of its, well, federalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_documents_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_documents_in_the_Unit...
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    It is. That's why companies like palantir want to do it in the shadows. They will get our info either way, as they have people who's full time job is to ensure so.
johnea 1y ago
I still think the California system is the best currently available: Votes are recorded by filling in the dots on a scantronic ballot form. The form is scanned and the votes are tallied electronically. The original paper ballot is archived, and can be re-scanned (or hand counted) if a recount is required. This combines the best of both worlds: speed and accuracy of electronic tally, and the original hand-filled paper ballot is retained as a record.
- maxerickson 1y ago
  Most states use optical scan tabulators: https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_equipment_by_state
  - johnea 1y ago
    That's excellent! and I would expect that this tech is not vendor captured by patent or other means. Which means many companies can make the equipment/systems...
- delichon 1y ago
  Five weeks to count the ballots is a model system? https://calmatters.org/newsletter/california-certified-election-results https://calmatters.org/newsletter/california-certified-elect...
  - ekr____ 1y ago
    This is less about technology than it is about process. Specifically: 1. California allows mail in ballots to be counted if they arrive up to 7 days after the election. 2. California requires a 1% manual tally. This can take a really long time in a big jurisdiction like LA. Note that this doesn't mean you don't know the likely answer relatively quickly. The 5 weeks is about how long it takes to have a certified result.
    - platevoltage 1y ago
      I cant help but notice that most people who are of the opinion that everyone should vote on Election Day, in person, and on a paper ballot that is hand counted, also have an issue with tabulation taking time.
hotep99 1y ago
The hand-wringing in this article about Republicans signing up election monitors and having lawyers on stand-by is absurd. Both parties pour huge amounts of resources every election into this sort of thing and aggressively pursue it. If you really want integrity in elections you should want interested parties to be able to audit the results and mount legal challenges if they feel it is justified (and, yes, that means all interested parties and not just who you consider to be the "good guys").
- tclancy 1y ago
  That is some serious whataboutism based on the actions in the last election. One side wants people to be able to vote (some mass too loosely), the other side wants to limit voting to people who attend to agree with them and if it fails, simply hold up the results of negative outcomes until the election is effectively decided.
fghorow 1y ago
Joseph Stalin said some version of "It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes." (Mixed rating, according to Snopes.)
- DavidWoof 1y ago
  Snopes has this as mixed because Stalin may or may not have expressed this sentiment at some point, but it seems impossibly unlikely to me that this pun works in Russian as it does in English.
- andreygrehov 1y ago
  'I care not who casts the votes of a nation, provided I can count them,' Napoleon failed to remark." — New York Times editorial (26 May 1880) [0]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1880/05/26/archives/imperialism.html https://www.nytimes.com/1880/05/26/archives/imperialism.html
izzydata 1y ago
Once the company sells the voting machine to some state or city I would assume the voting machine is not "owned" by the company anymore. I'm also assuming they aren't in any way connected to a network and are all isolated independent systems. The state should be auditing them prior to using them to see that they work as expected.
whimsicalism 1y ago
I don't really think this is that much of a problem, but perhaps we should have a bit more diversity in voting machines.
ImJamal 1y ago
Maybe we should just go back to the old school way? It seems like there have been grievances about voting machines for so long and it causes distrust to the entire system. The whole hanging chad issue in the 2000 election is a prime example.
efitz 1y ago
Two thoughts: 1. It is crazy that we are using machines in any way in the voting process. 2. Which is it? The MAGA people tried many lawsuits and many appeals to voting authorities for investigations. The unanimous response “safest election ever”. Ok fine, then no one should have a problem with whoever owns the voting machines, because there’s so little risk, only crazy people would even ask for investigation. Which is it? Ofc there is a problem with a single company or organization controlling a nontrivial segment of the voting machines used in the US. And ofc it was a problem in 2020 as well. The solution is to get easy-to-tamper-but-hard-to-detect stuff out of the voting process. Pen and paper and video recorded hand counts in front of witnesses. Same night results. It is not rocket science and most of the rest of the world does it this way.
- clickety_clack 1y ago
  If votes are counted by hand, you have to systematically corrupt hundreds, maybe thousands of people across jurisdictions. With machines you only have to corrupt a single person.
- cogman10 1y ago
  > It is crazy that we are using machines in any way in the voting process. I disagree. My state uses paper ballots and scantrons which I think is exactly the right mix of machine in the process. A hand recount can be pulled off pretty easily (Which, IMO, you probably want some sort of machine involved there too to hold the tally. Even if it's just a txt file). What's crazy is the extreme side of the machine in the process, where the machine is opaquely keeping track of who voted how.
- ekr____ 1y ago
  The problem with hand counting is that it scales very poorly. Specifically, the cost of hand counting is the product of the number of ballots times the number of contests on each ballot. US elections tend to have a very large number of contests, which makes the counting very slow. [0] Even with the California 1% manual tally this can take weeks [1] It's true that most of the world does hand counting, but most of the world has one or two contests. It's not unusual for a US election to have 20+ contests on the ballot, which obviously takes 20x as long. A more scalable approach is to use paper ballots with optical scan followed by a risk-limiting audit [2]. This still provides software independence, but at a much lower cost. The following blog series on why voting is hard goes into this in more detail: https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting1/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting1/, https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-hcpb/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-hcpb/, https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-opscan/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-opscan/, https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-vbm/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-vbm/, https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-dre/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-dre/ [0] https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-hcpb/#scalability https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-hcpb/#scalability [1] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/evt08/tech/full_papers/hall/hall_html/jhall_evt08_html.html https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/evt08/tech/full_papers/... [2] https://verifiedvoting.org/audits/whatisrla/ https://verifiedvoting.org/audits/whatisrla/
deleted 1y ago
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bofadeez 1y ago
[flagged]
- lawlessone 1y ago
  >We all know what kind of person wrote this inflammatory article. I don't, what kind?
  - bofadeez 1y ago
    A propagandist
    - lawlessone 1y ago
      so are you?
      - bofadeez 1y ago
        That's just a non-sequitur childish retort, but okay, if that helps you? Not much to chew on.
        lawlessone 1y ago
        You haven't offered anything other than opinion though?
        bofadeez 1y ago
        I asserted the US is objectively not a full blown oligarchy. Therefore calling someone an oligarch is objectively propaganda.
CGMthrowaway 1y ago
How did a man/company with annual revenue <$20M/year obtain the capital necessary to purchase a company that has $787M in receivables from the Fox News settlement? There are some key details missing in this story.
musha68k 1y ago
Aside from cryptographically sound and open source end to end verifiable options there is one simple alternative still used in many other countries and jurisdictions: 1. voters mark paper ballots 2. observers from all parties watch the counting 3. results are tallied publicly Yes, this is very much feasible; and no, this is not the right domain to be ingeniously efficient and cost sensitive. US being the richest country in the world or some such, etc..
- gruez 1y ago
  That won't stop the election cranks. In the 2020 election there were accusations of election fraud centered around workers "stuffing" ballot boxes or otherwise acting suspiciously.
cipehr 1y ago
Slightly tangential question: Why doesn't the government "own" the intellectual property for their citizens to vote? I'm all for free markets and capitalism, but I think its not clear to me why some fundamental responsibilities and operations of the government can be contracted out. Is there a way this make sense to anyone?
TrnsltLife 1y ago
It's OK because voting machines are always correct and voting fraud never happens, especially not late at night in Georgia when all the observers have been sent home, or while windows are being covered so observers can't see in.
notmyjob 1y ago
Digital voting is not secure and never will be, which is the main reason it exists. Nobody really wants secure elections, they want to win elections. Look at prop 50 for a recent example.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  Prop 50 without any context is useless. Which state, year, and why do you think it's rigged?
  - notmyjob 1y ago
    It’s a proposition in the upcoming California election intended to maximally gerrymander state congressional districts to reduce the number of republican legislators at the federal level. It’s a reactionary move in response to Texas redistricting process which removed some blue team congress folks in their state. The new gerrymandered prop 50 districts will replace, at great cost to the taxpayer the bipartisan commission drawn districts which were created not long ago based on another statewide proposition as I recall, which of course was also very costly but at least done with the intention of making districts more fair, ie less gerrymandered. But even that redistricting effort was not fair, leaving republicans with about 15% representation despite being much larger proportion of voters. The new prop 50 super gerrymandered districts would reduce that 15% even further, more or less eliminating the other party. What is so bad about that, other than the wasted tax payer money (the state is currently in the red), is that this decreases California’s political power in DC. It’s in the interest of the state as a whole, even just democrats, to have representation in both parties at the national level. So not only is it wasteful, and intentionally unfair, it’s bad for everyone in the state. And, it’s being done largely to support Gavin Newsom’s eternal presidential ambitions. I think the bulk of the 300 million spent on ads is from his presidential campaign purse.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > I think the bulk of the 300 million spent on ads is from his presidential campaign purse. Since he has no “presidential campaign purse”, not being a Presidential candidate, that is literally impossible. $2.6 million (which is, very much, not a majority of the funding) does come from his leadership PAC.

198 points by mdhb 1y ago

With the amount of crime done by the current administration it seems they're pretty sure they're going to win future elections, if they're even held.

beeflet 1y ago
like what

nullorempty 1y ago

I'd think the feds or individual states should own the machines...

mystraline 1y ago
I had some friends who worked in CISA. Had, cause they were fired, RIF'd, early retirement, etc. They have been gutted. During the Biden campaign, there were a few people doing rudimentary data gathering and election machine investigations. After they announced to their bosses, order came from the top to cease all voting machine research and destroy what they did. We dont know why the order to cease and destroy was issued. But, yeah. A guess was that the existing players bribe both parties, and bribe was called in. If you want to snoop more, go look at what Defcon's Election village is doing. Quite a few of those findings were damning.
- OrvalWintermute 1y ago
  voting machine security was such a joke as shown by many, and J. Alex Halderman most recently
  - Ancapistani 1y ago
    The ones in my precinct had exposed USB ports accessible to the voter while behind the privacy curtain. There was a lockable door to cover them, but they were left open. When I pointed it out I was told that it was policy and they couldn't lock them. They didn't even have a key.
wahern 1y ago
I think it's sloppy wording and rhetoric by the article author. AFAIU most jurisdictions do purchase and own their machines, as opposed to leasing.
- consumer451 1y ago
  But we live in the age where it's normal to buy something, and yet not really own it. The most egregious example has to be the F-35. Does the local gov "buying" a voting machine give them total visibility into the software? I am genuinely curious.
  - wahern 1y ago
    > Does the local gov "buying" a voting machine give them total visibility into the software? I am genuinely curious. No, it doesn't. But there's a wide variety of machines, from comparatively simple, tested-and-true Scantrons to the fancy touch screen Dominion machines with conceptually easier-to-hack software and processes, and plenty of nuance across the board. But I think the author's language is still sloppy, if not downright misleading. Also, IIRC the purchaser of Dominion has publicly committed to ensuring paper trails for everything, which at least 8 or so years ago was a popular criticism of Dominion machines--what paper receipts it did (or could optionally) produce didn't necessarily provide robust accounting of the overall tabulation system. Beyond being a Trump supporter (which alone says very little about any specific individual), there's no reason to think the new owner would be worse for election integrity than the status quo, and arguably some reason to believe integrity might improve. Only time will tell whether he improves the transparency and integrity of Dominion's products. Though I'm more than a little skeptical, not because of nefarious motives, but just because Dominion's position in the marketplace os providing fancy voting tech. The easiest way to improve integrity might be to just shutdown Dominion's entire voting machine product lineup and tell everybody to move to Scantron paper ballots with hand audits, like California does.

lawlessone 1y ago

I think this is bad but.. given the money required it seems like it with always be one or the other that owns these? Maybe governments should own the machines (people would still complain) disclosure, i am biased and think everyone should use paper.

School-Cotton 1y ago
You're right, there is absolutely no reason to use voting machines. Elections in other countries work perfectly fine with paper ballots.
- bell-cot 1y ago
  IIR, the US's huge push to (computerized) machine voting was after the 2000 election, when Florida's Democrats demonstrated just how badly they could screw up with paper ballots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Palm_Beach_County's_butterfly_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia... And of course, the magic cure for "we f*cked up at the simple job of doing X" is always "let's try to do something far more complex than X instead".
- ekr____ 1y ago
  Other countries tend to have only one or two contests, which makes counting easier. In the US, it's very common to have 10s of contests on a ballot, and it's much more efficient to count via optical scan. You can still have high confidence in this case if you do a risk-limiting audit.
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    > In the US, it's very common to have 10s of contests on a ballot, and it's much more efficient to count via optical scan. Then hire 100x the number of poll workers as are needed in other countries. The cost is still trivial relative to the importance.
    - 1y ago

Ancapistani 1y ago

The fact that a single company has this much potential influence on US elections is the real issue here. The party affiliation of the owner is irrelevant to that. If you're upset about this today - you should be, but you should have been upset about it last week, last year, and for the past decade or so.

aredox 1y ago
[flagged]
- Ancapistani 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - atmavatar 1y ago
    Hillary Clinton refused to concede on election night. The Associated Press didn't call the election until 2:29 AM EST, publishing their primary story at 2:43 AM EST. See: https://www.ap.org/the-definitive-source/behind-the-news/calling-the-presidential-race-state-by-state/ https://www.ap.org/the-definitive-source/behind-the-news/cal... See: https://apnews.com/article/fb2e92a47f054019a2589ace78d20836 https://apnews.com/article/fb2e92a47f054019a2589ace78d20836 Based on the former link, Hillary gave her concession call to Trump at 2:50 AM EST. She gave her public concession speech several hours later. See: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/clinton-concedes-to-trump-we-owe-him-an-open-mind-231118 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/clinton-concedes-to-t... I'm rather curious what more you expected. In Gore's case, we had a razor thin electoral result that hinged on a single state with less than a 550 vote margin against 5.96 million votes cast, or 0.009%. We can argue about how many recounts there should have been, but it makes perfect sense there'd be some contention when the entire election came down to so few votes. To his credit, he conceded the day after the Supreme Court made their ruling, exhausting his final legal recourse. See: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/dec/14/uselections2000.usa12 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/dec/14/uselections200... You may notice a distinct absence of attacks on the US capitol during the certification of either the 2000 or 2016 elections. You'll also do well to note that Bill Clinton in 2000 and Obama in 2016 dutifully aided their Republican successors getting up to speed with their office on the way in, sharply contrasting Trump's treatment of Biden's incoming administration. And, to this day, Trump still hasn't publicly conceded his 2020 loss. Quite the opposite - on multiple occasions, he's voiced the opinion that he should be allowed to run again in 2028 to make up for his "stolen" second term. There are still plenty of Republican members of Congress as well as many state-level Republicans who maintain the 2020 election was stolen. You would have a hard time finding a single elected Democrat at either the federal or state level who would claim any presidential elections were stolen from their party's candidates. There is no good faith argument to be made that both parties are the same in this regard.

tzm 1y ago

> This is investigative journalism with no bosses, no advertisers, no filters.. just the raw truth about power and those it crushes. Hard to take this statement serious when all the headlines in this substack echo leftwing bias. At least be intellectually honest about your intent.

jibal 1y ago
Do you seriously think your comment is intellectually honest?

stronglikedan 1y ago

[flagged]

aredox 1y ago
[flagged]
- platevoltage 1y ago
  This poster didn't invent the "facts". The "facts" get invented elsewhere, and they just repeat them.
- delaminator 1y ago
  No-one is truly neutral in this scenario. The previous owners Staple Street Capital are headed up by a bunch of guys from The Carlyle Group. Harvey Schwartz, CEO of the Carlyle Group was a big Biden guy.
  - aredox 1y ago
    Oh yeah, and that's why the Democrats were able to win full control of Congress, the Senate and the presidency... Wait
    - delaminator 1y ago
      Ignoring your snark, there has been more than one election under Dominion.
metamet 1y ago
What Facebook meme did you learn that from? Staple Street Capital's leadership is full of--get this--capitalists who have donated to both parties.
jibal 1y ago
Whataboutism is a fallacy ... and that never was the case.

dannyobrien 1y ago

Can somebody point out the "MAGA Oligarch" link here? Scott Leiendecker is a former Republican election official, and the linked article says the company is "repped by" (presumably a PR agency?) that uses Trumpian imagery, but that seems to be the extent of the connection. (I know that already might seem a lot to some people, but I was wondering if there was anything to justify the title beyond that.)

lokar 1y ago

IMO the answer has always been: - vote marking machines (eg it marks a voter readable ballot that is the official record). You get fast preliminary results and improved voter accessibility but still have very high tamper resistance. - risk limiting audits in all jurisdictions

whimsicalism 1y ago
- a national id that is easy for any US citizen to acquire (and a separate, similar id for all legal residents)
- ezfe 1y ago
  drive by opinions aren't really helpful, we're talking about the technical voting machines, not election policy
  - whimsicalism 1y ago
    I think it is obviously on topic for this article specifically highlighting this problem and doubt I'm being downvoted due to some neutral criterion separating 'machine' from 'policy'. > See, the SAVE Act got a lot of attention in the media because it will take away eligible Americans’ ability to vote because it requires in-person registration with specific documentary proof of citizenship (like a passport or State ID + birth certificate) that millions of citizens lack. State ID alone is not enough. 47 states don’t print “U.S. citizen” anywhere on them.
    - Spooky23 1y ago
      No, it’s a rabbit hole argument that appeals to people who are ignorant of the reality of identity or are fine with disenfranchising people. Given the context that the federal government is currently rounding up US persons and detaining or exiling them without due process, it’s a doubly asinine argument.
      - 1y ago

OrvalWintermute 1y ago

If there was no fraud, and all the recent elections were secure then this wouldn’t matter. My contention has always been that until we see the basis of identity secured like Estonia/CAC/PIV/Passports through strong identity proofing and robust processes, we are not ready to talk about the Pandora’s box that is voting machines.

aredox 1y ago
[flagged]
zahlman 1y ago
This kind of federal identification is a non-starter in US politics due to the history of its, well, federalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_documents_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_documents_in_the_Unit...
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  It is. That's why companies like palantir want to do it in the shadows. They will get our info either way, as they have people who's full time job is to ensure so.

johnea 1y ago

I still think the California system is the best currently available: Votes are recorded by filling in the dots on a scantronic ballot form. The form is scanned and the votes are tallied electronically. The original paper ballot is archived, and can be re-scanned (or hand counted) if a recount is required. This combines the best of both worlds: speed and accuracy of electronic tally, and the original hand-filled paper ballot is retained as a record.

maxerickson 1y ago
Most states use optical scan tabulators: https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_equipment_by_state
- johnea 1y ago
  That's excellent! and I would expect that this tech is not vendor captured by patent or other means. Which means many companies can make the equipment/systems...
delichon 1y ago
Five weeks to count the ballots is a model system? https://calmatters.org/newsletter/california-certified-election-results https://calmatters.org/newsletter/california-certified-elect...
- ekr____ 1y ago
  This is less about technology than it is about process. Specifically: 1. California allows mail in ballots to be counted if they arrive up to 7 days after the election. 2. California requires a 1% manual tally. This can take a really long time in a big jurisdiction like LA. Note that this doesn't mean you don't know the likely answer relatively quickly. The 5 weeks is about how long it takes to have a certified result.
  - platevoltage 1y ago
    I cant help but notice that most people who are of the opinion that everyone should vote on Election Day, in person, and on a paper ballot that is hand counted, also have an issue with tabulation taking time.

hotep99 1y ago

The hand-wringing in this article about Republicans signing up election monitors and having lawyers on stand-by is absurd. Both parties pour huge amounts of resources every election into this sort of thing and aggressively pursue it. If you really want integrity in elections you should want interested parties to be able to audit the results and mount legal challenges if they feel it is justified (and, yes, that means all interested parties and not just who you consider to be the "good guys").

tclancy 1y ago
That is some serious whataboutism based on the actions in the last election. One side wants people to be able to vote (some mass too loosely), the other side wants to limit voting to people who attend to agree with them and if it fails, simply hold up the results of negative outcomes until the election is effectively decided.

fghorow 1y ago

Joseph Stalin said some version of "It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes." (Mixed rating, according to Snopes.)

DavidWoof 1y ago
Snopes has this as mixed because Stalin may or may not have expressed this sentiment at some point, but it seems impossibly unlikely to me that this pun works in Russian as it does in English.
andreygrehov 1y ago
'I care not who casts the votes of a nation, provided I can count them,' Napoleon failed to remark." — New York Times editorial (26 May 1880) [0]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1880/05/26/archives/imperialism.html https://www.nytimes.com/1880/05/26/archives/imperialism.html

izzydata 1y ago

Once the company sells the voting machine to some state or city I would assume the voting machine is not "owned" by the company anymore. I'm also assuming they aren't in any way connected to a network and are all isolated independent systems. The state should be auditing them prior to using them to see that they work as expected.

whimsicalism 1y ago

I don't really think this is that much of a problem, but perhaps we should have a bit more diversity in voting machines.

ImJamal 1y ago

Maybe we should just go back to the old school way? It seems like there have been grievances about voting machines for so long and it causes distrust to the entire system. The whole hanging chad issue in the 2000 election is a prime example.

efitz 1y ago

Two thoughts: 1. It is crazy that we are using machines in any way in the voting process. 2. Which is it? The MAGA people tried many lawsuits and many appeals to voting authorities for investigations. The unanimous response “safest election ever”. Ok fine, then no one should have a problem with whoever owns the voting machines, because there’s so little risk, only crazy people would even ask for investigation. Which is it? Ofc there is a problem with a single company or organization controlling a nontrivial segment of the voting machines used in the US. And ofc it was a problem in 2020 as well. The solution is to get easy-to-tamper-but-hard-to-detect stuff out of the voting process. Pen and paper and video recorded hand counts in front of witnesses. Same night results. It is not rocket science and most of the rest of the world does it this way.

clickety_clack 1y ago
If votes are counted by hand, you have to systematically corrupt hundreds, maybe thousands of people across jurisdictions. With machines you only have to corrupt a single person.
cogman10 1y ago
> It is crazy that we are using machines in any way in the voting process. I disagree. My state uses paper ballots and scantrons which I think is exactly the right mix of machine in the process. A hand recount can be pulled off pretty easily (Which, IMO, you probably want some sort of machine involved there too to hold the tally. Even if it's just a txt file). What's crazy is the extreme side of the machine in the process, where the machine is opaquely keeping track of who voted how.
ekr____ 1y ago
The problem with hand counting is that it scales very poorly. Specifically, the cost of hand counting is the product of the number of ballots times the number of contests on each ballot. US elections tend to have a very large number of contests, which makes the counting very slow. [0] Even with the California 1% manual tally this can take weeks [1] It's true that most of the world does hand counting, but most of the world has one or two contests. It's not unusual for a US election to have 20+ contests on the ballot, which obviously takes 20x as long. A more scalable approach is to use paper ballots with optical scan followed by a risk-limiting audit [2]. This still provides software independence, but at a much lower cost. The following blog series on why voting is hard goes into this in more detail: https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting1/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting1/, https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-hcpb/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-hcpb/, https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-opscan/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-opscan/, https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-vbm/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-vbm/, https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-dre/ https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-dre/ [0] https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-hcpb/#scalability https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/voting-hcpb/#scalability [1] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/evt08/tech/full_papers/hall/hall_html/jhall_evt08_html.html https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/evt08/tech/full_papers/... [2] https://verifiedvoting.org/audits/whatisrla/ https://verifiedvoting.org/audits/whatisrla/

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

bofadeez 1y ago

[flagged]

lawlessone 1y ago
>We all know what kind of person wrote this inflammatory article. I don't, what kind?
- bofadeez 1y ago
  A propagandist
  - lawlessone 1y ago
    so are you?
    - bofadeez 1y ago
      That's just a non-sequitur childish retort, but okay, if that helps you? Not much to chew on.
      - lawlessone 1y ago
        You haven't offered anything other than opinion though?
        bofadeez 1y ago
        I asserted the US is objectively not a full blown oligarchy. Therefore calling someone an oligarch is objectively propaganda.

CGMthrowaway 1y ago

How did a man/company with annual revenue <$20M/year obtain the capital necessary to purchase a company that has $787M in receivables from the Fox News settlement? There are some key details missing in this story.

musha68k 1y ago

Aside from cryptographically sound and open source end to end verifiable options there is one simple alternative still used in many other countries and jurisdictions: 1. voters mark paper ballots 2. observers from all parties watch the counting 3. results are tallied publicly Yes, this is very much feasible; and no, this is not the right domain to be ingeniously efficient and cost sensitive. US being the richest country in the world or some such, etc..

gruez 1y ago
That won't stop the election cranks. In the 2020 election there were accusations of election fraud centered around workers "stuffing" ballot boxes or otherwise acting suspiciously.

cipehr 1y ago

Slightly tangential question: Why doesn't the government "own" the intellectual property for their citizens to vote? I'm all for free markets and capitalism, but I think its not clear to me why some fundamental responsibilities and operations of the government can be contracted out. Is there a way this make sense to anyone?

TrnsltLife 1y ago

It's OK because voting machines are always correct and voting fraud never happens, especially not late at night in Georgia when all the observers have been sent home, or while windows are being covered so observers can't see in.

notmyjob 1y ago

Digital voting is not secure and never will be, which is the main reason it exists. Nobody really wants secure elections, they want to win elections. Look at prop 50 for a recent example.

johnnyanmac 1y ago
Prop 50 without any context is useless. Which state, year, and why do you think it's rigged?
- notmyjob 1y ago
  It’s a proposition in the upcoming California election intended to maximally gerrymander state congressional districts to reduce the number of republican legislators at the federal level. It’s a reactionary move in response to Texas redistricting process which removed some blue team congress folks in their state. The new gerrymandered prop 50 districts will replace, at great cost to the taxpayer the bipartisan commission drawn districts which were created not long ago based on another statewide proposition as I recall, which of course was also very costly but at least done with the intention of making districts more fair, ie less gerrymandered. But even that redistricting effort was not fair, leaving republicans with about 15% representation despite being much larger proportion of voters. The new prop 50 super gerrymandered districts would reduce that 15% even further, more or less eliminating the other party. What is so bad about that, other than the wasted tax payer money (the state is currently in the red), is that this decreases California’s political power in DC. It’s in the interest of the state as a whole, even just democrats, to have representation in both parties at the national level. So not only is it wasteful, and intentionally unfair, it’s bad for everyone in the state. And, it’s being done largely to support Gavin Newsom’s eternal presidential ambitions. I think the bulk of the 300 million spent on ads is from his presidential campaign purse.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > I think the bulk of the 300 million spent on ads is from his presidential campaign purse. Since he has no “presidential campaign purse”, not being a Presidential candidate, that is literally impossible. $2.6 million (which is, very much, not a majority of the funding) does come from his leadership PAC.