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The Guardian has a story detailing the firing of Christopher Krebs, who served as the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa)
President Trump made the announcement on Twitter on Tuesday, saying Krebs "has been terminated" and that his recent statement defending the security of the election was "highly inaccurate".
CISA last week released a statement refuting claims of widespread voter fraud. "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history," the statement read. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."
Krebs, is a former Microsoft executive, and was appointed by President Trump after allegations of Russian interference with the 2016 election.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:26PM (12 children)
Except there is a paper trail [ballotpedia.org] in just about every state. In fact, the only state that Biden won that *doesn't* have a paper trail is New Jersey.
Every other state *without* a paper trail was won by Trump. So, by your logic, we should cry fraud wherever there is no paper trail. That would be:
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
New Jersey
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Texas
Note that no one is claiming that there was fraud in those states.
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin *all* have paper trails.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:27PM (2 children)
Too late - he's wandered off into the fact-free zone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:56PM (1 child)
Actually, he has been in the "fact-free zone" as long as I can remember him posting here. Just saying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:38PM
That is what the "right-wing" soylent filter is for. Keeps reality from popping his bubble. Welcome to the desert of the fact-free zone!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:34PM (1 child)
The list of states you point out that do NOT use paper ballots is amusing. Those are the states I would LEAST trust to run fair elections. And Trump won in those.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:51PM
It wouldn't be 2020 without a MASSIVE dose of Republican hypocrisy thrown in the mix!
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:23PM
Au contraire, mon frere ...
If Trump won, there was most assuredly fraud.
However, it was probably on Facepalm, not on the ballot paper.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:27PM (2 children)
Arizona does have a paper trail, but it's been made useless. After the issues in 2000, they removed the ability to request a recount and set the automatic recount trigger so low that it is essentially impossible to trigger (difference of 200 votes or 0.01% of votes, whichever is smaller). So while we do have paper ballots here, they will only be read by the machines.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @11:56PM (1 child)
What *evidence* do you have that suggests there were significant problems with Arizona's votes?
I mean that quite seriously. If *anyone* has evidence of any fraud or vote tampering, it should be fully investigated.
And I'm sure Dan Patrick [theguardian.com] would be quite generous if you can provide some. At $25,000/tip that leads to a conviction, you could clean up.
What's more, as someone who voted for Biden, I'm all about free and fair elections.
If there's evidence for fraud, let's get it all out in the open. It's not like voter fraud never happens. In fact, the Heritage Foundation [heritage.org] has documented 1300 cases of voter fraud since 1982.
Since 1982, many more than a billion votes have been cast. [statista.com]
Let's take the low end of that and work the numbers. 1300 documented cases of fraud/1,000,000,000 votes = 0.0000013% voter fraud.
That's not nearly enough to affect *any* election. But let's say the "problem" is much, much worse. Let's say there are *ten times* more cases of fraud than have been documented.
That would 13,000 documented cases of fraud/1,000,000,000 votes = 0.000013%. That's still far less than could affect an election, unless of course all or most of those were in a single small-medium sized town during a single election.
And since those were cases all over the country over almost 40 years, even ten times the fraud we know about certainly wouldn't impact any state-wide or even local races.
Even more, there isn't just one election, or even one election system. There are, in fact, 3,143 separate elections in the US on election day. Each with an election system managed by folks in each of 3,143 counties in the US.
And in each county representatives from all parties that have candidates on the ballot are able to monitor both voting and counting of votes.
The self-interest of the political parties and the processes that are in place make any sort of widespread election fraud, and certainly anything widespread enough to actually impact the outcome of an election would require complicity from hundreds, if not thousands of people, many of whom would have a vested interest in having the election go a different way.
But don't believe me. And don't believe the folks who claim there is rampant fraud.
Go ahead and work it out yourself. I recommend starting by looking at the election system and processes in your own county. That should give you a pretty good baseline.
And as you learn about how elections *actually* work, I think you'll come to the same conclusion I did.
And even if you don't, at least you'll have a better understanding of how our elections actually work. That's not a bad thing is it?
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday November 20 2020, @04:40PM
The whole point is that fraud can easily be accomplished without leaving evidence or only easily dismissible evidence. So, the whole "where's the evidence?" thing is a strawman. You know there's no evidence because the systems are set up in a way that makes it nearly impossible to prove whether voter fraud occurred. This is particularly true with mail-in ballots. They are out in public being handled by unsupervised individuals at multiple steps and even in the best case scenario, there's no way to ensure that only the intended voter can fill out that ballot.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:29AM (2 children)
One printed receipt is not a paper trail, it's a comforting fiction.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @11:43AM (1 child)
How's comforting fiction been treating you lately?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:21AM
Pretty good. Been rereading this Carrie Vaughn series about a werewolf named Kitty.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.