No, it wasn't plain to see. The only evidence was that things had changed. For 1200 ballots. That were flagged and then done by hand so every vote was counted. The state's explanation for the change was an error as a result of IT changing all the settings trying to get the printers to work. Anyone who's worked with printers professionally knows that these machines do not always behave logically, and you sometimes just got to try a bunch of different settings until one of them works. One of those settings is "size-to-fit", which ironically is an option that can make things not fit, because of how the computer recognizes margins.
Kari Lake's team could not come up with any evidence to counter this narrative for why the mistake happened, and again, the mistake was caught and rectified day of. This caused delays which her team complained about, but those delays were a result of publicly appearing to take a problem seriously and take the slow necessary steps to rectify a discrepancy. There's just not much legally here to stand on.
If anything, it's an endorsement for the Oregon system of mail-in only with hand-only count, since that avoids both the problems Maricopa ran into with ballot scanning. But I know y'all hate that.
25 year IT professional here. I work large installation of servers (100k to millions) running banking software including HIPAA, PII, & PCI data.
Stop speaking for us. The IT folks you talking about are incompetent.
You don't go into election and try a bunch of settings until they work. Are you insane? You certify a configuration and use that configuration. There are laws (that apparently aren't followed) that require election to be run of certified equipment and software.
Who had access to make the changes? At whom direction? What exactly was the issue? Etc.
It was a fucking shit show and the judge should see through it.
This is more like a reply that is actually useful to moving toward understanding what the issues really are. I hope there's a thoughtful and honest reply. In good faith.
I just feel like people are so bad at managing their emotions that if they think someone isn't passing the latest purity test or showing the proper amount of "virtue signals" they call names, spit judgement, and move on. And all the intelligent discussions that don't get to happen leave folks like me remaining naive to so much.
This I am IT and I worked for my local elections for 15 years. We had steps to follow and everything we did was recorded and written down. And if there was anything that wasn't on your follow manual then you had to call central. You never just tried different settings until it worked.
A shit show isn't against the law. Doesn't matter if the judge sees through it, being a judge is about being a human robot who interprets pre-written code, not about trusting your gut or your best judgement. Yes, being a judge is less about personal judgement and more about making sense of hundreds of years of legal writing and decisions and making a choice that doesn't break the edifice.
The printer wasn't working. If the printer isn't printing, you don't just sit around and not print out any ballots. You try and fix it. Especially since "there were delays" was about the only solid evidence the Lake team could muster. You... you claim to be an IT professional and then apparently mix up certification and configuration. Certification doesn't lock in configurations, and I know of no law that mentions specific printer settings like fit-to-screen.
And yes, you do go into an election and try printer settings until they work because you have hordes of people who refuse to use mail-in-voting but also get very upset if in-person voting takes longer than they wanted waiting right there. You don't just refuse to print out some people's ballots because an unexpected printer error happens (which is why voting should be a paper process with a hand-count, but then all the date fetishists on here would get mad) - are you insane? You do whatever you can to get these people's ballots printed out! So their vote can be counted!!
And then when you do, and it still doesn't work, you keep working at it until eventually those votes are counted, while someone else stops the printer error from repeating itself. Which is what happened. Yet again, I must remind you that the 1200 ballots were counted, so there's the entire failure to establish harm as well. I'm sorry, but 1200 votes being counted a few hours later than intended is not a shit show. It's more evidence in favor of handcounts, but it's no disaster.
The best argument that could be made was delays cause lines to swell, and it's possible potential voters see the line and balk or decide to leave the line before voting. Since the Lake team only really had that batch of 1200 in the most densely populated county they couldn't prove anything was widespread and thus systemic. And really, since mail-in voting was available and advertised, "the line was too long" is not a valid excuse to the judicial world which currently holds mail-in voting as acceptable. If you didn't block out the whole day to secure your vote, that says more about you than it does about Kari Lake or her evidence.
Also, it's really hard to prove that someone intentionally tried to throw the election when the only evidence is one handful of ballots that were counted. If it was an evil plan, that's a shit evil plan that doesn't accomplish anything. Occam's Razor says its a heady mixture of human and machine error. Which is why we should have hand counts and not digital ballot scanning. Any money y'all want to spend would be better spent on ballot initiatives (or pressuring state legislature if that's what's needed in Arizona) to remove machines from the voting process, and not tossed away on a hopeless legal case with zero legs to stand on.
The way judges are supposed to work is they are allowed to be human and have emotions and be sympathetic to ideas, narratives, and zeitgeists. But they must put those sympathies aside - the onus is on the plaintiff to bring arguments and evidence that will work within the established legal framework. Lake's team failed to do that, and they couldn't even get one person willing to perjure themselves for a higher cause! That last bit was really my main point - the Lake team came apparently unprepared to play ball in the light or in the shadows. Smells to me like Cyber Ninjas fishing for a quick buck all over again.
If you seriously believe the printer issues was genuine and not intentionally screwed up, why did 132 mostly republican voting center (corresponding to a map found in Hobb's office) experienced printer issues, and only 4 democratic areas out of the 233 voting sites? The other 98 sites in mostly Democratic areas experienced no issues.
I tell you, because the printer issues wake made up cover for the real issue: An unapproved and non-certified configuration change of 95% reduction of images.
The 1200 ballots was the only known ballots from a single site witness by the RNC lawyer that took the stand. The real number is completely un-fucking-known because ... THERE WAS NO CHAIN OF CUSTODY records for drawer #3 ballots.. Nobody knowns how many ballots was missed printed.
What they do know is that the extended wait time was predicted and intended to turn away 3% of the voters or 45k votes.
Who cares? The votes were counted. Mail-in voting was an option. If you choose not to mail your vote and don't block the entire day for voting and get there as soon as polls open, that's on you. You failed your duty.
No, it wasn't plain to see. The only evidence was that things had changed. For 1200 ballots. That were flagged and then done by hand so every vote was counted. The state's explanation for the change was an error as a result of IT changing all the settings trying to get the printers to work. Anyone who's worked with printers professionally knows that these machines do not always behave logically, and you sometimes just got to try a bunch of different settings until one of them works. One of those settings is "size-to-fit", which ironically is an option that can make things not fit, because of how the computer recognizes margins.
Kari Lake's team could not come up with any evidence to counter this narrative for why the mistake happened, and again, the mistake was caught and rectified day of. This caused delays which her team complained about, but those delays were a result of publicly appearing to take a problem seriously and take the slow necessary steps to rectify a discrepancy. There's just not much legally here to stand on.
If anything, it's an endorsement for the Oregon system of mail-in only with hand-only count, since that avoids both the problems Maricopa ran into with ballot scanning. But I know y'all hate that.
25 year IT professional here. I work large installation of servers (100k to millions) running banking software including HIPAA, PII, & PCI data.
Stop speaking for us. The IT folks you talking about are incompetent.
You don't go into election and try a bunch of settings until they work. Are you insane? You certify a configuration and use that configuration. There are laws (that apparently aren't followed) that require election to be run of certified equipment and software.
Who had access to make the changes? At whom direction? What exactly was the issue? Etc.
It was a fucking shit show and the judge should see through it.
This is more like a reply that is actually useful to moving toward understanding what the issues really are. I hope there's a thoughtful and honest reply. In good faith. I just feel like people are so bad at managing their emotions that if they think someone isn't passing the latest purity test or showing the proper amount of "virtue signals" they call names, spit judgement, and move on. And all the intelligent discussions that don't get to happen leave folks like me remaining naive to so much.
Good job Anon. Carry on.
This I am IT and I worked for my local elections for 15 years. We had steps to follow and everything we did was recorded and written down. And if there was anything that wasn't on your follow manual then you had to call central. You never just tried different settings until it worked.
A shit show isn't against the law. Doesn't matter if the judge sees through it, being a judge is about being a human robot who interprets pre-written code, not about trusting your gut or your best judgement. Yes, being a judge is less about personal judgement and more about making sense of hundreds of years of legal writing and decisions and making a choice that doesn't break the edifice.
The printer wasn't working. If the printer isn't printing, you don't just sit around and not print out any ballots. You try and fix it. Especially since "there were delays" was about the only solid evidence the Lake team could muster. You... you claim to be an IT professional and then apparently mix up certification and configuration. Certification doesn't lock in configurations, and I know of no law that mentions specific printer settings like fit-to-screen.
And yes, you do go into an election and try printer settings until they work because you have hordes of people who refuse to use mail-in-voting but also get very upset if in-person voting takes longer than they wanted waiting right there. You don't just refuse to print out some people's ballots because an unexpected printer error happens (which is why voting should be a paper process with a hand-count, but then all the date fetishists on here would get mad) - are you insane? You do whatever you can to get these people's ballots printed out! So their vote can be counted!!
And then when you do, and it still doesn't work, you keep working at it until eventually those votes are counted, while someone else stops the printer error from repeating itself. Which is what happened. Yet again, I must remind you that the 1200 ballots were counted, so there's the entire failure to establish harm as well. I'm sorry, but 1200 votes being counted a few hours later than intended is not a shit show. It's more evidence in favor of handcounts, but it's no disaster.
The best argument that could be made was delays cause lines to swell, and it's possible potential voters see the line and balk or decide to leave the line before voting. Since the Lake team only really had that batch of 1200 in the most densely populated county they couldn't prove anything was widespread and thus systemic. And really, since mail-in voting was available and advertised, "the line was too long" is not a valid excuse to the judicial world which currently holds mail-in voting as acceptable. If you didn't block out the whole day to secure your vote, that says more about you than it does about Kari Lake or her evidence.
Also, it's really hard to prove that someone intentionally tried to throw the election when the only evidence is one handful of ballots that were counted. If it was an evil plan, that's a shit evil plan that doesn't accomplish anything. Occam's Razor says its a heady mixture of human and machine error. Which is why we should have hand counts and not digital ballot scanning. Any money y'all want to spend would be better spent on ballot initiatives (or pressuring state legislature if that's what's needed in Arizona) to remove machines from the voting process, and not tossed away on a hopeless legal case with zero legs to stand on.
The way judges are supposed to work is they are allowed to be human and have emotions and be sympathetic to ideas, narratives, and zeitgeists. But they must put those sympathies aside - the onus is on the plaintiff to bring arguments and evidence that will work within the established legal framework. Lake's team failed to do that, and they couldn't even get one person willing to perjure themselves for a higher cause! That last bit was really my main point - the Lake team came apparently unprepared to play ball in the light or in the shadows. Smells to me like Cyber Ninjas fishing for a quick buck all over again.
Long post of absolute boot licking gas lighting.
If you seriously believe the printer issues was genuine and not intentionally screwed up, why did 132 mostly republican voting center (corresponding to a map found in Hobb's office) experienced printer issues, and only 4 democratic areas out of the 233 voting sites? The other 98 sites in mostly Democratic areas experienced no issues.
I tell you, because the printer issues wake made up cover for the real issue: An unapproved and non-certified configuration change of 95% reduction of images.
The 1200 ballots was the only known ballots from a single site witness by the RNC lawyer that took the stand. The real number is completely un-fucking-known because ... THERE WAS NO CHAIN OF CUSTODY records for drawer #3 ballots.. Nobody knowns how many ballots was missed printed.
What they do know is that the extended wait time was predicted and intended to turn away 3% of the voters or 45k votes.
Who cares? The votes were counted. Mail-in voting was an option. If you choose not to mail your vote and don't block the entire day for voting and get there as soon as polls open, that's on you. You failed your duty.