Voting Technology Company Files $2.7 Billion Lawsuit Against Fox News and Others (nytimes.com) 314
hcs_$reboot shares a report from The New York Times: Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corporation and three of its popular anchors are the targets of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed on Thursday by Smartmatic, a company that became a prominent subject of discredited theories about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Smartmatic, an election technology company, filed the suit in New York State Supreme Court against the Fox Corporation, Fox News, and the anchors Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. As part of the same action, the company is suing Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who made the case for election fraud as guests on Fox programs while representing President Donald J. Trump.
In its 276-page complaint, Smartmatic argues that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell "created a story about Smartmatic" and that "Fox joined the conspiracy to defame and disparage Smartmatic and its election technology and software." Smartmatic, which provided services for the 2020 election in only one county, filed its suit in the tense aftermath of a vote that Mr. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly and falsely described as rigged or stolen. Smartmatic is seeking damages of "no less than $2.7 billion," the complaint says, and is requesting a jury trial. In a statement to CNN, Powell said: "I have not received notice or a copy of this alleged lawsuit. However, your characterization of the claims shows that this is just another political maneuver motivated by the radical left that has no basis in fact or law."
In its 276-page complaint, Smartmatic argues that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell "created a story about Smartmatic" and that "Fox joined the conspiracy to defame and disparage Smartmatic and its election technology and software." Smartmatic, which provided services for the 2020 election in only one county, filed its suit in the tense aftermath of a vote that Mr. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly and falsely described as rigged or stolen. Smartmatic is seeking damages of "no less than $2.7 billion," the complaint says, and is requesting a jury trial. In a statement to CNN, Powell said: "I have not received notice or a copy of this alleged lawsuit. However, your characterization of the claims shows that this is just another political maneuver motivated by the radical left that has no basis in fact or law."
Evidence (Score:2)
Finally lawsuits where these people can provide ALL THEIR EVIDENCE of election fraud that none of the other judges let them show. Trump will get his second term yet. rofl
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The lawsuit is great, starts with this:
"The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won"
Re:Evidence (Score:5, Funny)
The lawsuit is great, starts with this:
"The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won"
That would be hilarious -- fingers crossed.
In addition, they manage to spell "United States" correctly, unlike Trump lawyers misspelled 'United States' in their defense brief for Trump's impeachment trial [businessinsider.com]:
Page 1 and 9: To: The Honorable,the Members of the Unites States Senate:
Link to actual brief [nyt.com].
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So what they need to do there is to show that the defendants knew that there was no evidence for fraud and they they made these claims regardless to defame the plaintiff. This makes defamation lawsuits notoriously difficult to win, and with good reason (my opinion).
From the perspective of Team Trump it might be a bit ironic that them not making defamation lawsuits easier (you can read some stuff about this here: https://anti-slapp.org/slap [anti-slapp.org]
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The Burden of Proof is on the plaintiff, which is not Team Trump.So what they need to do there is to show that the defendants knew that there was no evidence for fraud
Careful. The plaintiffs don't have to prove that the defendents knew it was false, they only need to show that they said it in "reckless disregard of truth".
and they they made these claims regardless to defame the plaintiff.
Intent is only needed for defamation of public figures. I think you could argue that Smartmatic is not a public figure.
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The Burden of Proof is on the plaintiff, which is not Team Trump.
The defense in such a case is that you told the truth. Powell and the others claim massive piles of evidence of their statements veracity, they should be EAGER to show it and the prosecution can't really stop them. It will be typical of this bunch to not show anything that is evidence in the real world.
Fox (Score:2)
Fox will just argue that they're entertainment, not news and people shouldn't believe them a la Alex Jones.
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Fox will just argue that they're entertainment, not news and people shouldn't believe them a la Alex Jones.
So they'll be changing their name from "Fox News" to ... ?
Re:Fox (Score:5, Funny)
Fox will just argue that they're entertainment, not news and people shouldn't believe them a la Alex Jones.
So they'll be changing their name from "Fox News" to ... ?
They will just move the quotes: Fox "News"
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Fox will just argue that they're entertainment, not news and people shouldn't believe them a la Alex Jones.
So they'll be changing their name from "Fox News" to ... ?
They will just move the quotes: Fox "News"
Hope so. I get modded down whenever I do that here; maybe that will help... :-)
ElectionGuard (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ElectionGuard (Score:4, Insightful)
How would you even know the source code matches what is running on the voting machines?
Re:ElectionGuard (Score:5, Funny)
How would you even know the source code matches what is running on the voting machines?
[... raises hand ...] Um... Blockchain? :-)
Re:ElectionGuard (Score:4, Funny)
Bingo: https://xkcd.com/2030/ [xkcd.com]
"Wear gloves"...
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This is the problem that Secure Boot was designed to address. All code has to be signed before it will run.
The start of the chain of trust is a ROM in the SoC that cannot be altered. Games consoles use that technique. It's not impossible to overcome but it is quite difficult, way better than what most systems use.
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You wouldn't care (Score:2)
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The problem is that a significant proportion of the population believes that's exactly what did happen. A conspiracy involving hundreds if not thousands, or perhaps hundreds of little groups acting with no coordination for the same purpose. That nothing substantive showed up in court doesn't sway them. A cryptographically bulletproof trail from voter to winning candidate wouldn't sway them. Far too many people would just say blah, blah, blah, crypto, crypto, fraud.
Re:ElectionGuard (Score:5, Insightful)
Of what? Of which part of the system? How do you know that that hash isnt just returned without a check? How do you know the hardware doesn't override the software? Wheres the chain of evidence?
Etc etc etc.
This is a lot harder than Slashdotters like to think, you cant just throw a few terms around like "open source" and "sha256 hash" and magically solve all the ills in the world.
A big issue here is not the verifiability of the results, its that one side in this simply wont accept a result that is detrimental to them - you can prove without a doubt that the machines and counters produced the right result, but that result would still be wrong to a lot of people.
And that isnt a technology issue, thats a social issue.
Re: (Score:3)
Reminds me of the login back door that Thompson put into the C compiler that was difficult to detect -
https://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/15/strange-loops-dennis-ritchie-a [scienceblogs.com]
So, how would you audit every single voting machine to detect something like that?
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There's no particular reason that the machines in question have to show you the binary they're actually executing.
Re:ElectionGuard (Score:5, Informative)
Georgia did audit the election through a hand recount. The difference was only 0.04% after the recount. Most election experts are fine with optical readers to do the initial count, with subsequent risk-limiting audits of subsets to verify, and complete hand recounts as fallbacks or for close results.
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How do you do signature verification on a recount? The ballots have already been separated from their signatures.
Or, perhaps you just want to throw out the "inconvenient" ballots?
You don't care (Score:2)
You can't commit voter fraud with false signatures. That's because you can't have a conspiracy with that many people involved in it. If you get enough people into your little voter fraud conspiracy to shift election results, even in the narrow elections of the US 2 party / winner take
Re:You don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump on the topic:
"They had a level of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."
The GOP is all about voter suppression.
Re: (Score:3)
"I will now describe how if you let me change the rules on how we count the votes, we can stop others from winning".
Yes, we agree that's what he said.
Re:You don't care (Score:4, Interesting)
Universal mail-in voting isn't a change to the vote counting mechanisms. It is a change to vote casting mechanisms but the counting is still the same as it has been for decades. There has always been mail-in voting and the way mail-in votes were counted in 2020 wasn't substantially different than how they were counted in 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000, 1996, 1992, etc.
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a) presumably the signatures were checked when people arrived at the polling station? Or checked the mail-in ballots as the envelopes were opened?
b) a lot of this "verification" talk is about trying to keep "those people" (for values of 'those') from casting ballots; the secretaries of state (or whatever title the People-in-Charge-of-Elections get) have said , REPEATEDLY, there were no irregularities seen in any numbers large enough to affect outcomes, in MULTIPLE contentious states. We're either talking
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The solution is much more simple and already available.
Don't record the votes electronically. Instead have one type of machine that prints individual ballots in human-readable form and another machine that counts them.
That's exactly what Dominion does. It allows manual recounts. It allows individual voters to check their ballots before they turn them in for counting.
Backpedaling is hard ... (Score:5, Funny)
I saw a clip on CNN yesterday of a Tuesday interview with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Newmax -- reported in Newsmax anchor storms off set when MyPillow CEO voices election conspiracies [cnn.com] -- it was actually pretty funny:
Newsmax anchor Bob Sellers repeatedly tried to cut off MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in an interview Tuesday after the Trump-supporting executive spread election fraud falsehoods on air.
"We have all this election fraud with these Dominion machines," Lindell said. "We have 100% proof."
Sellers quickly interjected.
"Mike, you're talking about machines. We at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of those kinds of allegations," he said, before reading from a statement: "While there were some clear evidence of some cases of voter fraud and election irregularities, the election results in every state were certified, and Newsmax accepts the results as legal and final. The courts have also supported that view."
While reading the statement, Lindell was shouting over Sellers, claiming that Newsmax was trying to do the same thing to him that Twitter did.
"You have just suppressed me, just like Twitter," Lindell said.
Sellers grew agitated as Lindell continued to talk over him.
Less than two minutes into the interview, Sellers asked the show's producers, "Can we get out of here, please? I don't want to have to keep going over this. We at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of those allegations."
When Sellers' co-anchor Heather Childers, a former "Fox & Friends First" anchor, continued the conversation, Sellers promptly got up out of his anchor chair and walked off set.
I guess getting sued for $2B gets a network's attention ... :-)
Re:Backpedaling is hard ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Trump and his crew managed to sell a steaming load of BS for about 4 years, but the US actually has a fairly low tolerance for it. In the long run, it's kind of like an immune response builds up. That group is going to have less and less success as time goes on. People talk about Trump running again in 2024. I'm not worried in the slightest about that. By then, he won't even be able to get an interview at my local cable station, let alone any free pass to spew bald-face lies on Twitter and Facebook.
There are articles running around the internet talking about how this happened with McCarthy. He started out as an absolute juggernaut that nobody dared to challenge. He managed to hold on for about 4 years until US society got tired of the red-scare BS and collectively ran him out of town on a rail.
The Trump family is already fleeing to Florida and finding nice places to lay low. They know the gig is over and they won't have much influence moving forward. And the lawsuits will probably keep them busy for the rest of their lives. They might be immune at the federal level (100% chance of a pocket pardon) but the states are going to put them through the meat-grinder. In a year Trump news won't even make the front page.
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I don't think that it was weariness of him that was McCarthy's downfall. Instead, it was because he went after the army.
In other words, he went too far. Perhaps that's what always eventually happens to people w
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> Trump and his crew managed to sell a steaming load of BS for about 4 years, but the US actually has a fairly low tolerance for it.
Prove it. What has been proved, beyond any doubt what-so-ever, is the Russia collusion story was a complete fabrication. Yet the media ran that BS story every day for years.
While you are accusing the right of creating hoaxes, let's not for forget AOC's recent hoax, which is reminiscent of her previous hoax of crying outside the fence where the "caged children" were kept.
Let'
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Unlike you, I actually read news sources that I PAY FOR. Which means that they employ actual journalists, doing actual research, and actual editors to make sure everything is actual quality. This is different than CNN, FOX, ABC, talk radio, Infowars, Parler, or whatever-comes-next. All those places compete for your eyeballs and feed you whatever they
Re:I'll bet you a coke they reform Trump in 8 year (Score:5, Insightful)
If Trump had finished his term with the slightest bit of class, you might be right. That's what Clinton and Bush did - they welcomed the next guy to the office, paved the way for the transition, and finished out looking *mostly* like a pro. Trump, on the other hand, spent his last month giving the next president a VERY public middle finger, claiming he was cheated when he very obviously lost fair and square, and his finale was the whole "orchestrate a violent attack on congress" thing. And, yes, regardless of how you feel about that personally, overall society is going to put that firmly in his lap.
There will be a small group that looks back fondly at those years. Emphasis on the word "small".
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Joe "Tailgunner" McCarthy used a shotgun approach when a scaple was needed.
"Controversy arose in 2009 over the Texas State Board of Education's revision of their high school history class curricula to suggest Venona shows Senator Joseph McCarthy to have been justified in his zeal in exposing those whom he believed to be Soviet spies or communist sympathizers.[55] Critics such as Emory University history professor Harvey Klehr assert most people and organizations identified by McCarthy, such as those brought
Re: (Score:2)
Discovery could be interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
The Covington lawsuit might be a precedent? CNN and WAPO settled that one.
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And I'm still wondering what the cause of action was there. I admittedly didn't follow that very closely as it was unfolding and I didn't see any of CNN's coverage of it.
It seemed like a bunch of people on social media said a bunch of things and WaPo and I guess CNN reported what they knew about it and like every other news source these days seems to do also reported what the Twitterati were saying.
Even before the lawsuit came out I eventually recognized that this Sandman character didn't say anything or e
Speculation does not equal lying (Score:2)
Libel is tough in the US. An argument can be made that Sidney Powell et al were describing court filings or asking questions around opaque and proprietary voting systems. That would qualify as protected speech.
Are there $2.7B in sales to lose? (Score:2)
It's Not a Slam-Dunk Case (Score:2)
Re: Software Voting Is Wrong (Score:2)
Re: Software Voting Is Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Do the names Halliburton or Diebold ring a bell?
They do, but why do you mention those?
Halliburton and Diebold machines tallied choices on a touch screen, wrote those to a data file, and supposedly sent that data file to be used as a vote count.
Completely evil, hacked, and wrong.
Smartmatic is a scan-tron machine.
You fill out a paper ballot, run it through the machine to be read, then go take your paper ballot to the box to be counted.
Results from the machine are NOT votes. They give an early estimate for the news to report as early estimates.
None of that matters until the paper ballots are counted up over the next week(s) to get a real vote count.
What exactly do you have against paper ballot voting?
It's worked for hundreds of years and every single democratic country on the planet uses paper ballots.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Software Voting Is Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The devices in question are just readers. Ballots are cast on paper and these count them. The hand recount afterward showed a difference of 2000 votes out of just shy of five million votes, a difference of 0.04%.
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I think that there are two machine types. One type allows the voter to create a paper ballot and the other reads them. This allows blind people to vote and provides an election that can be recounted (unlike DRE machines), by hand, if necessary. It also allows voters to validate their ballot before it is counted.
Why is it that the machines that cannot be audited (DRE-style machines) are in Republican-controlled states?
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Damages could come from counties or states already using them decertifying their devices, resulting in lost purchase and maintenance revenues, especially if contracts are terminated early. They may have already gotten indications of these.
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That would be the case if they were never going to sell their products to any other location on the planet.
I suspect they don't exist only to sell software to one county.
Re:This is symbolic (Score:5, Insightful)
The Smartmatic lawsuit described in Fox News Is Sued by Election Technology Company for Over $2.7 Billion [nytimes.com] "accuses Rupert Murdoch’s network of promoting a false narrative about the 2020 election that damaged the company." and notes on-air commentary from Sidney Powell and Lou Dobbs:
“The Smartmatic software is in the DNA of every vote-tabulating company’s software and systems,” Ms. Powell said later on the show.
Mr. Dobbs added, “We don’t even know who the hell really owns these companies, at least most of them.”
and Smartmatic offers this:
The suit argues that claims made on Fox were demonstrably false, given that Smartmatic’s technology was used only in Los Angeles County and not in any of the contested states during the 2020 election.
Given that Fox News self-identifies as a News Organization, it's pretty clear that they could researched things, if they cared to.
Re: (Score:2)
Does it? [npr.org]
"Just read U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil's opinion, leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers: The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' "
She wrote: "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropria
Re:This is symbolic (Score:5, Insightful)
Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes.
How about a typical viewer, rather than a reasonable one?
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Unluckily, contrary to evidence, the law considers the average person to be reasonable.
Not really (Score:3)
Unluckily, contrary to evidence, the law considers the average person to be reasonable.
Not really.
What it does is refuse to hold people responsible for how UNreasonable people react to them.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The set of "Reasonable" Fox News viewers is clearly the empty set.
Re: (Score:2)
> “The Smartmatic software is in the DNA of every vote-tabulating company’s software and systems,” Ms. Powell said later on the show.
> Mr. Dobbs added, “We don’t even know who the hell really owns these companies, at least most of them.”
Defamation applies to false statements of fact. Software simply doesn't have DNA, so there's no way to interpret this as a factual statement of any sort because it has no clear meaning to begin with.
For the second statement, it's ha
Re: (Score:3)
Not going to agree with you on this, "Software simply doesn't have DNA, so there's no way to interpret this as a factual statement of any sort because it has no clear meaning to begin with."
because the word "DNA" has been changed over time from what most people think it was Biological language speak to a Design language speak. You might hear that's a Italian DNA on certain automotive features, Chinese DNA on certain building features and so forth.
So for me, hearing "Smartmatic software is in the DNA of ever
Fox News does *not* identify as a News Org (Score:2)
Re:This is symbolic (Score:4, Informative)
They'll use Rachel Maddow's "I'm just an entertainer" defense.
From the NYT article I mentioned:
Don Herzog, who teaches First Amendment and defamation law at the University of Michigan, said the essence of the suit made sense. “You can’t just make false stuff up about people,” he said.
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty sure Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly were using that defense long before anyone ever heard of Maddow
The "No one takes them seriously" defense (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This is symbolic (Score:5, Insightful)
Melissa Carone also falsely claimed to be a "cybersecurity expert" based on her credentials as a temporary cybersecurity analysist contracted through a third party for Ford Motor Company. These are hacks who review logs and occasionally annoy real engineers, not experts.
Re: (Score:3)
You do go on specifying a lot of details in that said report. The danger is that for some, repetition reinforces belief even when non-factual.
Could you please at least provide a citation or a link for that report?
Re:This is symbolic (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: This is symbolic (Score:4, Informative)
CNN and other news outlets invented facts that were not in the initially released snippet of video of Sandman & the Native American - they showed a video of sandman standing still, not talking, not moving. And said that he approached the old man, said horrible things, and insulted the Native American.
In other words, they made up facts.
Then, when the expanded video was released, and it was shown that the boys were themselves approached & surrounded, insulted and called horrible names, CNN and the rest of the media tripped all over themselves refusing to report it, and clung fast to their racist, white privileged claims about the boys for (seemingly) weeks.
They refused to correct any earlier false claims, they doubled-down and never stopped.
They were bound to lose, their actions sealed their fate.
Re:This is symbolic (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that they continued to make up stories about voting irregularities EVEN AFTER states like Georgia had demonstrated that there had been no such irregularities, I'm thinking the suit probably has some reasonable chance of success. My hunch is that Fox News will probably settle this one, because even if the chances are even, that's a helluva lot of money to put on a 50-50 bet. The bigger problem is going to be for the pee wees in this face, in particular Giuliani. He doesn't have Rupert Murdoch's deep pockets. But any lawyer with expertise in defamation is going to be telling Fox News they do not want to go into a courtroom over this, and in fact, to some extent we know this, because Fox News, as soon as voting machine companies told them and other companies to hold on to their records and communications (in other words, discovery is imminent), they immediately started shutting down any and all talk of voting machine irregularities and fraud. That was Fox News' legal department saying "We are about to get sued, so tell Hannity, Carlson, Dobbs and the rest to shut their fucking mouths." That's when the bizarre voice over about no evidence of fraud appeared.
That's Murdoch's lawyers intervening in the hopes of offering some cover to the company.
Hilariously there *were* voting irregularities (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is symbolic (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, to win a libel suit, you have to prove the other party knowingly lied and did it to cause harm
This is wrong. Libel: a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation. The burden of proof as to whether a statement is false lies with the one that uttered it. If Trump's team has no evidence that their defamatory, factual (as in provable) remarks are true, then that's clearly libel. Which is exactly why I'm not going to make a defamatory, factual remark that I can't prove, like you having a habit of abusing children on Sunday afternoons.
But imagine - if the burden of proof actually rested with you having to prove that you do not have a habit of abusing children on Sunday afternoons, well, you can have a fun time actually proving adequately all of the details of your Sunday afternoons for the last few years.
Re:This is symbolic (Score:5, Funny)
Which is exactly why I'm not going to make a defamatory, factual remark that I can't prove, like you having a habit of abusing children on Sunday afternoons.
I heard many people are saying that ... :-)
Re: This is symbolic (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
you have to prove that the other person intentionally lied with the goal of defaming you
Absolutely 100% wrong [cornell.edu], "Counselor". Don't quit your day job.
The key one there is #3: "a plaintiff must show four things...3) fault amounting to at least negligence"
Because the defamed person must prove that the defamer was at fault, the practical result is that defamation in the US assumes the defamer is innocent and the defamed has to prove otherwise. This changes the entire burden of the process from the defamer to the defamed. Instead of YOU having to back up your statements, I have to prove that you were at fault EVEN IF your statements were false.
Re: (Score:2)
However [and I have no knowledge of what happened either way], what happens if Smartmatic learned about the false statements and immediately contacted the parties it had sued and provided them with evidence that their claims were false and a request that they desist from repeating them?
If something like that were to have happened the moment Smartmatic were made aware of the allegedly false statements, then the defendants in this cas
Re:This is symbolic (Score:5, Informative)
Actually knowingly lied can be sufficient. You do not need to be lying while purposefully be causing harm to a defamed party, only telling a lie that a reasonable person understands is likely to cause harm to that party.
A quick google search offers this:
[quote]Under United States law, libel generally requires five key elements: the plaintiff must prove that the information was published, the plaintiff was directly or indirectly identified, the remarks were defamatory towards the plaintiff's reputation, the published information is false, and that the defendant is at fault.
[/quote]
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On the “defendant is at fault”, I hear the “a lot of people are talking about how...” defense is a get-out-of-jail-free card.
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You don't have to prove that they knew it was definitely a lie, just showing that they had no real reason to think that the things they were saying were true is enough. At that point a reasonable person would have said "I am not confident of these extremely serious allegations, so I will not use my TV news network to present them as facts".
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Maybe conservatives should take some time to understand the law a bit better. If the last few months have shown us anything, it's that they are suckers for dubious legal theories and throwing money at lawyers.
Perhaps it was because they thought that after Trump stacked the courts with cronies they didn't actually need to be legally right, but it turns out there are enough checks in the system to prevent biased judges overthrowing democracy.
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Also, to win a libel suit, you have to prove the other party knowingly lied and did it to cause harm
No. They have to prove that the statements were defamatory, that the defamation caused a quantifiable loss; and if the defense gives evidence that the statements were true, they have to show that it isn't.
Malice (the part about "they did it to cause harm") is only required for a public figure. It is a higher bar to prove defamation of a public figure.
Its unlikely the Trump campaign had any real knowledge of the voting system's inner workings. To prove then that it was a lie,
No, if you defame somebody, you have to prove the defamation is true for it to be a defense. They don't have to prove it's a lie.
Counterintuitive, but true.
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Smartmatic may be considered a Limited-Purpose Public Figure [dmlp.org] in these circumstances in which case the actual malice standards would apply.
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"you have to prove the other party knowingly lied "
Even under the actual malice standard, that includes reckless disregard for the truth as well as knowingly lying. For example, if they were citing sources like "crazy-pants-rumors.com" and Crackhead McLiarface without doing further establishing those sources credentials that would be as damning as if they made things up themselves.
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Do you think CNN would have settled if Covington High and Nick Sandman didn't have a case?
- He was an underage child at the time it happened
- They intentionally cut video to create a negative narrative from whole cloth. They had the whole video yet CHOSE to make it look the opposite of what it said. They intentionally cut out the aggressive way in which the anti-semitic group which he stood in opposition to approached them.
- They then intentionally wrote a narrative which from the video can be proven was fa
Re:This is symbolic (Score:4, Informative)
The voting machines in the states all had paper ballots to back them up and they found the numbers were VERY CLOSE to what the computer results were. I agree these systems need to be audited to verify the software but to say cheating happened is a flat out lie. The truth is backed up by the paper ballots. Every questioned state result kicked off a recount of the PAPER ballots, which verified the original results.
As for mail in ballots those are just as secure and that is backed up by the fact that those that tried to cheat (every single case caught and there were more then a few, were votes for Trump)
If it was so easy to fake and falsify then all the mail in ballots that were caught would have gone uncaught.
The only reason for this we need to be more strict on verifying voting is to keep only the people we want to vote able to vote.
Just like when you tried to cancel AOL and you had to keep going in circles until they finally let you cancel. They were just making sure you were really you and you were "allowed" to cancel AOL. The reason it kept showing up on your bill after you thought you canceled? Obviously it was not REALLY you that wanted to cancel and it was a fraud cancellation. We should switch to total mail in ballot for everyone who is legally aloud to vote and in person only if you really want to.
Re:This is symbolic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Can you cite which clauses in Georgia's election laws the Secretary of State violated?
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I pulled off the State of Georgia's Title 21 - Elections, and in particular looked at the duties and powers of the Georgia Secretary of State in this regard. As with most laws, the elected representatives offload a great deal of the mechanics of an election to the chief electoral officers, in this case, the aforementioned Secretary of State. Reading this, it seems pretty clear that the Georgia's legislature has granted the Secretary of State pretty broad powers in running elections. So please do point out h
Re: (Score:2)
Even the voters of Georgia do not constitutionally have the right to sue their own state for the general enforcement of election laws.
Well, I guess that's all the options.
Re:Nothing's been discredited (Score:5, Insightful)
Regarding just one claim. In VA, a state judge said that some ballots should not have been counted.
* This might or might not hold up on appeal.
* The number of ballots is low (perhaps a few hundred).
* Biden won the state by more than 400,000 votes.
Every election has some issue that is disputable. This does not mean that every election is fraudulent. This case does not even imply that Biden was the benefactor of this issue, let along a conspirator.
It was also about timing (Score:2)
Re:Nothing's been discredited (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think it was a sound election, consider that a VA judge just ruled [msn.com] that the way mail-in ballots were validated was highly illegal. Now that Bad Orange Man is out, the courts are really rediscovering little things like "no, the Secretary of State must conduct the election precisely how the legislature said it must be conducted."
You fucked up, you trusted the Washington Examiner. The court enjoined VA from counting these ballots before the election--not after the Bad Orange President was voted out. https://publicinterestlegal.or... [publicinterestlegal.org]
If you have some evidence that Virginia violated that court order by counting the forbidden votes, then you really do have a scandal and people will go to jail. Otherwise this story provides no reason to doubt the integrity of the election. TedKnightInCaddyshack.gif
You also fucked up trusting Erik Sonoferik, but the rules of standing are decades old, easily googleable, and no different for this election than any other.
The worse president in living memory got spanked fair and square and then lied abut it to collect money and try to cling to power illegally.
Re: (Score:2)
Similarly, the SCOTUS case was shockingly bad because no one has ever resolved precisely who has standing to stand up and enforce state laws when the state executive or judiciary orders an election to be run contrary to the statutory process.
What case was that? Do you mean how SCOTUS refused to even hear the case of how states like Texas were trying to interfere and overturn Georgia's election results but only when it came to the Presidential vote. You do understand that 1) if people in Georgia have issues with Georgia they have to sue the state of Georgia. 2) Georgia was following all state laws as no real evidence was presented otherwise. Sore Loser Trump just cannot accept that he lost.
Re: (Score:3)
Giuliani didn't present evidence because apparently he was too dumb or disinterested to do it.
Uh, no. In multiple cases, judges asked Giuliani, et al if they have evidence. And Giuliani, et al said "No". Not because they're dumb, but because innuendo isn't evidence.
Also, there's no requirement that you present your evidence in a courtroom first.
Finally, your link is about a guy whining that he is so much smarter than everyone around him that he can't make a 1-page summary. Which is a fantastic example of Dunning-Kruger.
Similarly, the SCOTUS case was shockingly bad because no one has ever resolved precisely who has standing to stand up and enforce state laws when the state executive or judiciary orders an election to be run contrary to the statutory process.
No, it was resolved centuries ago. States run elections. That means state s
Re: (Score:2)
A brief perusal of Georgia's Title 21 seems to give the Secretary of State a great deal of authority in the running of elections (including the form of ballots, how absentee and mail in ballots are to be registered, and so forth). This is generally how such laws are written. Lawmakers cannot foresee every circumstance, and can't be expected at the 11th hour just to whip out amendments to standing statutes because of some unique circumstance. They do, as lawmakers have been doing for centuries in the English
Re: (Score:2)
So why has none of this fabled evidence, the Kraken etc, been aired in public?
Why havent any of the Trump team gone to the media and actually laid their case out with supporting facts and documented evidence?
Why did it all fizzle to absolutely nothing court case after court case after court case?
Why has the Trump team done absolutely nothing with this "evidence"?
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously, read or listen to some of the conversation that he had over the Georgia election with the officials running certifying the results. We get statements like "just find the votes". This is the President telling an election official to just magic
Re: (Score:3)
their goal was achieved. it was not to overturn the election, they full well knew that wasn't going to happen - because they are lawyers. the goal was to shape public opinion.
Re:Slashdot has changed (Score:5, Informative)
that discussion was about votes made and tallied without paper, entirely on computers. Everyone came to their senses a decade ago. the actual practice is to either computer count human-marked ballots, or print out the selections and count those. In either case the paper documentary evidence of the ballots is preserved, just as we argued on Slashdot should happen.
Re:Slashdot has changed (Score:5, Insightful)
3 months since the election, no verifiable proof has been made public. Rational people have moved on.
If the folks at Fox News are correct, defending against this lawsuit should be a breeze and the truth will finally come out.... or they know it's just a bunch of bullshit and they'll try to salvage the situation by settling privately and not having to admit any fault.
I got a paper ballot this year, that made me happy because I do not trust the machines. My distrust is more about them being unreliable not that someone is trying to hack the election. Why do we think the companies are trying to help out the Democrats anyway?
Re: (Score:3)
You don't even know how Smartmatics machines work do you?