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posted by janrinok on Sunday August 12 2018, @12:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the wasn't-expecting-that dept.

DNC serves WikiLeaks with lawsuit via Twitter

The Democratic National Committee on Friday officially served its lawsuit to WikiLeaks via Twitter, employing a rare method to serve its suit to the elusive group that has thus far been unresponsive.

As CBS News first reported last month, the DNC filed a motion with a federal court in Manhattan requesting permission to serve its complaint to WikiLeaks on Twitter, a platform the DNC argued the website uses regularly. The DNC filed a lawsuit in April against the Trump campaign, Russian government and WikiLeaks, alleging a massive conspiracy to tilt the 2016 election in Donald Trump's favor.

All of the DNC's attempts to serve the lawsuit via email failed, the DNC said in last month's motion to the judge, which was ultimately approved.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in Ecuador's London embassy for six years, is considering an offer to appear before a U.S. Senate committee to discuss alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, his lawyer said on Thursday.

WikiLeaks published a letter from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday which asked Assange to make himself available to testify in person at a closed hearing as part of its investigation into whether Moscow meddled to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. "The U.S. Senate Select Committee request confirms their interest in hearing from Mr Assange," lawyer Jennifer Robinson said in a statement.

Julian Assange 'seriously considering' request to meet US Senate committee

Lawyers for Julian Assange say they are "seriously considering" a request from a US Senate committee to interview the WikiLeaks founder as part of its investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

The Senate select committee on intelligence has written to Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been living for more than six years.

[...] The chairman of the committee, Richard Burr, wrote: "As you are aware, the Senate select committee on intelligence is conducting a bipartisan inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. As part of that inquiry, the committee requests that you make yourself available for a closed interview with bipartisan committee staff at a mutually agreeable time and location."

The ultimate irony would involve Julian Assange avoiding Metropolitan Police arrest by somehow fleeing to the United States.

See also: Mueller subpoenas Randy Credico, who Roger Stone says was his WikiLeaks back channel

Previously: DNC's Lawsuit Against WikiLeaks is an Attack on Freedom of the Press

Related: Prominent Whistleblowers and Journalists Defend Julian Assange at Online Vigil
Ecuador Reportedly Almost Ready to Hand Julian Assange Over to UK Authorities


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  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:45AM (16 children)

    by edIII (791) on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:45AM (#720466)

    I think you're talking about things related to the Electoral College. The popular vote was simply the total number of votes correct? They don't give the entire precincts votes away to the winner?

    If the individual votes are what constitutes the popular, then what is being decided by a coin toss?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by aebonyne on Sunday August 12 2018, @07:19AM (1 child)

    by aebonyne (5251) on Sunday August 12 2018, @07:19AM (#720491) Homepage

    Iowa has caucuses [wikipedia.org], not primaries. Wikipedia has a description of how it works [wikipedia.org]. The short version is that it sounds like it's a winner-take-all system per precinct and precincts are small enough that ties are not terribly unlikely, especially as in a caucus, only registered voters who manage to show up in person and on time vote, so they tend to have very low turnout.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @07:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @07:41AM (#720494)

      The simplest explanation for this post is that its a bot. Its otherwise difficult to understand the lack of reading comprehension.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 12 2018, @11:03AM (13 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 12 2018, @11:03AM (#720515) Journal

    aebonyne follows my thinking (although I'm not sure he agrees with it). Iowa has a special status in the election cycle, in that they set the tone, or the trend, for voters around the country. Iowa is the "most watched", in large part because they start the voting season off. Call it a caucus or a primary, they are first, and many people take their lead from Iowa's results.

    Half a dozen of those precincts in the caucus were decided by coin tosses, and they all went to Hillary.

    Had Bernie won in Iowa, instead of Hillary, voting around the entire country *could have* been very, very different. 50/50 odds for a coin toss, right? Unless you're flipping a double headed coin.

    Please note that there is no way to prove how things *might have* gone. What's done is done, and we can only speculate what the alternative results may have been. But the fact is, Hillary took the first round of voting with coin tosses, not by votes. And, I personally think it very suspicious that she won all six tosses - bing, bang, boom.

    It all ties in with the corruption that was later exposed by the DNC. And, all of it put together may help to explain why I despise the DNC more than I despise the Republicans. The GOP fought their renegade candidate pretty hard, until it became obvious the voters were siding with Trump. At which point, the GOP finally threw their support behind Trump. The DNC, on the other hand, knew that the vote was rigged, and they were never going to throw support to Bernie. Their support remained squarely behind Hillary, DESPITE the voter's wishes.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:40PM (8 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:40PM (#720603)

      Which still has nothing to do with the outcome of the popular vote that the person was talking about.

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 12 2018, @05:03PM (7 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 12 2018, @05:03PM (#720616) Journal

        Please, scroll on down to hemocyanin's response, posted after your own response. His link explains much that you have apparently overlooked. The DNC's campaign was dirty from start to finish.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @05:15PM (6 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @05:15PM (#720621)

          That is still about delegates, not the popular vote (which is just adding up all the votes). Not sure why this is difficult for some people...

          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 12 2018, @05:38PM (5 children)

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 12 2018, @05:38PM (#720629) Journal

            Popular vote, you say. And, then you dismiss the fact that Bernie had the popular vote. How does that work? Bernie led Hillary, time and time again with the vote, but Hillary got the delegates, and the "super" delegates were all hers anyway.

            If the Democratic party had respected the popular vote, they would have run Bernie against our Orange Ape. And - BERNIE MAY HAVE WON!!

            Once again, we can't know that. We can only speculate how that race would have gone. But, we don't need to speculate that the DNC stacked the deck in Hillary's favor, until the deck collapsed like every house of cards eventually does.

            So, where do you want to go now? You want to reiterate that Trump didn't win the popular vote? Well - neither did Hillary. Do we go back and nullify the election, and ask Bernie to take the office? Will that assuage your angst?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @06:33PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @06:33PM (#720645)

              Popular vote, you say. And, then you dismiss the fact that Bernie had the popular vote.

              I didn't dismiss the fact bernie had the popular vote anywhere. Im just pointing out people keep talking about delegates instead of the popular vote. That is all. Literally nothing else. You just want any excuse to push some sort of talking point. Wow.

            • (Score: 2, Informative) by aebonyne on Sunday August 12 2018, @06:39PM (2 children)

              by aebonyne (5251) on Sunday August 12 2018, @06:39PM (#720646) Homepage

              Here's the results of the Democratic primary [wikipedia.org]. The popular vote is listed as 16,914,722 for Clinton and 13,206,428 for Sanders. By those numbers, Clinton won the popular vote by 3.7 million votes or 12 percentage points. That's not even a close race. Clinton's delegate count possibly being slightly higher than expected by her proportion of the popular vote due to rules details is irrelevant to the final result.

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              • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday August 13 2018, @12:50AM (1 child)

                by hemocyanin (186) on Monday August 13 2018, @12:50AM (#720770) Journal

                Let me tell you why those numbers are crap. They don't include ALL the states.

                WA is a caucus state. The DNC has never released the popular vote numbers from the WA caucus. There was also a primary ballot that was run by the WA SOS, but the DNC ignored that and decided to do a caucus process -- as a result any primary ballot numbers reported by the state of WA are meaningless -- it was an after the caucus straw poll and had no effect on the election, and everyone here knew that. The only numbers the DNC has ever released from the caucuses, are the precinct delegate results. Precinct caucuses are the lowest level -- that's where the individual votes are gathered and delegates to the county convention selected. Those delegates are pledged to vote for a specific candidate. The WA DNC has released the number of delegates from each precinct. Ah you think, we can just calculate the popular vote totals from that number and the number of voters. Wrong.

                In my precinct, HRC got 14% of the popular vote and she was alloted 25% of the pledged delegates. The ONLY number WA DNC has ever published was the pledged delegate number. They know the actual vote, every precinct turned in a sheet with the tally, but they have never released it. This kind of rounding error in HRC's favor propagated all the way through the county and state caucuses.

                At the end of the process, Bernie got 74 delegates to the national convention, HRC got 27, and 17 were uncommitted (yea right) (118 total). Ignoring uncommitted, the spread between Bernie and HRC was 47 delegates (30 if you presume those "uncommitted" would be voting for HRC). If delegates were apportioned by popular vote, and Bernie had 80-85% of that vote, the loss for Clinton would have been huge. 0.8 * 118=94; 0.2 * 118=24. The spread in this case would have been a whopping 70 delegates. In the end, Bernie probably got about 67% of what he deserved to get out the WA caucus, and Clinton got away with little damage.

                So you see, the process from the precincts on up was designed to benefit HRC -- in fact, in previous years, her 14% popular vote in my precinct would not have been enough to get across the viability threshold. They changed that rule for the last election, for obvious reasons.

                Anyway, I challenge you to find the CAUCUS (not the irrelevant primary) popular vote totals for WA. Until you can do that, there is no valid number for the popular primary vote because it omits places Bernie was most popular.

                • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday August 15 2018, @10:27PM

                  by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday August 15 2018, @10:27PM (#721939) Journal

                  You seem pretty informed on this. I thought there was a state that decided at the party level to just go with Hillary over Bernie. Was that Colorado? Whats the deal with that?

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    • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:41PM (3 children)

      by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:41PM (#720604) Journal

      I don't normally look to twitter for good information, but this thread outlines how time and again during the primaries, Clinton got more delegates than the popular vote warranted, including states where despite winning the popular vote, Clinton won the delegate count (all due the anti-democratic practice of super-delegates): https://twitter.com/philosophrob/status/905118924311801864 [twitter.com]

      Democrats complaining about election rigging is like Jeffry Dahmer complaining about how his steaks are cooked.

      • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:58PM

        by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:58PM (#720614) Journal

        correction:

        this: despite winning the popular vote, Clinton won the delegate count
        to this: despite BERNIE winning the popular vote, Clinton won the delegate count

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @06:22PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @06:22PM (#720641)

        That thread is pretty nitpicky. Most of the percentages are slightly off, which unsurprising given that some voting inefficiency is inevitable in a districted system instead of a popular vote system. Without seeing a chart of all of the states, it's hard to tell if they're cherry-picking. Obviously Hillary won the primary in both delegates (not counting super-delegates which have never affected a Democratic primary since the current system of having the general population vote in a primary was instituted) and votes, so it's not like this actually helped her win the primary, as much as some news reports may have used it (like the super-delegates) as a way to exaggerate her already substantial lead.

        Of course, the Democrats chose to run their primary as a districted system instead of a popular vote system for similar reasons to why the United States originally chose to use the Electoral College: to make sure the election system chooses a candidate with broad support as opposed to strong support in a small number of areas. If Hillary consistently won more delegates than one would expect from her vote percentage, that means that districts that went for Bernie did so by larger margins than districts that went for Hillary. In other words, the results imply that Bernie had a concentrated base of excited supporters while Hillary had supporters everywhere. Which choice is the best for an electoral system is a matter for debate, but in this case Hillary won the popular vote of the primary as well by quite a bit, so it's not really an issue as both choices give the same winner.

        (Obviously, the Democrats are in favor of the other choice for the general presidential election because they have trouble appealing to rural areas, but arguing to change the rules to ignore a constituency, even one that is a minority in population, seems like an undemocratic choice as opposed to changing their policies and messaging to actually represent as many people as possible. Bernie was a step in the other direction; Clinton at least had policies trying to help rural areas in her platform, although she clearly failed at messaging.)

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Sunday August 12 2018, @09:03PM

          by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday August 12 2018, @09:03PM (#720681) Journal

          It isn't nitpicky -- you have states where HRC would get say 4% more than she deserved, which means Bernie got 4% LESS than he deserved -- that's an 8% spread. Then of course there are states where Bernie flat out won -- like Wyoming -- but Clinton won the delegate count. https://pics.me.me/dem-caucus-wyoming-18-delegates-bernie-sanders-democrat-56-dem-7732106.png [pics.me.me] Bernie won 56% of the vote to get 39% of the delegates. That's some democracy.

          My own personal experience in the WA caucus was a real eyeopener -- while Bernie won WA, the HRCbots did everything possible to make the win worth less than its true value because they understood that spread is what is vitally important and with only a little extra thumb on the scale, democracy is irrelevant. Ultimately, the DNC rigged it so that where Bernie would win, he would either lose or not get the full benefit of his win, and where HRC won, she almost always got a little extra to boot.

          That's not nitpicking -- that's pointing out how rigged it was. Bernie would have needed a super-majority in order to get the benefit of a mere simple majority.