but this is definitely a "conspiracy". She is alleging that Dominion conspired with others to alter the results of the election.
Whether any of us agree or disagree with it is immaterial. It is (by definition) a conspiracy theory. And therefore she is (by definition) a conspiracy theorist.
"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
"Maras’s lawsuit accuses Dominion of slander because it “cannot disprove” that her conspiracy theories, listing her in its $1.30 billion lawsuit against Powell as a crew member of “wholly unreliable sources.”"
It sounds like she's saying that not being able to prove a negative is slander. Regardless of one's political beliefs, I can't imagine someone seeing this as anything more than a desperate attempt to stay relevant by someone who doesn't deserve even the smallest amount of it.
I hope these people are obliterated in court and forced to pay Dominion billions. Garnish their wages aggressively until the end of their days. Usually I am very much against extreme rulings against individuals especially when the amount is pretty much unpayable. This time I am for it as these people have done huge harm to our democracy and continue to do so. I hope they lose and are punished every time they tell their lies in the future.
Why not just tie them to horses and have a public execution while we're at it? It is one thing to charge someone with a crime and put them in prison, but if I had to choose between prison and having my wages garnished aggressively to where I couldn't even afford a place to live I'd probably choose prison.
Pretty sure they could come to an arrangement where they go on tv, apologize to Dominion and admit to being caught up in the moment to the point where they made things up and did not do any due diligence with their sources. Dominion knows they cannot pay but they cannot stand by and let their reputations be trashed. The fact they are being sued at this point is entirely their own doing so I have no sympathy for them.
There is already a process for this and so what is being asked here is a change to the law to punish people beyond remedy that is already available in a civil suit.
I don't think there was an overt election fraud. Certainly there were some people who filled in mail in ballots for their dead spouses or things like that (as there is every single year), but it's minor, and not enough to have changed anything.
But I completely and whole heartedly support any audits, lawsuits, investigations, whatever that anybody wants to do. I say audit and go through discovery as many times as people want.
Suppressing this stuff just entrenches the people who think there is a conspiracy. Just let them look at it.
I hope this case proceeds, and goes through a lengthy discovery process.
And also, as a person who grew up as a hacker in the 90s and early 00s: i want no voting machines of any kind at all. Paper and pen only. If that's not possible, then the machines and their hardware should be 100% open source and Stallman should be in charge of it.
> But I completely and whole heartedly support any audits, lawsuits, investigations, whatever that anybody wants to do.
Improper “audits” are not harmless, they risk destroying (both as evidence of what actually happened, and, in the case of operational equipment, as usable equipment) the items subjected to the audit. That's (both for ballots which have been compromised by the “audit” process and voting machines) been an issue with the Arizona audit.
You can't believe in election integrity and blindly support “any audits, [...] whatever that anybody wants to do.” They are fundamentally mutually incompatible.
Consider what you're saying about auditing machines. That if a nefarious person has access to them, that it renders them untrustable.
Also consider what you are saying about the ballots, that if a bad person gets access to them post facto, that that is bad.
Neither of those things should be true in a well functioning election system. If the machines are vulnerable to a bad person touching them, then scrap them all.
If the ballots can be tied to voters (as is the accusation in AZ), then the system is broken. MUCH work has been put into to preventing that from being possible. If it is possible, then the election is flawed.
>> But I completely and whole heartedly support any audits, lawsuits, investigations, whatever that anybody wants to do. I say audit and go through discovery as many times as people want.
> Also consider what you are saying about the ballots, that if a bad person gets access to them post facto, that that is bad.
seems that 1 bad actor can taint the ballots for future discovery.
also, unlimited discovery just leads to a Gish Gallop. looking for traces of bamboo, kinetic artifacts, routers, etc.
>looking for traces of bamboo, kinetic artifacts, routers, etc.
How many conservative friends do you have? I don't think people understand the positive effect that the Arizona ballot has had on their faith in the election.
It was "we're looking for bamboo fibers because there is a claim that these ballots were printed in China, where bamboo is used to make paper, and we didn't find any, so that seems unlikely."
Those CrAzY things actually have a calming effect on the conspiracies, not a fueling one. There are some people who are susceptible to conspiracies who will never let this go (in the same way that their left leaning counterparts never let Russian collusion stories, or governor kidnapping plots go), but for your average, not-that-into-politics conservative voter, the audits are good.
That number is likely even higher, now, after the crap that the GOP is pulling in Arizona. One of my close friends (a conservative, who doesn't even like Trump) is now convinced that the Democrats somehow stole the election. It's insane.
I point out that there have been multiple audits, already, and no proof of fraud was found.
Doing a third audit, with zero oversight/accountability, is not a serious attempt to detect fraud. It's a means to "discover" wrongdoing that can't be proven/disproven and further confuse people about what really happened.
Unfortunately option 2 isn't what's being offered here in any legitimate way. Instead there is a stream of bizarre theories which are given as much publicity as possible, before being quietly discarded and replaced with the next one.
The point isn't to reach the truth, but to cement in people's minds the idea that a massive crime has occurred, based on the psychological bias of "there's no smoke without fire", despite all the smoke being generated by a smoke machine.
This strategy of misinformation has long been known, and was portrayed quite brilliantly in the 1962 film "The Manchurian Candidate":
> Are they saying: "Are there any Communists in the Defense Department?" No, of course not, they're saying: "How many Communists are there in the Defense Department?"
> How many conservative friends do you have? I don’t think people understand the positive effect that the Arizona ballot has had on their faith in the election.
Your friends may be different, but all the public evidence I’ve seen is that Republicans and Trump supporters (not exactly the same universe) have gotten less confident in the 2020 election over time (including the course of the AZ “audit”), not more.
The audit hasn't produced its report yet. They haven't said anything about bamboo fibers one way or the other.
If they had discovered something obvious, it's likely that they would have leaked it (and gotten their report in on time). But I suspect that they'll find something to point out in their draft report due next week -- not a smoking gun, but something sufficient to show that the fraud was just too clever to have left one.
So I'll be curious to know what your conservative friends think when the draft report is released next week. I imagine there will be an HN article about it, so I'll keep an eye out there.
"The Arizona Republic reported in May that because Senate Republicans had given private companies and individuals unfettered and unmonitored access to voting machines, the county might need to expend significant funds and time to ensure the equipment would meet federal, state and local requirements for certifying and protecting election equipment. Hobbs, the Secretary of State, later informed the Board of Supervisors that election technology and security experts, including at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, unanimously advised her that the machines should not be reused in future elections because no methods exist to adequately secure them.[49][50]"
>unanimously advised her that the machines should not be reused in future elections because no methods exist to adequately secure them.
Yes isn't that more of an indictment of the machines than anything? Shouldn't these machines simply be able to get a new image written to them and be good to go?
Again if part of the security model of the voting machines is "nobody except trusted people can touch them", then they shouldn't be in use.
Do you use your computer to do anything secure like log in to your bank? How about you give me 1 week with your computer out of your control along with any BIOS/UEFI passwords, then after I return it to you would you still trust it to log in to your bank? Would you think you could sufficiently vet all the software and hardware to ensure I had done nothing to the computer?
Now instead assume I am only given 10 minutes with your computer, and not even the computer it self, just a touch screen with no access to any of the physical ports, and I'm only allowed to use a very limited guest account that can only run one program that is auto run and the account logs out if that program closes. Would you feel safe using that computer afterwards?
> Shouldn't these machines simply be able to get a new image written to them and be good to go?
If you lose trust in the hardware there is next to nothing you can do in software to rectify the problem. The quote "no methods exist to adequately secure them" might be going to far, but it's entirely reasonable to say it would be cheaper to buy 5 new machines than it would be to fully verify and recertify 1 of the spoiled machines.
Given that most computers are already backdoored before you buy them and that they spend more than 1 week with the manufacturer I would say that this is an argument against electronic election machines.
I honestly never understood why anyone (except these who manufacture them) would support their use.
> Shouldn’t these machines simply be able to get a new image written to them and be good to go?
If they can be trivially reimaged, that’s already a security problem.
They can go through the entire recertification process with any necessary rebuilding, but the cost of that when you have no certainty what might have been done is unlikely to be less than, and may be much more than (ad hoc diagnosis being much more expensive than production-line manufacturing) just buying a new certified machine.
> Also consider what you are saying about the ballots, that if a bad person gets access to them post facto, that that is bad.
> Neither of those things should be true in a well functioning election system.
A bad person with physical custody of ballots and associated records to perform an audit can also destroy or alter the ballots and/or associated records. Even if the ballots and associated records are structured and authenticated in a way which makes it impractical to convincingly alter data, ballots and aasociated records can be altered or destroyed in ways which make subsequent review impossible. That has been the main concern with ballot handling in AZ.
The significance of the Dominion lawsuits is confirming who owns it. It appears the CCP bought it for $400 million in mid-2020 (ie. just before the US election.)
After the purchase, the About web page was 100% Chinese briefly, then was scrubbed. (Reported by NTD.)
I'm getting this weird "sovereign citizen" vibe from the lawsuit. I wouldn't be surprised if it winds up with her claiming the court has no jurisdiction over her because the courtroom flag has a fringe (and therefore it's an admiralty court rather than a land-based court), or some such rot.
On the other hand, she seems to be represented by an actual attorney who actually passed the bar, so maybe I'm off base...
54 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadthese corrupt to the bone government vendors deserve some disruption, great opportunity for startups to enter the space.
Whether any of us agree or disagree with it is immaterial. It is (by definition) a conspiracy theory. And therefore she is (by definition) a conspiracy theorist.
-Sagan
It sounds like she's saying that not being able to prove a negative is slander. Regardless of one's political beliefs, I can't imagine someone seeing this as anything more than a desperate attempt to stay relevant by someone who doesn't deserve even the smallest amount of it.
But I completely and whole heartedly support any audits, lawsuits, investigations, whatever that anybody wants to do. I say audit and go through discovery as many times as people want.
Suppressing this stuff just entrenches the people who think there is a conspiracy. Just let them look at it.
I hope this case proceeds, and goes through a lengthy discovery process.
And also, as a person who grew up as a hacker in the 90s and early 00s: i want no voting machines of any kind at all. Paper and pen only. If that's not possible, then the machines and their hardware should be 100% open source and Stallman should be in charge of it.
Improper “audits” are not harmless, they risk destroying (both as evidence of what actually happened, and, in the case of operational equipment, as usable equipment) the items subjected to the audit. That's (both for ballots which have been compromised by the “audit” process and voting machines) been an issue with the Arizona audit.
You can't believe in election integrity and blindly support “any audits, [...] whatever that anybody wants to do.” They are fundamentally mutually incompatible.
Also consider what you are saying about the ballots, that if a bad person gets access to them post facto, that that is bad.
Neither of those things should be true in a well functioning election system. If the machines are vulnerable to a bad person touching them, then scrap them all.
If the ballots can be tied to voters (as is the accusation in AZ), then the system is broken. MUCH work has been put into to preventing that from being possible. If it is possible, then the election is flawed.
> Also consider what you are saying about the ballots, that if a bad person gets access to them post facto, that that is bad.
seems that 1 bad actor can taint the ballots for future discovery.
also, unlimited discovery just leads to a Gish Gallop. looking for traces of bamboo, kinetic artifacts, routers, etc.
How many conservative friends do you have? I don't think people understand the positive effect that the Arizona ballot has had on their faith in the election.
It was "we're looking for bamboo fibers because there is a claim that these ballots were printed in China, where bamboo is used to make paper, and we didn't find any, so that seems unlikely."
Those CrAzY things actually have a calming effect on the conspiracies, not a fueling one. There are some people who are susceptible to conspiracies who will never let this go (in the same way that their left leaning counterparts never let Russian collusion stories, or governor kidnapping plots go), but for your average, not-that-into-politics conservative voter, the audits are good.
That number is likely even higher, now, after the crap that the GOP is pulling in Arizona. One of my close friends (a conservative, who doesn't even like Trump) is now convinced that the Democrats somehow stole the election. It's insane.
1) You are not allowed to look at the ballots, and if you do you are traitor. Just trust us and stop asking questions.
2) Look at these things as many times as you want.
Doing a third audit, with zero oversight/accountability, is not a serious attempt to detect fraud. It's a means to "discover" wrongdoing that can't be proven/disproven and further confuse people about what really happened.
The point isn't to reach the truth, but to cement in people's minds the idea that a massive crime has occurred, based on the psychological bias of "there's no smoke without fire", despite all the smoke being generated by a smoke machine.
This strategy of misinformation has long been known, and was portrayed quite brilliantly in the 1962 film "The Manchurian Candidate":
> Are they saying: "Are there any Communists in the Defense Department?" No, of course not, they're saying: "How many Communists are there in the Defense Department?"
https://www.quotes.net/mquote/121163
Your friends may be different, but all the public evidence I’ve seen is that Republicans and Trump supporters (not exactly the same universe) have gotten less confident in the 2020 election over time (including the course of the AZ “audit”), not more.
If they had discovered something obvious, it's likely that they would have leaked it (and gotten their report in on time). But I suspect that they'll find something to point out in their draft report due next week -- not a smoking gun, but something sufficient to show that the fraud was just too clever to have left one.
So I'll be curious to know what your conservative friends think when the draft report is released next week. I imagine there will be an HN article about it, so I'll keep an eye out there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Maricopa_County_president...
Yes isn't that more of an indictment of the machines than anything? Shouldn't these machines simply be able to get a new image written to them and be good to go?
Again if part of the security model of the voting machines is "nobody except trusted people can touch them", then they shouldn't be in use.
Now instead assume I am only given 10 minutes with your computer, and not even the computer it self, just a touch screen with no access to any of the physical ports, and I'm only allowed to use a very limited guest account that can only run one program that is auto run and the account logs out if that program closes. Would you feel safe using that computer afterwards?
> Shouldn't these machines simply be able to get a new image written to them and be good to go?
If you lose trust in the hardware there is next to nothing you can do in software to rectify the problem. The quote "no methods exist to adequately secure them" might be going to far, but it's entirely reasonable to say it would be cheaper to buy 5 new machines than it would be to fully verify and recertify 1 of the spoiled machines.
I honestly never understood why anyone (except these who manufacture them) would support their use.
If they can be trivially reimaged, that’s already a security problem.
They can go through the entire recertification process with any necessary rebuilding, but the cost of that when you have no certainty what might have been done is unlikely to be less than, and may be much more than (ad hoc diagnosis being much more expensive than production-line manufacturing) just buying a new certified machine.
That seems catastrophically stupid.
> Neither of those things should be true in a well functioning election system.
A bad person with physical custody of ballots and associated records to perform an audit can also destroy or alter the ballots and/or associated records. Even if the ballots and associated records are structured and authenticated in a way which makes it impractical to convincingly alter data, ballots and aasociated records can be altered or destroyed in ways which make subsequent review impossible. That has been the main concern with ballot handling in AZ.
As it stands, people are free to file lawsuit after lawsuit and force other people and companies to pay out the nose to defend themselves.
The USPS back-dated thousands of mail-in ballots, for one.
Last-minute state ballot law changes were rolled back by judges after the election, for another.
Who owns Dominion voting, used in 26 states, but banned in Texas because of unclear ownership? Looks like the CCP bought it just before the election.
> Certainly there were some people who filled in mail in ballots for their dead spouses or things like that (as there is every single year)
The FEC considers each count of those a federal crime.
> but it's minor, and not enough to have changed anything.
It actually was enough to change outcomes. 5% of the names in a recent county recount don't match voter rolls.
You have no idea what you're talking about. There's reasons why half the country doesn't believe in the election results.
After the purchase, the About web page was 100% Chinese briefly, then was scrubbed. (Reported by NTD.)
On the other hand, she seems to be represented by an actual attorney who actually passed the bar, so maybe I'm off base...