Can someone, perhaps someone named opaquesquid, explain on what basis a judge could put a stop to this farce? I mean, you’re raising the issue of the judge’s impartiality, perhaps you could explain what the judge should be doing.
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WTF - why isn’t this in the Courts?
Actual question: can someone, oh let’s call him “Tubby Don”, can Tubby Don write up an NDA to preemptively restrict you from discussing crimes he plans to commit?
Say it another way, does an NDA prevent you from spilling the beans on crimes you’ve witnessed?
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I would think the concern might be that there is a bunch of obviously partisan hacks looking at people’s names and addresses to decide whether their vote is legitimate, long after the actual process that determined the ballot was legitimate.
My vote is is private, and supposed to be known only to the agency that handles the election, not outsiders. Anything else is an invasion of privacy.
An additional privacy concern might be threat of retribution of some sort. There are a bunch of partisans here with the potential for “doxxing” attacks against voters who didn’t vote the right way, if they’re recording names and addresses. I don’t know that they are, but this process has opened up the possibility, and that’s how lawsuits are often born.
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God I wish we would - I’d feel a thousand times better about everything.
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Compliant media, including TPM. They (cyber nincompoops and the state senate) declare this private party review of the 2020 ballots to be an “audit”, and the media goes along with that nomenclature.
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Yes, it does. I have suggested that political science researchers file an amicus curiae with the judge asking what is being done to ensure the historical probity of the ballot collection.
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Not just trying to match names and addresses on envelopes (which are deliberately separated from ballots for just that reason) but also using UV to ostensibly find (or not find) fingerprints. No worries about that, nuh-uh.
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It’s hard for me to imagine how these non-disclosure thingies could rise to the level of enforceable agreements. As described, they show a fundamental misunderstanding of (and lack of respect for) the law and what contract lawyers do. I can picture some cyber ninja business type telling his lawyer that everything about this charade needs to be confidential and instructing the lawyer to draw up the “paperwork” to make it so.
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Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m under the impression that there are no names or other identifying elements on a ballot. Also, once the voter has checked in to vote in person, or had their mail-in ballot accepted, there is no way to connect a name to the ballot (mail in ballots are separated from the identifying info before being added to the count pile.) So nobody can come after you for voting for the “wrong” person or otherwise exact any kind of penalty.
So the only way this audit can come up with fraudulent ballots is if they are trashed by the addition of blue or black marks, or otherwise destroyed or rendered unreadable or some get tossed out, changing the counts. Is that right?
ETA Even if a voter’s signature is now considered invalid, there is no ballot attached to it, so no way to ascertain how the vote might have affected the totals.
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“Similar to other documents, ballots do have a retention period as mandated by federal law. According to U.S. code, ballots and other records related to any federal election—that means for the Office of the President, U.S. Senate, or U.S. House of Representatives—must be kept for at least two years.”
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Sign the fucking NDA and then violate the hell out of it if necessary.
It is rather astonishing that some court has not put an end to this farcical, but utterly undemocratic and dangerous, process. Other than taking steps to insure that the ballot count is secure from fraud, there is no legitimate reason for the lack of transparency that is being employed here.
There is little more that these fools could do to encourage suspicions of fraud while undermining confidence in the integrity of whatever results they finally announce. One wonders if they will all be wearing black hoods and MAGA hats while doing so.
Criming, in business suits.
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Really? It’s hard not to conclude – hear me out here – they’re up to no good and have stuff to hide.
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You may be right about no names or other voter ID on ballots, I’m not sure how Arizona handles that. The name is on the outside sleeve of our mail-in ballots here in WA and that gets separated after the initial cross-check with signature, but I don’t remember what’s on the actual ballot.
ETA: Some of the fraud complaints Trump and others were making would require voter info that could be checked against the registration database, like “dead people voting” or similar forgeries. So I don’t know if this audit includes that kind of access to voter info.
You’re right with regard to the ballots in Texas. We voted by mail and the only names go on the envelope the ballot was mailed back in - nothing on the ballot.
And voting in person is the same - there is no identifying information on the ballot.
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The lawyer of Ashli Babbitt’s survivors still has not filed his case in federal civil court, but the coverage on this story now has well outlasted the meat story on Fox. The family seems confused as to murder, a criminal law distinction, when they should be focused on a wrongful death action.
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