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Sunday, May 16, 2021

UPDATED: Stefanik Off To A Good Start--Plus Election Update

Elise Stefanik got off to a good start after replacing What's-her-name in the GOP House leadership. Asked by Maria Bartiromo about her (Stefanik's) support for the AZ audit, Stefanik responsed:


I support that audit. Transparency is good for the American people. And again, this should be a non-partisan issue, whether you are Republican, Democrat, Independent or conservative transparency is important. And the audit was passed by the Arizona State Senate. The Biden Department of Justice is trying to block that audit. That is unconstitutional from my perspective. Our states, constitutionally, are responsible for writing states constitution law. 

 

UPDATE: The election update comes courtesy of Emerald Robinson's Twitter feed today. No confirmation that I've seen re Wisconsin, but she's usually reliable. Some excellent points--I opted for simplicity:


Emerald Robinson 

@EmeraldRobinson

·

May 15

Maricopa County (AZ) officials have already admitted they don't have the router passwords. They are not in charge of the election. That's illegal.

Michigan officials are admitting the exact same thing now!

Quote Tweet

Matthew S. DePerno, Esq.

@mdeperno

 · May 14

SOS Benson’s responses 15, 16, and 17.  Fairest election ever and she doesn’t know how the equipment works. She’s admitting only a vendor knows the intimate details that control our elections.

.

Democrats would not be able to "game" the election systems of crucial swing states CONTROLLED BY THE GOP without the aid of GOP officials. 

These same officials are now trying to block audits in order to hide their activities in the 2020 election.

.

There's a civil war inside the GOP because the GOP establishment collaborated with Democrats against Trump in the 2020 election.

You know it. And the GOP knows that you know it. 

They're just hoping that you forget.

.

The state of Wisconsin authorized an audit of the 2020 election!


26 comments:

  1. A noticeable and delightful change from the previous #3.

    To add to her comment, I rather doubt the Baidan DOJ will worry too much about the constitutionality of their actions.

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  2. It’s not unusual that election officials don’t have admin passwords for the routers. IT people would have that so this sounds overblown to me. We should focus on the recount not diversions like this.

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    1. But I think the real point is that the election administrators *could have obtained the passwords* from the IT people and provided them to the state legislature auditors. The IT people do NOT have the authority to withhold such info. And the state legislature has authority under the US constitution--and state law--to handle election procedures.

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    2. Slight misunderstanding of the issue here...

      Maricopa is withholding the routers, those are seprate from the server / password issue. In the case of the routers they are simply claiming the routers contain HIPPA and LEO data on them... This is a incredibly stupid statement of true. As each type, election, LEO and HIPA all have different legal requirements and couldn't co- mingle together. Also, putting data on a "router" would be an industry standard no-no so I seriously doubt what is being claimed is truthful.

      The password issue is on the data sever. I have a sneaky suspicion they (the country AND their IT people) may genuinely not have the admin user / pass to the server.

      I believe Dominion would be the holder of that info and no one (to my knowledge) has issues a subpoena to Dominion.i think that is the exact scenario were now hearing out of Michigan... The counties were not actually running their elections. Dominion was!

      By the screen shots we have already seen they have pulled a image clone of the drive, the deleted files are recoverable. They simply can not use that image to boot into the system using the several actual OS.

      Or well, they "could" by simply cracking the password, which they may have already done... But are intentionally pushing the "no user/pass" issue for publicity purposes.

      Short of an encrypted database (they clearly are not) no IT person worth their weight in dust needs a user/pass account to actually get admin/root.

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    3. But in that capacity *Dominion is working for the county,* and therefore the county should, for cause, be able to demand the information that the overall authority--the senate--is demanding. This should all work in a strictly hierarchical fashion.

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    4. I didn't think that would carry though in a "state" issued subpoena?

      Certainly not arguing, just trying to wrap my head around that aspect of production.

      We obviously don't know but I'm guessing Dominon's contracting with the county disallows admin access period. That would not be unusual in a lot of IT contracting situations where "the business" gets superuser rights but not actual "admin" access which is often regarded as a "IT role". That's often done for security and legal reasons for SoX or other compliance issues.

      So if the county has no right under contract, would that authority still carry over to Dominion in a state (vs federal) case?

      I would need to adjust my thinking...

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    5. What you're saying might well hold for ordinary business, but not when the state senate has issued a subpoena.

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    6. Dominion doesn't get to veto the state legislature's oversight of elections.

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    7. "Dominion doesn't get to veto the state legislature's oversight of elections."

      I don't believe / nor am I implying they do, I'm speculating that Dominion, until directly subpoenaed will simply just keep dancing around the issue pretending there is some federal protection to be found in other courts.

      Once issued, or, if issued, I'm betting they will stall and delay by going back to court again. In the end it doesn't matter so much, as you are saying, they can't ignore it. But I'm seeing a bigger and far more interesting criminal plight developing beyond the audit it's self.

      There is a pickle going on here where a state Senate has absolute legal authority over voting matters, but we have state and non state actors involved in criminal actions.

      Looking at the larger picture of issues normally something like this would be in a federal court or already handed over to a federal entity. But here we have a situation where all of the audit legal authority falls directly to the state Senate.

      Additionally, in the bigger picture the Senate has its roll of authority but it's abilities to hold persons or individuals criminally accountable are very limited to the direct action / failure to act involving the Senate it's self. They can jail a person for non production on a subpoena, but they can't criminally prosecute them.

      Or am I wrong about that?... Ultimately that's what I'm seeking asking to understand here.

      Right now it appears, at least on face value we have both intrastate and interstate crimes but have a Senate and a non certified private entity doing what is moving from an audit to a crime scene. In that we have both intrastate and interstate laws that apply. Being a computer crime the DOJ has reason to step into this right now. I think we would all agree that would be a bad thing.

      (Note- overall, I still don't trust the auditors in their audit process, I see it as sloppy. But im waning on their overall intentions because they seem to be plucking criminal actions out and tossing them to the public... Kudos to them for that)

      Now that we seem to be crossing over from an election audit to criminal malice I think we're heading into interesting territory. The question becomes, who's going to investigate the criminality? The AZ state AG is calling this all garbage. I certainly can't name a federal agency I could trust. The Senate can technically only go so far. These are political crimes... That never goes well!!!

      I'm speculating but... I'm pretty sure the Maricopa county board are dunces where they truly have no idea what's going on here.

      Also or additionally... Sundance, TGP and now Trump are speculating that the *D drive* in question is a network drive that isn't on the server. I think we already know that is not the case here. If the physical drive was virtual, remote or missing the auditors would not have been able to mount or image it to find the deleted files. It could have been a *shared* networked drive allowing outside remote access but the drive is definitely located on the server the auditors have in hand.

      I base that on the rStudio screenshot shared publicly in the senate's letter to the Marocopia county board. The only way they could have produced that screenshot is by having physical access to it. rStudio can be used over networks aka "remote drives", however you need admin rights on the remote machine to accomplish this, they don't even have that on the local server... This whole subpoena thingy is fighting over those rights so by default I'm comfortable in saying this is a local drive.

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    8. This is a unique situation, so no analogy quite covers it. While it's true that the SecState and county conducts elections, they do so under the ultimate authority of the Senate. The election records do not belong either to the SecState/County nor certainly to Dominion. The SecState/County is a bit like an agent of the Senate. Dominion is certainly no more than an agent in this situation and has no lawful custody of the records if they're subpoenaed. Ultimately, if it's a matter of who gets lawful custody, that has to be the Senate. Since Dominion is no more than an agent, the Senate doesn't need to subpoena Dominion any more than when a GJ subpoenas a bank they would have to locate and name the IT person who is in charge of the records. That IT person is instructed by their superiors, just as Dominion is instructed by the SecState or the County people.

      If I were the State AG I'd want to be very careful about about screwing around with the Senate. Everything is dependent on State law, but the Senate probably has multiple ways to hold the AG's feet to the fire. The Senate appears quite determined and probably mapped all this out before taking action.

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    9. Thank you for taking the time to pick that apart.

      I'm currently addicted to these audit cases. Regardless of their final outcomes we are getting to watch a historical process in the making.

      Ignoring the players, parties and politics involved (sides) this is like the IC, Russia Russia Russia, dual impeachments. 100 years from now it will end up being curriculum.

      Sometimes one must marvel at the sheer scope of it all. If you can numb yourself enough!

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    10. To be honest, I'm pretty much just waiting to see what happens and not getting immersed in the details. Someone else will do that for us at some point, but for now it's the politics that matters.

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  3. One major thing that worries me about Stefanik (I did watch her impeachment heroism), is her position on the Paris agreements. Her votes on this issue were against Trump's position (see link)

    https://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local-news/2019/11/stefanik-differs-with-trump-on-paris-climate-accord/

    This issue in IMO a defining aspect of Trump's presidency and a major reason for his supporters to vote for him. It is a major dividing line between globalists/socialist/democrats and the rest of us.

    How can you lead the GOP, if you agree with one of the
    Democrats main strategies (Green New Deal) to usurp power for eternity?

    There are only 3 Republicans who have a lower score on the Conservative Union scorecard. (see link below)

    http://ratings.conservative.org/people?chamber=H&limit=500&state=US&year=2020

    If the GOP surrenders to the "Climate Emergency Crises" BS, then all is lost!

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    1. Everything you note is absolutely correct. In Stefanik's defense, the makeup of her district may have some bearing on her positions.

      But we have bigger fish to fry at the moment. With Trump out of office, Cheney's current positions and statements were doing more harm than good.

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    2. Agreed, Cheney's personal vendetta is a distraction.

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  4. Why GOP establishment figures get so upset about electoral fraud allegations? Maybe it is because it threatens exposing their own incompetence and therefore job security?

    I had an experience 20 yrs ago exposing fraud and I ran into exactly what I am seeing with the 2020 election.

    I worked for a major Conservative newspaper company in Wash DC (not naming it, but you can figure it out).
    I discovered a major anomaly in renewal response rates from mailings. Brought my observation to the attention of my supervisor, who threw my memo in the trash. That supervisor had initiated the hiring of the mailing house from where the renewals were being mailed.
    I then circumvented the chain of command and brought the issue to the attention of the general manager. All hell broke loose the GM and the CFO both accused me of al kinds of things, as what I was exposing was just not possible. after about 3 weeks someone at the mailing house acknowledged throwing half of our mailings out for at least a year. Now the GM assigned my boss (who thrashed my initial memo) to go find out what the problem was and how to solve it. (sounds familiar?) No one from management ever came and asked me how I figured it out, did not want to know. The company eventually receive a $300k settlement from the mailing house insurance company. The mailing house was not fired, but retained (your kidding, right? NO).
    Not really satisfied with the explanation I got, I pushed for them to go to the USPS to get the paperwork for the mailings, you can't really mail half of a mailing after the paperwork was generated in-house. We gave the mail-house paperwork (3rd class presort) for 10,000 pieces and they only send 5,000 pieces to the USPS. The USPS would never accept that, not possible.
    So, the GM sent my boss (who trashed my memo) to the USPS, he came back and said the USPS does not retain paperwork after one year, so it was not possible to verify anything. Really??? I did not believe it, but lacked the power to do anything about it.

    A year or so later, at a down turn time, I was laid off.

    Bottom line, I embarrassed upper management.

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  5. I think Stefanik will be your typical republican leadership... Say one thing publicly, do another privately. Typical of Graham, Cruz, Rubio, etc, etc, etc.

    This drama queening reminds me of the John Boehner / Paul Ryan dust up.

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  6. I view Elise Stefanik as a huge improvement over Cheney.

    At least she is saying the right things, so many of her gop colleagues are not even doing that.

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    1. Outside of the climate thing--which I presume was done for her constituents--her record actually seems pretty decent.

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    2. Redstate is summing-up my thinking. (Kinda)

      https://redstate.com/stu-in-sd/2021/05/17/its-time-to-end-the-republican-kabuki-theater-n381233

      My only beef on the articles *over all* is, I don't prescribe to the belief that the theater ends with the term *RINO*. It is my belief the term RINO is more appropriately applied at the other end of the spectrum. Party supporters that keep believing / wishing the party "is" or "could be" something that's it's clearly not. Which is conservative.

      Accept them as they are, not as you wish/hope they be. Aka, in life the only person we can control is ourselves.

      As we are seeing in these last few weeks of election audits the corruption transcends parties and is is just as prevalent (if not more so) on lower levels.

      Just because Stefanik "says things" that are more appealing only means she's that much more dangerous.

      Sorry, I don't mean to be overly cynical but my stance on all politicians because of their history is simple... Prove me wrong, time always tells.

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  7. letter to the Maricopa Board of Supervisors from Senate

    https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20706832-5-12-21-letter-to-maricopa-county-board-1

    Frank

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    1. Here is the response from the MCEB:

      https://www.maricopa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/68972/20210517-Response-Letter-to-Senate-President-Fann---FINAL

      Aggressive, condescending and arrogant.
      Well worth reading in it's entirety.

      The concluding line:

      "It is time to end this. For the good of the Senate, for the good of the Country
      and for the good of the Democratic institutions that define us as Americans."

      Note the Capital D for "Democratic institutions" (not in line with stylistic guidelines, I think), what they probably meant is "Democratic Party"

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    2. The issue of the reluctance of providing the access to the routers is confusing to me.

      Why are all the election related hardware connected to the rest of the county systems through routers? Should not the entire election system be on an isolated network.

      To claim that providing access to the routers is possibly exposing sensitive info from other county systems, you are implicitly acknowledging the reverse as well. That is that the other county systems, which are connected to the internet, no doubt, through the routers, in reverse direction, now are providing access to the election systems. And were are constantly being told that none of the election machines were exposed to the internet? You cannot have it both ways?

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    3. Yeah, you are implicitly acknowledging the reverse as well, as Denninger has been hammering away at, on the pipeline fiasco.

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    4. @aNanyMouse:

      Link? Not familiar with Denninger and the pipeline fiaso you are referring to?

      Thx

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    5. More on the routers issue:

      According to this site (good info on all election audits):

      https://uncoverdc.com/2021/05/21/contentious-battles-continue-over-arizona-audit/

      "Unless the county did not follow the contract, none of the equipment (routers) “support or connect to other county infrastructure.”

      This is exactly the point I was trying to make in my earlier post. AZ BOS are making bogus arguments to stall access and obstruct transparency.

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