Chilling & Suing EI: activists threatened with lawsuit for opposing ES&S in NY: Forbes promises retaliation against election "liars"
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Paul Lehto
Jan 11, 2021, 1:42:16 PM1/11/21
to Election Integrity
The understandable energy created by the recoil and revulsion from January 6 is being harnessed to attempt to silence election integrity not just in its ability to allege actual fraud (using claims that are ALWAYS called "baseless" despite varying levels of evidence) but in the ability to even point to dangers. It is by no means just violence that is in the crosshairs now because vendors are now threatening lawsuits against activists for speaking out. (See below)
Those that question elections even hypothetically are being attacked.
For example ES&S has very recently sent cease and desist letters to activists at SmartElections because they oppose the adoption of their system in New York- coming up for a vote on Thursday. https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2021/01/11/ess-voting-machine-company-sends-threats/
For decades EI claims have been called "baseless" regardless of the level of evidence. Whether or not you are MAGA you will be treated as such certainly by vendors trying to exploit this moment.
For progressive EI folks you are getting caught in a crossfire, treated by vendors (and, I would assert, the establishment) as MAGA and therefore deserving of silencing and lawsuits, but since you are progressive treated by MAGA itself as "communist."
None other than Forbes magazine's chief editor is promising robust retaliation against anyone hiring "election liars" specifically of either party, (as it says at the end), but it gets people cheering near the beginning by focusing its ire on certain Trump administration liars.
Keep in mind that Forbes magazine itself will decide who is a "liar" as there is no court that will fairly adjudicate this for them. So, Forbes adopts a spirit of passionate retaliation:
"Let it be known to the business world: Hire any [liar from either party] and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away."
So what does Forbes think are the BIGGEST LIES? Violence is not a problem mentioned at all - the problem is those who lie about elections. Much of that is in the opening paragraph:
"Yesterday’s insurrection was rooted in lies. That a fair election was stolen. That a significant defeat was actually a landslide victory. That the world’s oldest democracy, ingeniously insulated via autonomous state voting regimens, is a rigged system. Such lies-upon-lies, repeated frequently [are the Tinder and gasoline of violence].
If a company can get full retaliation from the "worlds biggest business media brand" for hiring an election liar, it would appear to follow with just as much or more force that if any media prints election evidence Forbes considers to be lies they too will be treated as funnel for misinformation.
To some extent the media already worked this way and suppressed evidence. But now it should be clear that it is unfair to say "there is no evidence" because media simply won't print the evidence fearing this retaliation not only by Forbes, but other parts of the mainstream media.
Paul Lehto, J.D.
Josh Mitteldorf
Jan 11, 2021, 4:53:46 PM1/11/21
to Election Integrity
Paul -
Yes, this is alarming. Zooming out, we see that it's not focused on election integrity. After a year of draw-dropping advances in censorship, we have had a week of more audacious advances than in the previous year.
When Twitter closes the official account of the POTUS, they are saying that no one is beyond their reach. When people move from Twitter to Parler, Apple and Google have let us know they will brook no competition for Twitter that doesn't play by these same rules.
In my other field of activism, I see doctors and epidemiologists being professors with international reputation being shut out of Youtube because what they say doesn't agree with "the science". (It's obvious to us on the outside that these people ARE the science.)
- Josh
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Allegra Dengler
Feb 1, 2021, 12:51:01 PM2/1/21
to Election...@googlegroups.com
The Dominion lawsuits are going to be a huge problem for those of us trying to ensure the electronic vote count is accurate. Is it time to start advocating for the European model instead? Handmarked paper ballots hand counted in the polling place on election night!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-28/mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell-won-t-stop-trying-to-prove-trump-got-cheated
"Lindell was already extremely sure of the fraud but claims that his smoking gun arrived in early January,..., “another guy came to me and he’s a mathematic cyber forensic expert. I’ve never seen a genius like that in math, and he validated what these other people have.”...Basically, Lindell’s story is this: These machines had algorithms built in to count every Biden vote as 1.2 votes and every Trump vote as four-fifths of one. This would be provable, he insists, but “no one was allowed into those machines.” That said, he claims that if you were able to fix the algorithms to deliver a true result, the “actual count was 79,800,000 for Donald Trump, 68,200,000 for Biden. “
...Hold on a second, I said: What about the courts? ..These judges, Lindell said, refused to look at the real evidence. They just couldn’t handle the truth. “I’ll tell you this, when this evidence gets before the Supreme Court,” he said, referring to the “forensic cyber” evidence from the American Report, “when those nine justices—if they look at it… it is so blatant that they’re all nine going to raise their hand and go, ‘Wow, we were attacked by China and all this.’ ”
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ElectionIntegrity/CAMVOpmOQjgKzmyMLAZuS72R1L2b%3DBDoMzYuL1%3DrBzHPDAom26w%40mail.gmail.com.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-28/mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell-won-t-stop-trying-to-prove-trump-got-cheated
"Lindell was already extremely sure of the fraud but claims that his smoking gun arrived in early January,..., “another guy came to me and he’s a mathematic cyber forensic expert. I’ve never seen a genius like that in math, and he validated what these other people have.”...Basically, Lindell’s story is this: These machines had algorithms built in to count every Biden vote as 1.2 votes and every Trump vote as four-fifths of one. This would be provable, he insists, but “no one was allowed into those machines.” That said, he claims that if you were able to fix the algorithms to deliver a true result, the “actual count was 79,800,000 for Donald Trump, 68,200,000 for Biden. “
...Hold on a second, I said: What about the courts? ..These judges, Lindell said, refused to look at the real evidence. They just couldn’t handle the truth. “I’ll tell you this, when this evidence gets before the Supreme Court,” he said, referring to the “forensic cyber” evidence from the American Report, “when those nine justices—if they look at it… it is so blatant that they’re all nine going to raise their hand and go, ‘Wow, we were attacked by China and all this.’ ”
Bob Klauber
Feb 1, 2021, 6:03:49 PM2/1/21
to Election Integrity
I guess a big problem with this argument is the hand counted votes in GA and WI. This election had more hand counted votes than any prior one, where in many cases the statistics were vastly more indicative of foul play. (If we don't count the fact that once again, there was a massive red shift, indicative of foul play. And of course, is yet further evidence, though circumstantial, against the Trump team argument.) Plus other states, like AZ, had random risk limiting audits of paper ballots.
Jonathan Simon
Feb 1, 2021, 11:00:40 PM2/1/21
to bobkl...@gmail.com, Election...@googlegroups.com
The other big problem with this (Lindell's) argument is that it doesn't pass the laugh test. What I mean by that is he offers up specific numbers for the supposed rig (1.2 multiplier for Biden, 0.8 multiplier for Trump) and alleges that those numbers were systemic (nationwide!), such that Trump "wins" 79,800,000 to 68,200,000, an 11,600,000 vote margin for a candidate with 42% approval and no "events" to explain why, at the very last minute, voters would flock by the tens of millions from Biden to Trump. Indeed, based on both tracking and exit polls, in the Lindell/Trump Universe, we'd be looking at a 25 million vote red shift!
Well, shoot, anything is possible! But he don't have the evidence - any evidence. Hey why not just make up really impressive multipliers like Biden 1.8, Trump 0.2?! Then we could have Trump with 350 million votes, to Biden's 44 million!! Or whatever (note that these simple linear offsets lead to not just absurd but categorically impossible results?).
Then you have the audits and recounts, the lines, the USPS, the eye test. In short, what you have here is a crock of shit on stilts getting airtime - and a grotesque insult to anyone who ever attempted to conduct good-faith election forensics. If they want to argue the system is too nontransparent to be trusted, that's great. We can all get on board with that - it's what we've been arguing for decades. But that is not what they're arguing. They're arguing Trump won - in a landslide. Their evidence-free wet dream is the truth and every other measure of reality is fake news. Gee, I wonder where they ever got that idea from?!
Jonathan D. Simon
Executive Director, Election Defense Alliance (2006 - 2016)
@JonathanSimon14
Allegra Dengler
Feb 2, 2021, 10:41:55 AM2/2/21
to Election...@googlegroups.com, bobkl...@gmail.com
This isn’t so much an “argument” as a belief system. The problem for us is, Lindell has demented ideas that are sometimes close to true things. "
these machines had algorithms built in to count every Biden vote as 1.2 votes and every Trump vote as four-fifths of one”
This is a riff on Bev Harris/Bennie Smith discovery of fraction magic.
.These judges, Lindell said, refused to look at the real evidence. They just couldn’t handle the truth
How many times have we lamented the same thing, looking at races where candidates could not get 100% hand counts no matter how unlikely the results. (Yes, they got 100% hand counts in Georgia, but they weren’t legitimate hand count audits for several reasons. And the Trumpsters never addressed those problems in Georgia, or any actual facts about problems with electronic vote counts or voter rolls)
The public is generally very confused about what goes on with vote-counting. Electeds and election commissioners themselves are confused/willfully ignorant. And the Dominion lawsuits are going to muddy the water even more.
Like I said
Is it time to start advocating for the European model instead? Handmarked paper ballots hand counted in the polling place on election night!
This is a system everyone understands.
Allegra
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ElectionIntegrity/626970326.933229.1612222717606%40mail.yahoo.com.
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