Smartmatic Sues MyPillow CEO For Defamation Over His Months Of Nonstop Election Conspiracy Theories

from the making-himself-poorer-and-other-people-dumber dept

Hope Mike Lindell has socked away some of his MyPillow millions. Trump toadying is proving to be an expensive hobby, and it's not as though the former president is doing anything to repay those whose support has been absurdly unwavering with anything like, you know, legal assistance. Or actual money.

Trump cohorts and legal reps are being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for the weeks of (alleged) defamation they engaged in following Trump's loss at the polls. The MyPillow CEO is being sued by Dominion for the same thing, thanks to his sudden ascendance into the public sphere -- a position he used to spread plenty of false (and easily disproved) "stolen election" theories.

Lindell responded to being sued by Dominion with a lawsuit of his own -- one that claimed Dominion's lawsuit was unconstitutionally silencing his company by naming it as a defendant. His lawsuit pointed out (correctly) that Lindell made all of the allegedly defamatory assertions before going on to claim his company was being censored by Dominion, preventing it from saying all the things Lindell just finished claiming it had never said, nor would ever say.

Another voting tech company is now suing Lindell for defamation, raising a lot of the same allegations Dominion's lawsuit did. Smartmatic -- which was dragged into the post-election shitstorm by Trump acolytes pushing conspiracy theories -- says Lindell made tons of false claims about the company being involved in the "theft" of votes, as well as being compromised by Chinese hackers during the 2020 election. (h/t Mike Dunford)

The lawsuit [PDF] doesn't waste any time letting the judge (and Lindell) know exactly what Smartmatic thinks of him and his assertions.

Crazy like a fox. Mike Lindell knows exactly what he is doing, and it is dangerous.

Mr. Lindell knows Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. He knows the election was not rigged, fixed, or stolen. He knows voting machines did not switch votes from former President Trump to now President Biden.

These facts do not matter to Mr. Lindell because he knows he can sell. Mr. Lindell knows he can sell xenophobia. He knows he can sell conspiracy theory. He knows he can sell a preconceived story about voting machines stealing democracy by stealing votes from a president who is incredibly popular with millions of Americans. And, of course, Mr. Lindell—“the MyPillow Guy”—knows he needs to sell pillows to keep and increase his fortune.

That last point is repeated throughout the lawsuit: Lindell leveraged his position as the CEO of MyPillow to make public appearances. And he leveraged these public appearances to advertise for his company. The two are intertwined, even if, as Lindell claims, the company itself has never issued a public statement purporting to be the business's official take on election fraud theories.

Here's what's bothering Smartmatic:

Mr. Lindell’s message was as dangerous as it was factually inaccurate. Mr. Lindell told people that Smartmatic stole the 2020 U.S. election. He told people that Smartmatic’s election technology, hardware, and software were hacked by China and other foreign countries. He told people that Smartmatic election technology, hardware, and software were developed for the sole purpose of stealing foreign elections by switching votes. And he told people that Smartmatic deployed its election technology, hardware, and software to do just that in the 2020 U.S. election. All lies.

Unlike Dominion's multiple, multi-billion dollar lawsuits, Smartmatic's lawsuit does not seek a set amount in damages. This suggests it has more than enough evidence on hand to show how Lindell's false statements harmed it. And the narrative that the 136-page lawsuit details is one in which Lindell -- despite being aware other entities like Fox News had retracted false claims about Smartmatic -- continued to make the same, disproven assertions over and over again.

The lawsuit lays out -- in great detail -- the false claims made by Lindell on Fox News, as well as on other networks seeking to "outFox" the former leader in conspiratorial conservatives, like OAN and Newsmax. This went on for weeks, long after other conspiracy theorists had decided to abandon the "stolen" election narrative. The longer Lindell continued, the more evidence contradicting his claims he willingly ignored, as Smartmatic points out:

Mr. Lindell had obvious reasons to doubt what he was saying about Smartmatic outside of the 2020 U.S. election because it had been publicly debunked for months prior to his statements.

[...]

Mr. Lindell possessed and had access to a significant volume of information that contradicted the story he told about Smartmatic. Mr. Lindell reviewed this information (and therefore knew his statements and implications were false) and/or purposefully avoided reviewing this information because he did not want to know the truth.

A minimal amount of investigation would easily establish the falsity of Mr. Lindell’s statements about Smartmatic’s role in the U.S. election. Mr. Lindell has stated that he spent millions of dollars investigating Smartmatic. He would have needed to spend only a fraction of that amount to learn of Smartmatic’s limited, secure role as a voting technology and services provider in Los Angeles County.

Lindell's persistence in the face of actual facts is likely to cost him more than just the legal fees he'll spend defending himself against this lawsuit. Smartmatic's lawsuit points out dozens of false statements made by Lindell that had already been disproven by the time he started making these assertions. That's actual malice and it's going to be very hard for Lindell to argue he was just engaging in heated political rhetoric that got a little out of hand. He has attached his personal brand -- along with MyPillow's -- to bizarre conspiracy theories that originated from a small but vocal minority that simply cannot bring themselves to believe their president got voted out of office.

Filed Under: defamation, mike lindell, voting
Companies: smartmatic

Vice Publishes Bullshit Nonsense Article Blaming DEFCON Voting Village For 'Stop The Steal' Idiots

from the this-is-bad-reporting dept

Vice News has some really great reporters on tech issues who work for its Motherboard publication. For reasons that don't make sense, last week they had some other reporter write an absolutely ridiculously bad story trying to argue that the "stop the steal" idiots were helped along by the amazingly important work done by folks in the famed "Voting Village" at the DEFCON conference. The full article is long and bad and has the ridiculous and misleading title: How an "Ethical" Hacker Convention Is Fueling Trump's Big Lie. But the very premise of this story is not just wrong, but dangerously stupid. It's shameful that anyone at Vice thought this was an appropriate story to publish.

The facts are this: there have been quite reasonable concerns about the security and technology in certain electronic voting machines going back decades. In fact, Techdirt covered tons of these stories, which were often about problems with the security in early machines, the lack of paper trails for the votes, and (perhaps most importantly) the unwillingness of the voting machine companies to work transparently with actual security researchers who could help harden those machines. Voting Village was set up in DEFCON as a response to that, in which these ethical hackers would get their hands on voting machines, seek out the vulnerabilities in order to help harden the security and improve these machines. It's how cybersecurity has always worked.

And while it is true that some of the Stop the Steal grifters have tried to take some of the headlines or presentations from DEFCON and pretend that they prove that the 2020 election was hacked or broken or whatnot, that's got nothing to do with Voting Village "helping" them. If it weren't for Voting Village, those same grifters would have found other reports and other news stories to misinterpret and to make their unsubstantiated claims.

The simple fact is that just because security researchers have concerns about some voting machines, and have worked to highlight where security vulnerabilities might be, that does not mean that an election is easily hacked, or that any election was actually hacked. That's the kind of thing that the "stop the steal" grifters have never been able to show and all of the evidence to date has failed to substantiate.

Paragraphs like this are utter nonsense:

And then there is DEFCON. The experts here agree that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and many have worked hard to debunk those conspiracy theories. But with its sensationalist rhetoric, flashy theatrics, unstructured hacking, and lack of context about how elections operate, DEFCON also emphasizes the vulnerabilities that are possible, even when they’re not necessarily probable. As a result, the event serves as easy fodder for dis- and malinformation, showing how even well-intentioned experts are being used to prop up the Big Lie.

Yeah, it emphasizes vulnerabilities are possible because of course they're possible. That's just being factual and accurate. And, on top of that, the way to minimize those vulnerabilities and to better protect elections is to allow security researchers to find those vulnerabilities, report them, and seek better ways of protecting voting. And that's exactly what Voting Village does. Arguing that they should somehow be blamed because idiots are misrepresenting their work, as if the work was the problem is so disingenuous to be effectively disinformation.

Or as security researchers Rob Graham rightly notes:

As he notes later in the thread, "pretty much all government transparency information is at some point misrepresented by conspiracy theorists" but that's no excuse to say we should have less transparency.

Others, like Kim Zetter -- one of the best cybersecurity reporters ever -- point out that the reporter's main sources for the article appear to be people close to voting tech companies and election officials, which are the two groups of people who are most frequently embarrassed by the security research that comes out of Voting Village. In other words, this was a hit piece, put in place by folks who have long wanted to destroy Voting Village. In fact, Zetter highlights that one of the main sources quoted in the article has complained about Voting Village for years, which seems like extremely relevant context that was left out of the article.

Others noted that many of the actual experts in this space -- names which have been mentioned on Techdirt frequently, like Alex Halderman and Matt Blaze -- are not quoted in the article at all. The author claimed that while he spoke to many such experts he didn't have room to include their quotes. Maggie MacAlpine, a Voting Village organizer notes that neither she nor any of her colleagues were quoted, and the article is full of "unattributed, and factually incorrect statements."

Matt Blaze -- again, one of the foremost experts on election security issues -- summed up the nonsense premise of the article perfectly:

He later notes three important facts about the complicated world of computer security:

• There's been great progress securing US election infrastructure.
• There are still serious vulnerabilities and much work is left to be done.
• Yet there's no evidence technical attacks have altered election outcomes.

And the only reason the first bullet point is as true as it is, is because of the work of the security researchers like those who populate Voting Village every year at DEFCON. The only reason more work is progressing on the second point is because of the same thing. And articles like this one in Vice make that much, much more difficult.

Do better, Vice.

Filed Under: defcon, electronic voting, security research, voting, voting village
Companies: vice

Dominion Sues Newsmax, OAN, And The Head Of Overstock.Com For Election-Related Defamation

from the paper-tigers-asked-to-convert-allegations-to-USD dept

The failed insurrection may be over -- all but the Capitol cops ending their own lives after being assaulted by "law and order" types, who thought they could bypass the peaceful transfer of power with violence. (Fuck all those people, by the way -- all 500+ of them.) But the hope remains. It must have been stolen, say a collection of denialists and grifters. Let's win back the election process, say those unable to count votes or put their faith in the institution that put their boy in the White House in the first place (looking at you, Electoral College).

So the grift continues. So does the denialism. But it's going to start costing people some serious money. The people that decided that backdrafting Trump's odorous emanations following the November election are still theoretically on the hook for besmirching the election process and the machinery behind it.

While it's always appropriate to question the security and trustworthiness of election tech, it makes zero sense to air a bunch of insane conspiracies as actual fact. A bunch of acolytes thought they could call the presidential election into question if they amplified QAnon-level speculation into the public discourse. The stupidity of these actions has been called out by a frequent target of unvetted speculation: Dominion Voting Systems.

The challenges were only raised in areas where Trump expected to win but lost, indicating these "challenges" had nothing to do with election integrity. After all, if the integrity of the election was in question, wouldn't these people be questioning election results where Trump won? Everyone knows it's a façade -- a carelessly edited sermon to the converted. Playing to the base usually pays off. But it may not in these cases.

Dominion has been suing over these false statements, implications, and complete, utter bullshit. The company first targeted Trump legal figures (both past and present) like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. Now it's coming for Trump's favorite non-gorilla-related programmers: One America Network and Newsmax. Both companies stepped up during Trump's last couple of years mismanaging the country to prove they could be even further right than far-right mainstay Fox News.

Two more lawsuits have been filed by Dominion. They reiterate many of the same allegations raised against Powell and Giuliani. That shows "Republican" figureheads have all been operating off the same cheat sheet when it comes to contesting the parts of the election they don't like.

I won't quote the latest lawsuits by Dominion at length. We've already covered the lies and misinformation spread by defendants who now claim this was all just heated rhetoric and hyperbole (even when portraying these same claims as "evidence" of voter fraud in lawsuits where they were the plaintiff). It's all more of the same: a debunking of literally incredible claims by defendants willing to sell out their credibility (if not their defamation insurance providers) by attaching themselves like so many remora on a shark in the midst of capsizing in its own wake.

Here's one representative accusation (taken from Dominion's suit [PDF] against One America Network):

OAN spread these lies by broadcasting and promoting interviews with discredited figures such as Sidney Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, Patrick Byrne, and Mike Lindell. But OAN went further, helping create and nurture the false and fabricated Dominion narrative by endorsing, promoting, and manufacturing these known falsehoods, including by pointing to the so-called “evidence” OAN was broadcasting in support of these lies and by falsely claiming the lies had corroborated “all of our investigations.”

To capitalize on the interest its target audience had in the false Dominion narrative, OAN effectively deputized its Chief White House Correspondent, Chanel Rion, as an in-house spokesperson for all Dominion-related content. After priming its viewers with a steady diet of post-election programming falsely claiming Dominion rigged the 2020 election, OAN and Rion began producing an entire line of programming exclusively devoted to defaming Dominion, descriptively named “Dominion-izing the Vote,” which branded OAN’s disinformation and defamation campaign against Dominion into a single catchy phrase that is now synonymous with fraudulently flipping votes.

How much of this will be determined to be defamation rather than heated electoral-related rhetoric remains to be seen. But enough Trump acolytes decided it was better to tongue the ex-presidential boot than protect themselves from billions of dollars of defamation damages. And that's fine. The law protects the assertions of inveterate assholes. But it doesn't protect the supposedly factual claims of people not in possession of actual facts. That's libel. And that's going to add up to real money should a court decide Dominion is in the right.

Dominion has also sued [PDF] Patrick Byrne, the Overstock.com founder. Someday the time capsule will be exhumed and our descendants will wonder how a pillow salesman and an internet entrepreneur became inextricably entangled in presidential politics. Wikipedia's explanation of "dark money" will likely fail to clarify anything. But Byrne better have a satisfactory explanation for his decision to translate his late-stage-capitalism failures into election theft electioneering. LOL deeply at the opening sentence:

After blowing up his career at Overstock by having an affair with a Russian spy, Patrick Byrne soon found himself a new pet project: promoting the false narrative that the 2020 election had been stolen. In fact, as Byrne has publicly admitted, he had already committed to that narrative three months before the election took place. After the election, Byrne manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen as part of a massive international conspiracy among China, Venezuelan and Spanish companies, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), prominent Republicans, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Dominion, which, Byrne falsely claimed, committed fraud and helped steal the 2020 presidential election.

Don't be shitty, Patty. You're too smart for that, alleges Dominion.

Byrne was not hoodwinked by the ex-con or the conspiracy-theorists-for-hire. He is far too intelligent to buy the nonsense he has been selling to the American public. He is a Dartmouth-educated Marshall Scholar with a PhD from Stanford who, until he was pushed out in disgrace in 2019, had a national platform as the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company. By lying about the 2020 election, Byrne catapulted himself back into the national spotlight, where he promoted himself as an “us-against-the-world” hero, and won access to the highest echelons of political power, including an in-person meeting with Trump at the White House.

LOL. This is Dominion preemptively striking any motions by Byrne saying he was just talking out of his ass. He had to know what he said was not only false, but demonstrably false. And yet he chose to do it anyway.

Dominion has a high bar to meet in its defamation lawsuits. Good. That's the way it should be. If defendants can indicate they were just being hyperbolic when discussing election issues, that protects the rest of us who don't have internet startups or pillow companies to absorb the blows of speech-related lawsuits. But Dominion's suits appear to allege defendants knew they were trafficking in lies but chose to do so anyway. And that certainly shouldn't protect the Sydney Powells and OANs of the world from putting their reputations (and liquid funds) at stake to stump for an obstinate failure and his inability to accept reality.

Filed Under: defamation, election, election integrity, patrick byrne, voting, voting machines
Companies: dominion, newsmax, oan, oann

Smartmatic Sues Two Trump Lawyers And Three Fox News Hosts For $2.7 Billion-Worth Of Defamation

from the putting-a-price-tag-on-months-of-dipshittery dept

Another day, another multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuit. And like the other lawsuits filed over frothy falsehoods that emerged from the spittle-flecked lips of Trump lawyers and supporters, this one also targets people who definitely should have known better than to engage in the speech they did.

Smartmatic -- a voting tech company whose name was dragged into the mud by a number of Fox News personalities and Trump legal team members -- is suing three Fox News hosts and two lawyers. Media members and lawyers should definitely know how to stay away from engaging in alleged libel. But everyone sued here (Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro) abandoned their better instincts to wallow in the lowest-common-denominator toxicity that exemplified Trump's response to losing a national election.

And Smartmatic had hardly anything to do with the national election. While Dominion Voting Systems -- another post-election libel litigant -- is in use in nearly half the nation, Smartmatic's software was used in one single county in the US during the 2020 election.

But conspiracy theorists gotta theorize. So this group of morons in hurry to curry favor with Trump amplified a bizarre claim that Smartmatic was a tool of deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. In reality, Smartmatic is an American company founded by two Venezuelans. Its software was used by the Venezuelan government, but there's absolutely no evidence the company itself engaged in any voter fraud, vote switching, or anything other illegal behavior Hugo Chavez's government participated in.

The company's 285-page(!) lawsuit [PDF] lays down the facts. A lot of the lawsuit's runtime is given over to recounting the lies told by the two Trump lawyers and three Fox News hosts. Because the lying has been pretty much nonstop since last November, the filing is necessarily lengthy. Much of it highlights statements that were delivered by the defendants that made it clear they were stating facts, rather than simply offering their opinion on perceived election irregularities.

It also points out a long list of facts that would have been verifiable if any of the defendants had felt the slightest inkling to engage in the truth for a change.

Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not widely used in the 2020 U.S. election. They were only used in Los Angeles County.  

Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not used by Dominion during the 2020 U.S. election. The companies are competitors.  

Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not used to steal the 2020 U.S. election. Nor could they have been, given that Smartmatic’s role was limited to Los Angeles County.  

Smartmatic’s election technology and software did not send votes to foreign countries for tabulation and manipulation during the 2020 U.S. election. The votes were tabulated in Los Angeles County.  

Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not compromised and hacked during the 2020 U.S. election. No one has identified a shred of evidence that there were cyber-security issues in Los Angeles County.  

Smartmatic has not been banned from being used in U.S. elections. Other election technology companies may have been banned but not Smartmatic.  

Smartmatic is not a Venezuelan company and was not founded and funded by corrupt dictators from socialist and communist countries. Smartmatic USA Corp is based in Florida, and its parent company is based in the United Kingdom. No dictators – corrupt or otherwise, from communist/socialist countries or otherwise – were involved in founding or funding the company. Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not designed to rig and fix elections.

Smartmatic’s election technology and software were designed for security, reliability, and auditability. No after-the-fact audit has ever found that Smartmatic’s technology or software were used to rig, fix, or steal an election.

At the end of all of this, there's a $2.7 billion damage demand. This is mostly performative and Smartmatic still has an uphill battle. Truth is the best defense against libel claims but none of these defendants have that option. But they can still bat away this lawsuit by showing the court no one really takes them seriously as pontificators or legal advisors. Admitting they're nothing more than idiots in the entertainment business might be tough on their egos but it's far less expensive than being forced to admit they knew they were lying or, at best, unwilling to vet any of these wild-ass claims before airing them publicly.

Filed Under: defamation, election fraud, fox news, jeanine pirro, lou dobbs, maria baritromo, rudy giuliani, sidney powell, voting
Companies: fox

DNC Sues Georgia Governor Over His Bullshit Claims Democrats Hacked The State's Voter Registration System

from the hope-you've-got-a-20-on-you,-Kempster dept

The never-ending amount of election related litigation keeps on coming. The Trump campaign is still heavily invested in lawsuits -- a practice it started before the election and it hasn't scaled back now that its boy has been handed an L.

Georgia remains a hotly contested state, thanks in part to pressure applied by the outbound President and his many minions. It will recount all five million votes, which Trump appears to believe will reverse Biden's 14,000-vote lead.

Georgia has long been a victim of its Governor, dating back to his days as the Secretary of State. During Brian Kemp's tenure as an elected official, voting in Georgia has been little more than his political plaything. Issues with the state's voting tech were ignored in favor of Kemp's indulgence in wild speculation, culminating with his baseless claims the Democratic National Committee had hacked the state's voter registration system. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation investigation found no evidence supporting Kemp's ridiculous assertions.

Now, as Courthouse News reports, the DNC is suing Kemp over his election related bullshit. This isn't a defamation suit, even though it's possible to see that claim being raised. Instead, the DNC alleges the then Secretary of State violated federal election laws with his claims of DNC hacking and his decision to air his speculation hours before the polls opened in 2018.

The lawsuit [PDF] opens with this stinging sentence, which highlights one the many problems with allowing Brian Kemp to oversee the 2018 election.

Kemp was also a candidate in the governor’s election that year. He claimed, however, that he could fairly manage an election at the same time as was running in it.

And how did he "manage" it? Like this:

Two days before the election, Kemp worked with others to release a statement on the Secretary of State’s website that said in all capital letters: “AFTER FAILED HACKING ATTEMPT, SOS LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO GEORGIA DEMOCRATIC PARTY.”

The statement further claimed to “confirm that the Democratic Party of Georgia is under investigation for possible cyber crimes,” and noted that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had been alerted.

The DNC never hacked the voter registration system. Instead, a private citizen reported security flaws in the Secretary of State's website to a DC election lawyer. This report later made its way to the DNC local branch in Georgia. Eventually, news made its way back to Brian Kemp -- via the DNC, FBI, and the DC election lawyer. It was this information Kemp spun into a fantastic tale of DNC hackery.

The lawsuit recounts Brian Kemp's ineffectual run as Secretary of State, an era marked by multiple reports of serious flaws in the voting system he was supposed to be overseeing. Then, as he was running for a new post, he decided to broadcast unsupported claims about Democratic Party interference in the very election he was interfering with. This included Kemp's bizarre anger over DHS penetration testing -- testing he had apparently asked the DHS to perform.

He converted both of his fantasies into last-minute electioneering for his governor run, sending out emails to supporters claiming he had "intercepted" the Democrats' "fourth quarter Hail Mary pass" and would be holding these "power-hungry radicals" accountable for their "criminal behavior."

The lawsuit says many people and entities were informed about security flaws in the voting system, but Kemp chose a single target to attack with baseless claims of criminal behavior.

The DNC accuses Kemp of violating federal law by falsely targeting it with these accusations. It alleges this was done in retaliation for its efforts to unseat Kemp and support its own candidates.

Here, Defendant Kemp has shown a pattern of falsely accusing Democratic administrations and Democratic parties of “hacking.” In 2016, he accused President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security of a “large attack on our system.” Unsatisfied with the DHS explanation for why there was no attack, Defendant Kemp asked the incoming Trump administration to investigate further. Later, he conceded that there had never been any hacking.

[...]

Defendants accused the Democratic Party of Georgia even though the Democratic Party of Georgia’s only involvement was to (1) receive information from Richard Wright on a voter security hotline; (2) forward that information to two experts at Georgia Tech; and (3) inform the Secretary of State’s office.

[...]

Defendants conspired to accuse the Democratic Party of Georgia of cyber crimes without any basis.

[...]

Defendants’ choice to maintain the public statements on the Secretary of State website even after they found out that the Democratic Party of Georgia was not the source of the vulnerability information was and is an ongoing substantial step in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Defendants’ choice not to remove the public statements on the Secretary of State website even after they found out that the supposed “intrusion” was the Department of Homeland Security acting at the request of the Secretary of State was and is an ongoing substantial step in furtherance of the conspiracy.

That's one potential federal law violation. There's another one listed in the lawsuit. Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act forbids anyone from intimidating voters or coercing votes. The DNC alleges Kemp's actions and statements were meant to intimidate the DNC and divert its resources towards responding to baseless accusations during the final days of the state election.

The DNC isn't asking for much. The damage request is limited to $20.00. But it does want an injunction in place requiring the removal of Kemp's disproven accusations from the state's Secretary of State website.

This lawsuit is one of what will likely be several postscripts appended to the 2020 elections. Claims of hacking, fraud, and other voting related misconduct have been delivered by a number of Republicans over the past several weeks. But baseless claims of election malfeasance aren't a recent development.

They've been a permanent fixture of the Republican party since Trump took office -- urged on by a president who lost the popular vote in 2016 but ended up with the most Electoral College votes. Ever since then, the Republican Party has waged war on the democratic process, having realized allowing the voting process to go unfucked could possibly result in fewer Republicans being elected.

Filed Under: brian kemp, elections, georgia, voting, voting machines
Companies: dnc

Trump Campaign Gets Laughed Out Of Court For Claiming A Bunch Of Unvetted Webform Submissions Is 'Evidence' Of Voter Fraud

from the who-needs-sworn-statements-when-you-have-a-CAPTCHA dept

The Trump Campaign is back in court, hoping to reclaim a presidency Donald Trump has lost. It spent plenty of time in court prior to the election, hoping to prevent as many people as possible from voting. Now, it's doing the same thing, insisting (without evidence) there's voter fraud everywhere.

Immediately following Election Day, the Trump campaign opened its own voter fraud hotlines. People who thought they observed voting fraud were encouraged to call the campaign or submit sworn statements via a handful of websites. Both offerings were immediately swamped by pranksters and other non-fans of Trump, tying up phone lines and filling the webform coffers with useless things like, say, the script from "Bee Movie."

Undeterred by a lack of credible fraud accusations, the Trump campaign still attempted to submit some of its mostly unvetted webform garbage as "evidence" in its Arizona lawsuit. As Adam Klasfield reports, the judge wasn't impressed by the campaign's attempt to portray a bunch of statements from internet randos as something worth the court's time and attention.

A Trump campaign attorney conceded in court on Thursday morning that he tried to enter hundreds of dodgy form-filed affidavits into evidence, even though their own investigation found that a subset of the sworn statements that they received were filled with lies and “spam.”

“This is concerning,” Judge Daniel Kiley, from Arizona’s Maricopa County, remarked with some understatement.

This wasn't the only laughable assertion by Trump campaign attorney, Kory Langhofer. On the record and in front of a judge, Langhofer said the campaign was confident it had weeded out bot submissions because the site had a CAPTCHA.

Then he got even stupider by claiming the narratives the Trump campaign couldn't immediately disprove must be truthful representations. Not being able to prove something is a lie isn't the same thing as finding it to be true, the judge pointed out.

Judge Kiley replied that this did not show the remaining affidavits are trustworthy.

“That just shows you cannot disprove what’s asserted,” Kiley noted.

Then, despite entering the legal arena to dispute alleged fraud, the Trump attorney said it was unlikely anyone actually engaged in fraud.

“This is not a fraud case,” Langhofer said, casting the lawsuit instead as allegations of flaws within the voting system. “It is not a stealing-the-election case.”

It appears the Trump campaign's lawyer isn't getting the talking points memos. There have been wild, widespread accusations of voter fraud from both the outgoing president and many of his administration figureheads, which for some reason include his children and his children's spouses.

The Trump campaign thinks a webform and a hotline that will coddle conspiracy theorists when not swamped by pranksters is going to help it win back an election. Good luck with that. But it will make for some great popcorn munching as the campaign and its attorneys continue to embarrass themselves in courtrooms around the nation until every last avenue for redress has been (in all senses of the word) exhausted.

Filed Under: donald trump, election, evidence, fraud hotline, trump campaign, voting, webform

Just As The Postal Service Is Being Dismantled To Prevent The Handling Of Mail In Ballots, It Tries To Patent Blockchain Voting By Mail

from the i...-uh...-what? dept

We are living in truly dystopian times. As you may have heard, this week there have been a bunch of stories regarding the somewhat systematic dismantling of US Postal Service operations in what appears to be a coordinated effort by this administration to foil the process of sending and collecting mail-in ballots. But, apparently, rather than ensuring its own ability to handle mail-in ballots for this election, the US Postal service is trying to... patent blockchain-based voting?

As you almost certainly know, President Trump has been -- without any factual basis at all -- decrying mail-in ballots, despite the fact that they have been proven safe and effective. As we're in the middle of a pandemic -- made significantly worse by this administration's own incompetence -- whose main mode of transmission is gathering indoors, the need for more mail-in ballots is obvious to anyone who cares about a functioning democracy. Instead, the President has apparently focused on making it impossible. While that seemed like a conspiracy theory to many, he admitted he was holding up funding for exactly that reason:

"They want three and a half billion dollars for something that'll turn out to be fraudulent, that's election money basically. They want three and a half billion dollars for the mail-in votes. Universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion, billion, for the Post Office. Now they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump said, repeating his false claims that mail-in voting would be "fraudulent."

"But if they don't get those two items that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because you they're not equipped to have it," Trump added.

Except, again, there is no evidence to support the claims of mail-in ballot fraud. Indeed, Trump and the first lady themselves have requested mail-in ballots in Florida (where he does not reside) and when questioned as to why it was okay for their to be mail-in ballots there, has said it works in Florida because there's a Republican governor.

So Florida has got a great Republican governor, and it had a great Republican governor. Ron DeSantis, Rick Scott, two great governors. And over a long period of time, they’ve been able to get the absentee ballots done extremely professionally. Florida is different from other states.

He's also supported mail-in ballots among his supporters in North Carolina. Of course, it's notable that North Carolina is basically the one place where there was some evidence of mail-ballot fraud... conducted by Republican operatives.

At the same time, however, beyond just blocking funding for the USPS, other efforts have been made to harm the ability to handle mail-in ballots. The Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, who was only just appointed in May, fired a bunch of top USPS execs in a "Friday Night Massacre" a week ago. And this week, it seems like there's been a new story every hour or so. All over the country, the USPS started removing and dismantling expensive postal sorting machines for now clear reason.

There have also been reports in places like Montana and Oregon that the familiar blue postal boxes were being removed for unclear reasons.

To drive all of this home, the USPS has directly warned 46 states (and Washington DC) that it may have delays in handling mail-in ballots.

But have no fear (or, really, have lots and lots of fear), because in the midst of all of this, a USPS patent application for blockchain-based mail-in ballots has been released. Applied for back in February, but just now revealed, the patent application first noticed by Jamie Love is for:

A voting system that can use the security of blockchain and the mail to provide a reliable voting system. A registered voter receives a computer readable code in the mail and confirms identity and confirms correct ballot information in an election. The system separates voter identification and votes to ensure vote anonymity, and stores votes on a distributed ledger in a blockchain.

Of course, as we've highlighted in the past, while some people keep pushing for blockchain-based voting it solves none of the problems of actual online voting, and leverages none of the benefits of the blockchain. Indeed, basically every blockchain-based voting system to date has been a dumpster fire of security concerns and, given everything else discussed above, you can bet the same would be true for any USPS-based blockchain voting system.

Even so, the timing of this release of this patent, in the midst of everything else going on with the USPS and efforts to suppress mail-in ballots (well, at least from those who don't support the President) is the kind of coincidental timing that even the worst Hollywood writers would reject as just too on the nose. Alas...

Filed Under: blockchain, democracy, donald trump, e-voting, elections, louis dejoy, mail-in ballots, patents, usps, voting

Don't Panic, But Do Reflect: Lessons From The Iowa Democrat Debacle

from the don't-throw-in-the-towel dept

As I write this post, party officials in Iowa are still trying to figure out the results of last night's Democratic Caucus, while pundits and political opponents have wasted no time in tearing into the Democratic Party, technology, and the very idea of democracy itself. Although there is plenty of reason for criticism, much of what there has been overwrought. Professor Ed Felten's twitter thread here provides plenty of useful perspective on this:

Nevertheless, there are many lessons to draw from last night's Iowa caucus mess, but first and foremost is this one: don't panic.

The biggest reason not to panic is that only the technology supporting the tabulation of the results broke. Whereas the systems for recording the results appear to be working just fine: there was paper, instruments for marking the paper, and (eventually) a way to transmit the recorded results to a place where they could all be added together. Sure, it will take a bit longer to add up all the results for the night, but that's ok. Because there's a paper trail we can still know what they are.

That said, there are still some cautionary lessons we as Americans can learn from the experience, not just for primaries and caucuses but for every election for every office, no matter how partisan, run in America.

First, of all the things elections need to be optimized for, speed is not one of them. And should not be one of them. The most important thing elections need is accuracy. While, sure, it would certainly be nice to have accurate results also quickly (and perhaps caucus officials thought the perceived convenience of the app would help towards that end), adding to the list of things it might be nice for election results to be tends to take away from what election results MUST be. And it is not worth the compromise. Which we can understand if we take a moment to think about the consequences if something does go wrong, as something almost always will. The reality is that if election results are delayed, we can still cope. As it is, in general elections results are often not certified until weeks or even months later. There is rarely a legitimate governance need requiring us to know electoral outcomes within hours of polls closing. We can wait a while, and it would probably behoove us to all expect to wait a while, because it's our hunger for instant gratification that is creating pressure to rely on tabulation systems that are not optimized for what we can't live without: accurate results we can all believe in. Ultimately nothing else matters, and we should be dubious about any voting solution that offers to deliver anything other than that.

Next is a lesson that applies to more than just elections, which is that just adding tech does not magically make everything better. Often, and as this situation illustrates, it can instead make things worse. Which is not to say that there is no room for technological innovation at all. The world would not be a better place if it were artificially locked into a 20th, or even 19th, century technological environment. Certainly there is a role for technology to play, and for technology innovation. However, not all new technology is necessarily an improvement over what came before. Sometimes what we already had was perfectly fine, or at least good enough for what we needed. And even if a new innovation might someday be better, it won't necessarily be right away. In the case of the Iowa caucus, it appears they replaced the traditional tried-and-true telephonic support for reporting results with a brand new cell phone driven app, and it is not apparent why. True, sometimes older systems can have their own quirks and imperfections and things we might want to be better, and it's not a bad thing to want to improve them. But where systems have at least been proven and reliable, any innovation needs to at least be able to deliver that same degree of trustworthiness before it can be considered a replacement, much less an improvement. No technology is magic; no innovation will suddenly solve all of our problems. Even the technology that is now regarded as proven and reliable was once new and untested itself. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work to get a technology to a point where we can depend on it for our most important functions, like elections. Expecting any new technology to immediately be able to be an adequate substitute for what came before, let alone an improvement, is therefore a mistake.

Next, paper matters. Again, the most important thing we need any electoral system to deliver is accuracy. Having a paper record helps deliver it. First, it affords redundancy. Even if our digital systems were perfect and bug-free, it would still be a good idea to have a back-up analog record. But especially while our digital technology is still evolving so rapidly and is still so decidedly NOT bug-free, it is critical to have a way to validate the results it gives us. Even when we think technology is working properly we still need to be able to audit it to make sure it is, and paper lets us do that. And then in those instances, like this one, when the technology has come up short, as it is still very much prone to do, paper means that we can still get what we need: accurate results of how people voted.

There is also one more critical lesson for now, and it's one mentioned above: something will always go wrong, and so, by anticipating that something will go wrong, we can make it ok when it does. The more complex the system, the more likely something will go wrong. But on the other hand, a system complex enough to have problems is also complex enough to contain solutions.

Elections are complex systems, so there are plenty of opportunities for hiccups. Which is not to say that we want hiccups; naturally we should try to minimize them. The issue though is that no matter how much you try to eliminate them, hiccups will still happen, so what we need to do is be ready. And that means at least two things: one, that we design our systems to have the resiliency needed to overcome those hiccups. For instance, in the case of Iowa, the results could not be transmitted to a central accounting system via the app, and that was a problem. But because there was a paper record they will be able to overcome the problem.

And it means something else, which goes back to the first point made in this post: don't panic. Don't rush to throw away faith in our electoral systems when things go wrong, because it is almost a near certainty that something will go wrong. But just because something has gone wrong does not mean it's the end of the world. Yet if, instead of allowing our systems to self-correct, we instead jump immediately to panic, we create a new problem. The reason we need accurate election results is because we need to be able to believe in them. It won't matter how accurate they are though if we simply refuse to.

When things go wrong, as they are wont to, we need to take a deep breath and give them a chance to right themselves, which is what will happen in Iowa since they have paper records. Furthermore, as the saying goes, never attribute to malfeasance what can be more readily explained by incompetence. What happened in Iowa was the result of a poor deployment of a technological solution. It was not a conspiracy. It was not the Russians. It was plain old human error to have so heavily depended on this untested mobile app system. And the good news is that we can deal with these sorts of bad decisions. Sure, there are plenty of things we can and should do to minimize these sorts of problems and improve our electoral systems, like better fund and train local election authorities, end reliance on unproven new technologies for supporting elections, ensure we always have paper records, reinforce the franchise, and so on. But there's no point in attacking our own democracy with distrust. Especially when it is so likely so misplaced.

Filed Under: apps, caucuses, data, election security, elections, iowa, voting, voting security