Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft (nytimes.com) 220
The top executive of an elections technology company that has been the focus of attention among election deniers was arrested by Los Angeles County officials in connection with an investigation into the text, the county said on Tuesday. From a report: Eugene Yu, the founder and chief executive of Konnech, the technology company, was taken into custody on suspicion of theft, the Los Angeles County district attorney, George Gascon, said in a statement.
Konnech, which is based in Michigan, develops software to manage election logistics, like scheduling poll workers. Los Angeles County is among its customers. The company has been accused by groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election with storing information about poll workers on servers in China. The company has repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States, including in recent statements to The New York Times. Mr. Gascon's office said its investigators had found data stored in China. Holding the data there would violate Konnech's contract with the county.
Konnech, which is based in Michigan, develops software to manage election logistics, like scheduling poll workers. Los Angeles County is among its customers. The company has been accused by groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election with storing information about poll workers on servers in China. The company has repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States, including in recent statements to The New York Times. Mr. Gascon's office said its investigators had found data stored in China. Holding the data there would violate Konnech's contract with the county.
Obligatory complaint about /. "editing" (Score:2)
Is this summary supposed to be comprehensible? It makes essential reference to "the text" without ever introducing it: we even have to guess whether that means SMS or manuscript; and it seems to suggest that an arrest was carried out over a civil matter (failure to meet contractual obligations), which makes no sense.
Re:Obligatory complaint about /. "editing" (Score:4, Insightful)
It also repeatedly refers to election deniers, while essentially saying that it looks like they were correct in this case.
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It also repeatedly refers to election deniers, while essentially saying that it looks like they were correct in this case.
That doesn't make them not deniers, a word which refers to people who are denying that the election was legitimate. They are not even proposing that this company altered the outcome of the election, so this company's actions are not relevant to whether they are denialists, or whether they are right or wrong about the election results being manipulated.
Further, even in the prior article [nytimes.com] on this subject (linked from TFA) the NYT never took a stance on whether the denialists were correct or not about Konntech
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It also repeatedly refers to election deniers, while essentially saying that it looks like they were correct in this case.
Well, except that this case seems to have to connection to election denial.
From the LA County DA’s office:
“This investigation is concerned solely with the personal identifying information of election workers. In this case, the alleged conduct had no impact on the tabulation of votes and did not alter election results."
citation: https://gizmodo.com/election-s... [gizmodo.com]
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However, that is exactly what the deniers claim revolved around, it doesn't matter that it had no effect, just that they were correct on this point.
Non Paywall link (Score:3)
CEO arrested over poll worker data theft [gizmodo.com]
NY Times doing NY Times things... (Score:2, Interesting)
This is really something. Within 24 hours, we went from 'election conspiracy theory' to 'theft of personal information' (which is what the conspiracy theory folks were alleging all along). By the same reporter, no less!
October 3rd 2022: How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target [nytimes.com]
October 4th 2022: Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft [nytimes.com]
Is it still a conspiracy if it's true? Asking for a friend...
Re:NY Times doing NY Times things... (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically speaking, a conspiracy theory could be true or false, like any other theory. People deride conspiracy theories as if they are all made up, but many of them follow actual evidence, sometimes incorrectly, to deduce connections.
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Most of what the FBI does and was created to do is conspiracy.
Criminal Conspiracy is an actual thing; part definition of organized crime, actually.
Nutjob theories have been labeled conspiracy theories.
Aside from all this, criminal conspiracy laws need to be fixed but not in the flat-earth era in which we live.
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What's true here that suddenly makes Trump president? This company was never the "center" of the conspiracy theories. He stored some poll worker data in China, which was alleged. So now it seem likely true? Ok. Tiny story really, since it does not mean the Big Lie is now true. It doesn't mean we had Chinese controlled poll workers, it doesn't mean Venezuela controlled the votes on Dominion voting machines, it doesn't mean Trump is now president. This sounds a lot like someone found a part of the earth
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I thought Cyber Ninjas was supposed to find bamboo fibers on the votes they printed in Asia...
That sure fizzled out in a hurry.
Yet another misleading headline (Score:3)
From the article:
“...the alleged conduct had no impact on the tabulation of votes and did not alter election results. Data breaches are an ongoing threat to our digital way of life,” the district attorney’s office said in the statement. “When we entrust a company to hold our confidential data, they must be willing and able to protect our personal identifying information from theft. Otherwise, we are all victims.”
This isn't really , its breach of contract, incompetence and probably illegal a number of other ways, but not theft...
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This isn't really , its breach of contract, incompetence and probably illegal a number of other ways, but not theft...
They took the data to servers they owned in a country they were not supposed to take it to. That means it was arguably theft. It is also breach of contract. The only safe assumption is that there are multiple copies of the data out there. The idea that it is incompetence is unjustified. Data doesn't copy itself. They copied it.
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This isn't really , its breach of contract, incompetence and probably illegal a number of other ways, but not theft...
They took the data to servers they owned in a country they were not supposed to take it to. That means it was arguably theft. It is also breach of contract. The only safe assumption is that there are multiple copies of the data out there. The idea that it is incompetence is unjustified. Data doesn't copy itself. They copied it.
There were given the data. Not theft.
Breach of contract for sure. And there could be other data protection laws they violated, but theft shouldn't be one of them.
As for the broader context, they certainly did wrong, but I'd be surprised if most companies who deal with protected data were doing things with that data they weren't supposed to.
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Breach of contract for sure. And there could be other data protection laws they violated, but theft shouldn't be one of them.
That's going to depend on who it is claimed received the data, isn't it? And how their other office was structured.
As for the broader context, they certainly did wrong, but I'd be surprised if most companies who deal with protected data were doing things with that data they weren't supposed to.
Whataboutism is not a valid defense in court.
Asterisk (Score:2)
BIG Asterisk (Score:2)
Re: Weird (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm still stuck on the fact that a roaring economy, roaring stock market, healthy economy didn't matter one bit if the president sent a couple mean tweets.
But super high inflation, tanking markets, and blowing up a big pipeline releasing a record amount of pollution is no big deal as long as the president smiles and acts like a "polite citizen".
Personally I'll take the mean tweets.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a bigger fan of how Biden is objectively guilty of everything the left accused Trump of.
Influence peddler? Check.
Pedophile? Check.
Incompetent? Double, Triple Check.
We had 4 years of peace under Trump, despite the left's daily accusations of starting world war 3. Biden bungles every single international conflict, killing thousands and the left supports it.
Believe all women? Well, unless they're accusing a democrat, of course.
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I'm still stuck on the fact that a roaring economy, roaring stock market, healthy economy didn't matter one bit if the president sent a couple mean tweets.
That boost was due to Trump's deficit-raising tax cut. It cost The People more than it made for the oligarchs. That's how we know Trump is a true Republican.
super high inflation, tanking markets, and blowing up a big pipeline releasing a record amount of pollution is no big deal as long as the president smiles and acts like a "polite citizen".
You have proof we blew up the pipeline? I'm sure Putin would be interested in hearing [more] from you.
Propaganda spin. (Score:2)
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I'm still stuck on the fact that a roaring economy, roaring stock market, healthy economy didn't matter one bit if the president sent a couple mean tweets.
But super high inflation, tanking markets, and blowing up a big pipeline releasing a record amount of pollution is no big deal as long as the president smiles and acts like a "polite citizen".
Personally I'll take the mean tweets.
Are you implying the USA blew up the gas pipeline?
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Are you implying the USA blew up the gas pipeline?
ofc he is. And hell, it could even be true, though I don't think it is. But that's what makes it such a good conspiracy theory. The ones that have an air of plausibility always have longer legs.
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it's the fascist coup attempt. It went down exactly like we said it would.
Nice strawman though. Does a good job distracting from the fact that we came within inches of becoming a dictatorship with Donald Trump as El Presidente. What is it with you guys and dictators anyway?
The TDS is strong with this one
Re:The problem isn't mean tweets (Score:5, Insightful)
>But TDS sufferers go off the deep end with nonsense like "fascist coup attempt", "dictator", "Hitlerian", every "-phobe" and "-ist" you can think of.
But there was a coup attempt. Did you not hear the Jan 6th hearings? There was a coordinated attempt by multiple different groups, including people in power, to ensure that Donald Trump was seated as the next president. Did you have your TV off on Jan 6th?
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>But TDS sufferers go off the deep end with nonsense like "fascist coup attempt", "dictator", "Hitlerian", every "-phobe" and "-ist" you can think of.
But there was a coup attempt. Did you not hear the Jan 6th hearings? There was a coordinated attempt by multiple different groups, including people in power, to ensure that Donald Trump was seated as the next president. Did you have your TV off on Jan 6th?
Unfortunately truth doesn't matter to them, only their version of the truth where Democrats cheated and Biden stole the election with Trump being the actual president who's being denied his rightful place. You can show them any number of reports, play them the calls where Trump is begging state election officials to "find" him the extra 11k-ish plus one votes he needs to win, listen to the endless number of credible witnesses - including those in the secret service - saying that Trump wanted to get out of
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These guys are like the three monkeys in a row, except it's actually 2/3 of republicans lined up with hands somehow simultaneously over eyes and ears... but not mouths.
Re:The problem isn't mean tweets (Score:5, Insightful)
the way he has been treated ever since he ran for office is a disgrace.
Trump has literally always been a piece of shit; he was raised to be one, and he has always risen to that expectation. He has always been racist. He has always been nationalist. He was raised by a white supremacist who was raised by a white supremacist. Grab 'em by the pussy, invading the girls' dressing room at pageants, never paying contractors to the point he can't even get a lawyer worth a fuck... I will spend any amount of my karma points saying fuck that piece of shit.
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I would love to see the definition of fascist you are using that somehow relates to Trump.
FYI, Obama and Biden have done more to act like dictators than Trump ever did. Biden has repeatedly done things he knows are unconstitutional, and that he says are unconstitutional, such as the vaccine mandate and student loan forgiveness, he also did the eviction moratorium extension after the supreme court warned him that it was unconstitutional. Obama did numerous things that were easily shown unconstitutional, an
Re:The problem isn't mean tweets (Score:5, Informative)
I would love to see the definition of fascist you are using that somehow relates to Trump.
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
Asking for someone to "find votes" so he can win is pretty fascist.
Re:The problem isn't mean tweets (Score:4, Informative)
14 characteristics of facism. One of many such lists.
https://ratical.org/ratville/C... [ratical.org]
https://insight.bibliotech.us/... [bibliotech.us]
Trump was demonstrating many of the characteristics even before he was elected, and it worsened throughout his presidency. Culminating in a large-scale plan to overthrow the constitution and throw out the election results in a self-coup to avoid surrendering power.
Re:The problem isn't mean tweets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The problem isn't mean tweets (Score:5, Insightful)
The only fascist coup attempt was using the FBI to influence the election.
You mean FBI Director James Comey publicly announcing that he reopened the agency's investigation into Hillary's e-mail eleven days before the election despite a well-publicized FBI policy not to comment on ongoing investigations?
Yes, there's a good chance that this tipped the election to Trump.
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"fascist coup attempt"
I've yet to see any factual verification of anything related to this claim. It's parroted a lot in the state media a lot, though.
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Same way that "election denier" never seems to be applied to Stacy Abrams, Hillary Clinton, or any of the other miriad Democrats who have been claiming "stolen elections" for the last 22 years.
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He did try to get us on Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin in place of vaccinations which is now recommended by the CDC as preventative.
The CDC briefly had a suggestion up to that effect in 2020 [reuters.com], which appears to have been politically motivated (by Cheeto Mussolini himself.) Since then, all official medical advice everywhere has been consistently against HCQ or Ivermectin's use related to Covid in any capacity. The current CDC guidance [cdc.gov] does not mention HCQ or Ivermectin at all, presumably because they thought they were past people like you deliberately spreading disinformation about it. They should probably think again, because there's nev
Clinton blamed hackers for her losing (Score:3, Insightful)
Hillary DID release a gracious concession statement right after the election. That was true statesmanship. Then 12 hours later she blaming hacking for her loss, saying "he's an illegitimate president".
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Gore said we should count dimpled ballots in the Democrat precincts, throw out all ballots in the Republican precincts that have the chad hanging by a corner, and not let the soldiers deployed overseas vote, so he could pretend to win.
Local politicians (of both parties) are oft
Re:Clinton blamed hackers for her losing (Score:5, Insightful)
Hillary and Donald both had the same problem. They were totally unable to see that the majority of voters really did not like them. Both campaigned mostly to their base, which gave them lots of positive feedback. So when they lost they were baffled and confused, while being surrounded by yes men claiming "it wasn't your fault, everybody we know loves you, so they must have cheated!"
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Yeah at least in one point of the primary season, polling showed the Trump was the ONLY republican candidate that people liked less than they liked Hillary. According to polling at the time, any other Republican candidate would beat her.
Of course he ended up squeaking out the win, partly because of a lot of conservatives holding their nose and voting against Hillary, even though that meant voting for Trump. Remember #nevertrump was *Republicans*.
"but nobody likes me. It can only be my personalit (Score:2)
I will say, near the end of his presidency, Trump did says this is a news conference:
"but nobody likes me. ... It can only be my personality".
I was thinking "NOW he's starting to get it!" We don't like you. :)
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It was always my impression that, in part, Trump was running on how much he was pissing off the entrenched deep state in DC. Of course nobody likes him. He's threatening to take the cookie jar away.
Re:Clinton blamed hackers for her losing (Score:4, Informative)
Your distortions make lies. The Clinton article you link is from 2019. So much for "12 hours". And the hacking she is talking about is hacking to obtain material that can be quoted out of context to give political advantage - not hacking the polls.
Not going to bother to look up how you are distorting other things. The truth is we do not know who "should" have won the 2000 presidential election because the margin in Florida was smaller than the error in the polling method. Again that's not claiming the count is "hacked" or "stolen" but acknowledging that polling does have finite error.
And if you think these things are so important but ignore obvious constant widespread methods by republicans to suppress votes in Democratic-leaning districts you are just lying to yourself to rationalize your bias.
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Democrats complain when they lose - the Russians rigged it.
Republicans complain when they lose - they're "election deniers".
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I think it's completely fair for me to say that Russia influenced and continues to influence elections in our country and also say the vote is secure and acceptable to how people voted. The outcome of the election was simply influenced by parties not in the US. That is a world of difference from denying the results of an election and claiming fraud on the part of the workers and systems that counted the vote.
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Tell that to all the democrats that spent years claiming that Hillary was robbed.
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I can't stand Hillary and don't want to be called a Democrat, but objectively what Comey did was inconsistent and therefore hypocritical.
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Which is probably why YTimes wrote this article on the same subject yesterday calling it a conspiracy theory
Conspiracy: Secret plot to commit a crime
Theory: a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon
Conspiracy Theory: The belief that a conspiracy exists, and/or performed a specific action
Consequently, it was a conspiracy theory. Why are you upset that they called it what it was? And is, actually. Evidence has still not been presented.
Sounds like despite the alphabet soup of agencies we have devoted to security, Internet sleuths still have to do the job of defending America and its borders.
It would be interesting if said sleuths would say where they got the information, huh? Because that never happened.
Alternate sources (Score:2)
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/05... [npr.org]
https://www.freep.com/story/ne... [freep.com]
https://www.detroitnews.com/st... [detroitnews.com]
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:5, Insightful)
At one time, the vote was made anonymous to stop the buying of votes. This would allow people to validate that someone voted the way they wanted, for either paying them off, or to allow them to pressure others for not agreeing with them.
Consider if the people behind cancel culture knew exactly who voted for Trump, or if employers were able to look up which of their workers voted for Biden, then blame them for the economic downturn, and fire them. Your idea would allow that. However, if the actual votes were anonymized in the arrogate set, but you were able to log into and elections site in your state and look up your vote to make sure it was what you voted for, or did not vote for, that would allow both your goals, without putting anyone at risk for voting their conscious.
Back on the original topic, I find it funny that the "election deniers" were actually right in this case, and this company has been caught likely doing exactly what they accused them of doing.
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If you were slightly familiar with cryptography and how it works, you would know that in today's modern age it's possible to be both private and secure, where you could verify any vote with the original signing key. It'd be as simple as a print-out receipt at voting time with your verification details. No identity need be attached.
This is hardly the first time electronic voting has been found to be of "questionable" ethics. Since 2000, there have been massive security vulnerabilities in e-voting machines di
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The solution I offered would work just as easily with your idea as mine, the point being that the public records need to remain AC to prevent abuse, not have people and their votes identified together publicly, the actual implementation doesn't matter as much as that it is somewhat secure from abuse.
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Consider if the people behind cancel culture knew exactly who voted for Trump
I doubt the Republicans would attack their own base like that.
or if employers were able to look up which of their workers voted for Biden, then blame them for the economic downturn, and fire them.
Personally I would welcome being fired for whom I voted for. The payday would be bigly after my boss gets arsefucked by the lawyers.
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:5, Insightful)
So because there are issues with the voting system nationwide that number in the single digits we should just throw the whole thing out? Your logic makes no sense.
Because the election system is distributed through states, counties, and cities, that leaves issues at each level but it also makes the system very hard to rig. Imagine the level of effort that would be required to maintain a conspiracy among multiple cities much less counties and even states.
That's why it was quite the joke here in Arizona about bamboo ballots and all the other absurdities from the cyber ninjas audit.
We in Arizona, when early voting can see that our ballot arrived, that its signature was verified, and that my vote was counted. Keeping those ballots is a mere physical security issue and doesn't require us throwing out a system that has worked extremely well for the last 30 years.
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:5, Informative)
We will never know how many issues there are, as the people who count the votes are the same people who validate the counts are accurate.
Audit after audit conducted by republicans has found that not only was there not enough vote fraud to change the outcome of the election, but most vote fraud was conducted by republicans, on behalf of the republican party.
We know how many issues there are. There are very few issues, and most of them are Republicans, and even Republican officials are completely aware of this.
https://www.brennancenter.org/... [brennancenter.org]
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-m... [msnbc.com]
https://www.usnews.com/news/po... [usnews.com]
The denialist myth has been promulgated by Republican politicians who have been shouting at their constituencies (you) that there is massive voting fraud despite they themselves having absolutely zero evidence to show it. Once you believe the lies, then they shout about how voters don't trust the system, just like they told you not to. It's amazing how short your memories are that you can't even remember this happening over less than a decade. It seems to me like if you realize it, then you have to admit that you've been hoodwinked by con men who upon reflection aren't even all that smart, and then what does that say about you? But you're ignoring what it says about you that you can't admit it and move on.
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. Audit after audit is done by those in power and not by the general public.
Your beloved CYBER NINJAS are THOSE IN POWER? Kid, here's a nickel. Go buy yourself a real argument.
Republicans cheated [Re: TRUMP WON.] (Score:3)
Bullshit. Audit after audit is done by those in power and not by the general public.
Just to verify, you're saying here is that the Republicans cheated on the election audits to make sure Trump lost.
Well, ok. If the conspiracy against Trump is so deep that even the Republicans are in on it, it's pretty much a conspiracy theory that can't be refuted.
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Eh, I doubt anything will be enough for you people. You've run your own audits and found nothing. You've been to the courts many times, often with judges appointed by Republicans, and been thoroughly rejected. You should already know the election was fine just as we've known for the last couple hundred years our presidential elections are fine. I strongly doubt anything will actually satisfy you people at this point, you want to believe in conspiracy and there's no amount of reality that will change that.
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Just to verify, you're saying here is that the Republicans cheated on the election audits to make sure Trump lost.
I think some republicans, the establishmentarians for sure, would rather Trump not be in the White House.
OK. So, you're saying that the conspiracy is so vast, even the Republicans were in on it.
Right.
...
Yeah, don't much care about the rest of what you say. Just wanted to make sure you were indeed accusing the Republicans of being the ones cheating on the election.
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Arizona audits were performed by NGOs meaning they are private companies, further audits were performed by cyber ninjas (paid for by Republicans + a stupid amount of tax dollars). So Internal audits, NGO audits, and cyber ninjas all came back with Biden as the winner. You pretty clearly don't know how vote counts work as you seem to think the people validating the counts are the same people.
Vote audits are always performed by a 3rd party to eliminate your very complaint. The system we have was not built overnight, it has evolved since the formation of the country and will continue to improve where we find problems. At this point though, it is so rare its hardly even worth discussing. [reuters.com]
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Of the same organization. Namely, the state government, its employees, its consultants, or its contractors. It isnt a different organization.
The charge that had been made was that the Democrats stole votes in Democratic controlled precincts. The audits were done at the state level, by Republicans.
So, no, you're wrong. The audits were not done by the people in charge of the elections.
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Anonymous Cowards will not be replied to.
As you reply to an AC :)
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Re:Election validation (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean the same way legal solutions have eliminated theft and murder? And the way there's absolutely no bribery in government, and we definitely haven't formalized it into the existence of a vast lobbying industry?
The basic premise of *any* election system has to be that you can't trust *anyone*. Anything else is an invitation to dictatorship. That's why there's supposed to always be at least two observers from opposing parties monitoring ballot integrity at every point from the moment they're cast until the results are finalized. You can't trust either observer, but the presumption is that they have opposing goals in the election, and thus will keep each other from tampering.
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>Coercive voting can be delt with legally.
You are begging the question. There is no reason with it to be able to be dealt with legally if there is no reproducible voting record.
>Those problems are easier to solve and therefore a great tradeoff for election trust.
I don't believe that a voter being able to verify their vote to a third party is necessarily a good thing or engenders election trust. Or is any kind of great tradeoff.
Re: (Score:2)
Which means you're still screwed when your boss/spouse/parent/union head/etc says "give me your voting receipt" (probably something like a hash number of your ballot)
This would give you evidence for a wrongful termination lawsuit though, while public records would not.
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:4, Insightful)
They wear their Chinese-made hats with a stupid phrase,
Is this intended to slam Trump? You do realize how ignorant you sound when you spout off like this don't you? The only Chinese made hats were the knockoffs, not the ones he sold from his campaign.
Everything you posted is entirely untrue, but feel free to continue to believe that everyone who voted for him can be identified, I am sure you know better who everyone votes for and how they act.
It is also so enlightening that you focus on the one side, while ignoring that I gave examples from both sides, but I guess you can't talk about something neutrally without injecting your idiot partisan arguments. Maybe you are perfectly ok with people being fired for voting for Biden, as they should be right?
Not even worth addressing the false equivalency of your arguments over cancel culture, but I guess it is easier to deflect to your political enemies those things your side does.
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:4, Informative)
or have funny signs in their yards about who they think won the 2020 election.
but feel free to continue to believe that everyone who voted for him can be identified
The people with the "Trump Won" signs in their yards are not the totality of the people that voted for Trump. I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that the ones that have that sign in their yard did vote for him. Big difference.
I honestly have no issues with most of the people who voted for Trump. I have quite a few close friends that voted for him, I probably disagree with them on a lot of issues, but I don't automatically think negatively of them. The guy that lives near me with a 4'x8' hand-painted plywood "TRUMP WON" and "FUCK BIDEN, AND FUCK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM" signs in their front yard, along with everyone else that ardently supports the bullshit "stolen election" claim, that's a different story.
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Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can go onto the public dataset and see your name and where and how you voted next to everyone else's. Mistakes can be addressed, and we can have faith in the elections. Those eligible to vote will have, those who didn't who might have had their ballots stolen can raise their hands.
Even though I have mod points today, and I'm sure I could use them in this thread, I'm posting because I need to point out just exactly why we have anonymous elections and don't track who voted for what or who. Let's assume for a moment that your reality comes to pass and everyone can see who voted on what and who:
* Your boss is a raging [insert political leaning here] and sees you voted for the [insert opposing political leaning here] candidate. How quickly will you have a "performance" issue at work which results in you being fired?
* Your place of worship strongly hints they expect you to vote according to [insert political leaning here], but you instead vote according to your [insert opposing political leaning here] beliefs instead. The pastor calls you out on the pulpit during the next sermon for being a horrible [insert opposing political leaning here] and expunges you from the congregation.
* Your spouse is an abusive piece of work who demands you vote according to [insert political leaning here] and will beat you horrifically if you vote for [insert opposing political leaning here].
If you look through history you'll find plenty of examples where elections which require voters to publicly state how they voted end up being easily swayed by coercion and threats of violence against them by opposing groups who want to ensure one votes in a very specific way. We have multiple controls in place to verify the identity of the people who are voting are that they are actually allowed to vote, but once they're in that room filling in the voting form we have no idea how they filled it out and that's a good thing because one can vote their conscience without worrying their life will be at stake for voting "wrong".
This is different from publicly elected officials voting on official business, we record their votes as a matter of public record so we citizens can hold them accountable for their actions - but when they go into the voting booth to cast their ballots for the general election, they have just as much privacy as you and I.
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Don't forget the buying of votes too.
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:2)
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The reason we have these laws about anonymity is that when you do not these things are known to happen, even when there are laws against them. Now you want to throw all that away, while you and yours simultaneously make appeals to tradition, and want to make things the way they used to be. It's obvious that you're picking and choosing, and have a different set of rules for yourselves than for anyone else.
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Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think election privacy is overrated now. I think in order to be absolutely sure who the winners are, a giant database needs to be completely free and open showing who voted, and on every choice, and every question, for who or what.
Hard no.
The whole point of election privacy is to prevent coercion, Whether it comes by force (unlikely and doesn't scale) or social pressures (scales easily, refer to #MeToo, Cancel Culture, etc).
If you lose election privacy, then you lose the ability to claim that the result is a true reflection of the will of the people. The result may reflect a true tally of which boxes were checked, but there is no way to know if people voted for what they actually wanted or just how they thought they were supposed to vote according to coercive pressures.
I can support adding a method for voters to validate that their votes were recorded and correctly tallied, but that too must remain private.
Verifiable election (Score:2)
Unfortunately, any method that allows you to prove to yourself that your ballot choices made it into the final tally correctly, also allows you to prove that fact to someone else. Like your overbearing boss or spouse.
The only (still imperfect) solution I can think of is to
1) make it highly illegal to check on anyone else's results, or even collect their "receipt", except in cases of a lost or altered ballot. Discouraging any organized surveillance.
2) make it easy to request a "decoy receipt" for a random
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:2)
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a giant database needs to be completely free and open showing who voted, and on every choice, and every question, for who or what.
Is it not immediately obvious that this is a Very Bad Idea if we want to truly maintain a "healthy democracy"? Do we really want to have it public knowledge how every single person voted, along with their address and phone number? What is to stop "poll verifiers" from "reeducating" people on the "appropriate choices" to be made? To be clear, I mean that there is a small fanatical subset of people who will commit violent acts on people who do not vote for their preferred candidate. Did we already forget
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Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to restore faith in the election, perform manual spot-checks of machines along with two independent records of the vote.
If you want to restore faith in elections, hold the republican senators who have spread and sustained the deliberately fraudulent idea that our elections are not sound responsible for their roles in the January 6th coup attempt. Their followers literally believe our elections are corrupt because they told them they were corrupt, as often as they would listen, but without ever presenting any evidence. Unfortunately, most politicians don't believe they can survive a culture of being held responsible for what they say. Which ones are willing to do so tells you everything you need to know about the composition of congress, but few are willing to look at a voting record and base their opinions on it...
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So what you're saying is you want what Russia has. No secret ballots to prevent any type of coercion. Instead, have the security forces come to your door with their guns drawn because you voted the "wrong" way.
That way the tally can be quickly ascertained, and everyon
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You nor I can validate the voters.
In most states you personally can. https://www.ncsl.org/research/... [ncsl.org] in the others, your "friends" in your clan can do it for you.
You nor I can verify the counts.
Nobody could. By the time YOU got done counting the 160 million votes it would be well past the time for the next election. So now what? How many like-minded friends would you need to count them all in a couple weeks? And how do I know that your friends aren't corrupt? Just in case they are, I need my friends to verify their work. And since we can assume my friends don't trus
Re: TRUMP WON. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point. The entirety of this discussion is the same one Qanon and their supporters, along with a multitude of elected Republican officials, keep trotting out, that the election was somehow rigged. They have offered no evidence at any of the several trials, have never posted anything online for others to review, and even the pillow guy, for all his whining about all the "evidence" he has, has never, ever, under any circumstance, shown how the 2020 election was rigged. Ever.
The only reason for this discussion is a pathetic attempt to sow doubt in future elections so they can keep going back and claim their candidate won.
Mind you, when these exact same arguments were brought forward in 2016 when Hillary lost, an election which the polls showed she should have won, the same people now claiming the 2020 election was rigged, went to court in 2016 [voanews.com] to prevent any recounts or examination of voting. There was no evidence of fraud or rigging so no recounts were needed, they claimed. Which is funny, because Dominion Voting was the same company they are now claiming rigged the 2020 election.
It's goalpost moving. No matter what explanation is brought forth they will keep moving their claims to the point where it will be literally impossible to have a vote count which will satisfy them. Then they will try to sneak in, as they are trying now, that it is the state legislatures who determine the winners.
Dumpy's a born LOSER and a FRAUD. (Score:2, Troll)
As for the actual issue, not mentioned in the flamebait summary, this has nothing to do with election results.
Their software "assists with poll worker assignments, communications and payroll". [lacounty.gov]
It has nothing to do with votes OR voters.
It's team management software. [pollchief.com]
As for, again flamebaity, mention of "groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election with storing information about poll workers on servers in China"... Yeah... about that...
A lot of people don't know that, but, there's this thin
China [Re....] (Score:2)
They stored data in China? Seriously WTF ?
No. They are accused of storing data in China. Slight difference there.
It's also not entirely clear what data.
we must if nothing else have 100% absolute faith in our elections. It is paramount to a healthy democracy, and the inconsistencies and fuckery are astounding. How can government fuck it up this bad?
Note that what this company does is the paperwork for the work schedule of election worker. It doesn't run voting machines or count votes, so offhand it doesn't seem to be anythink that should challenge our faith in the elections.
This seems more of a privacy breach; personal information on the election workers stored on a (possibly) insecure server, not an election breach.
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we must if nothing else have 100% absolute faith in our elections.
100% absolute faith in anything is not an available option, in any case.
Get back in touch with reality, if you still can. It may be a long-distance call from where you are....
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So multiple videos of people (sometimes the same people) dropping off trunk loads of ballets in drop boxes not doing anything for ya huh?
You do you champ! But remember, just because your "team" is good at stealing elections today, does not mean the other will be better at it tomorrow.
Not one single court of law would even take on these cases. Judges appointed by Trump and card carrying Federalist Society members all dismissed these frivolous lawsuits.
Re:"Election Deniers" (Score:4, Interesting)
ZERO evidence of any voter fraud.
So multiple videos of people (sometimes the same people) dropping off trunk loads of ballets in drop boxes not doing anything for ya huh?
You do you champ! But remember, just because your "team" is good at stealing elections today, does not mean the other will be better at it tomorrow.
Because nothing says evidence like a for-profit documentary released by someone who is literally a convicted felon for breaking federal election law [wikipedia.org].
A documentary that supposedly identifies "242 mules" yet somehow fails to gather enough evidence to result in a single arrest or even a real investigation. In fact, to the degree that any of this was investigated all we know is that the mysterious "whistleblower" is happy to talk to D'Souza but not anyone in law enforcement who could actually do something! Oh, and the few mules who were investigated were ordinary people legally dropping off ballots for family members.
Do you have any evidence that isn't a felon's cash grab* which falls apart when subjected to scrutiny?
* Please tell me that you didn't end up paying to see it.
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You are Rube.
or you've been suckered this time....
or you are hoping for some more money from Russia.
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The only people "denying" anything are those who are denying there were not massive irregularities in the last few elections.
Don't recall you folks complaining when Trump lost the popular vote the first time. Something about that second time, though, really seemed to melt you snowflakes. Because he couldn't possibly have lost the popular vote like he did the first time, right?
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There were irregularities. In every election. But none of these irregularities for the 2020 that were focused on had any substance behind them. Even Trump appointees threw these claims out of court. Nothing so far has held up under scrutiny.
And 2000 mules is a documentary so stupid it should be a mockumentary. There are no references given, no way to back up any of the claims they make, their leaps in logic would make for a great circus act. Seriously, why are people so stupid to believe videos? Peopl
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The only people "denying" anything are those who are denying there were not massive irregularities in the last few elections.
That statement is false right on its face, by literally any reasonable interpretation, and most unreasonable ones as well.
Further, nobody has been able to find any massive irregularities in the last few elections. The last election where massive irregularities were found, in proportions which could actually affect the outcome of the election, was Bush v. Gore. For example, Florida counties where the scan-tron machines were set to silently accept errors (and ignore such ballots) in mostly black boroughs, and
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Is that the movie funded by the guy who smoked so much crack his own dealer had an intervention?
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