There have been so many false accusations of voter fraud already in the media that I’m not sure one more, even if legitimate, would have been taken seriously. Even if “the media” reported it, I don’t know that anyone hearing about it would change their minds; Republicans would accept the new accusation as gospel, and Democrats would dismiss it.
That said, if this really was an attempt to expose election fraud, rather than to commit it, there was a better way to go about it. Make a plan in advance, have the absentee ballots sent to a notary, attorney, or judge; someone who can keeep the ballots sealed and verify that they were not fraudulantly cast. Have multiple witnesses and evidence, then come forward with the accusation.
What authority does this person have to have ballots sent to anyone outside the ordinary process? That is generally highly illegal, and for good reason. Ballots are supposed to remain in the custody of the persons properly appointed to have that custody (I don’t know if the exact procedure varies by state, but it probably does.)
Intent is usually an important part of establishing that a crime has been committed. If this person could establish that their intent was to expose a vulnerability in the process by which absentee ballots are dispersed, rather than to cast them himself, I think that would go a long way. Essentially they’re saying “if I could do this and bring it to the attention of the legislature and courts, then someone else could do it and keep it secret”.
Systems like this should be tested, their vulnerabilities exposed, and corrected. It sounds like the person who did this had already tried to bring it to attention through less drastic means.
But what actually happened was that they were caught – showing that the vulnerability didn’t actually exist, because someone who tried to use it would be found out.
You’re not going to get off on having stolen money from the bank by claiming that you wanted to prove that they wouldn’t catch you. Why should you get off of election fraud charges by claiming that you only wanted to prove they wouldn’t catch you?
If you robbed a bank while carrying a concealed camera, and after the crime you immediately delivered the money and camera footage to the FBI or the president of the bank (ideally both), you could make a good case that you were testing how the bank employees would respond to a robbery, rather than trying to enrich yourself. It would be pretty crazy to try something so dangerous without notifying the bank in advance, but I can see how it might be informative.
I was travelling last week, and as I was going through the security screening at the airport I wondered how often that system gets tested. Does the TSA ever send undercover agents through the checkpoint with weapons concealed in their luggage? Does the customs service send people with drugs through their screenings to see if they get caught?
Now, I would not suggest than any civilians try to undertake any of these tests. Saying after the fact “I wasn’t smuggling that heroin, I was just testing you guys” is not going to fly. You need proper controls in place, authorization to keep from getting in trouble, and record keeping so you know how many tests pass and how many fail. If you don’t learn from them, there’s no point.
Reading the article, it’s not entirely clear if the fraudulent requests were detected, or if the election offficial, Kimberly Zapata, brought them to the attention of the Milwaukee Election Commission before they could be. If that’s the case, it kind of invalidates the test. We don’t know if they would have been detected or not.
I still think that systems like this should be tested. It was kinda stupid that someone went rogue to do it without authorization, and I don’t object to her being punished for it. The way she went about it do make it look like she was trying to test the election system, rather than to cast the votes and influence the result of the eletion. The judge seems to have agreed, saying that Zapata did not act with nefarious intent.
I don’t know the details, I doubt anyone outside those testing operations knows the details. Wouldn’t surprise me if they don’t use real guns/knives/whatever but dummy items the shape/material of such things that should trigger an alert to test the systems.
Or maybe she was trying to commit fraud until she got caught, and then she was retroactively just testing the system. Which is why, as you say, you need proper controls on this sort of thing.
That’s what I was suggesting in the beginning; have the ballots delivered to a judge or notary, ensure that there are witnesses and documentation, etc.
As it was, she had the ballots delivered to a state legislator, and brought it to the attention of the eletion commission unbidden (if the article is correct).
So, as I said, not a great test, but not classic electoral fraud, either.
At least as of 2017, the TSA was shown to have a failure rate of about 70%, which was an improvement over the 95% failure from 2015. I didn’t google further to see if recent data is available.
With real weapons or fake ones, real drugs or fake ones, that particular system really doesn’t work well. Though I did once have a butter knife with a blade approx 0.25" too long get confiscated (by CATSA, but same difference), so, yay?
It depends greatly. Not every crime requires establishing mens rea, and there are different kinds that apply to different crimes. For example, one crime might require establishing malice, while in another it’s enough to establish recklessness or negligence. It will vary by statute.
As others have said, when there were other reasonable options available, a defense that she was trying to do good is harder to establish. It’s like saying you killed your child to end suffering when you avoided giving the child medicine that could have helped.
There was a Japanese man who discovered a security hole at Tokyo Haneda airport.
It used to be that after a flight into Haneda, you could go and pick up your baggage, then go back to the gates to another flight. Someone could put a large knife in a small checked bag, then carry that bag onboard another flight.
Nothing was done about the security hole so the man actually hijacked a plane to demonstrate the weakness.
My WAG is that actually committing a crime to prove a point isn’t generally a good idea.
Richard Feynman noticed a hole in the fence surrounding the Los Alamos facility, but no one did anything about it after he reported it, until he left via the hole, entered and signed in at the gate, left through the hole, entered and signed in at the gate and so on. Less dangerous than a demonstration hijack.
Now off to google to confirm my memory of this story
One day I discovered that the workmen who lived further out and wanted to come in were too lazy to go around through the gate, and so they had cut themselves a hole in the fence. So I went out the gate, went over to the hole and came in, went out again, and so on, until the sergeant at the gate begins to wonder what’s happening. How come this guy is always going out and never coming in? And, of course, his natural reaction was to call the lieutenant and try to put me in jail for doing this. I explained that there was a hole.
You see, I was always trying to straighten people out. And so I made a bet with somebody that I could tell about the hole in the fence in a letter, and mail it out. And sure enough, I did. And the way I did it was I said, “You should see the way they administer this place (that’s what we were allowed to say). There’s a hole in the fence 71 feet away from such and such a place, that’s this size and that size, that you can walk through.”
Right now, Helldivers 2 is one of the biggest hits in the video game world, especially on PC, where Sony hasn’t had a hit game in quite some time.
Then on Friday, just before the close of business, Sony decided to announce that effective Monday, players would be completely locked out of the game they had already bought and paid for and had been playing for months unless they had a Playstation Network account.
A PSN account is free - but it’s only available in certain countries. As a result, Steam announced that it would stop selling the game in 177 countries and territories where PSN is unavailable, and made a unique exception to their returns policy by offering full refunds to any affected player regardless of how much playtime they had (usually Steam will only refund you if you’ve played a game for less than 2 hours)
It’s now Monday in Japan and Sony has just backed down from one of the most epic corporate self-owns in recent history, but in the meantime the game’s Metacritic score has plummeted, its score on Steam has gone from “Overwhelmingly Positive” to “Overwhelmingly Negative”, and it’s not likely to recover.
There was a hole in the fenced around Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. The owners found out about the hole, but decided not to repair it. Kids who got in through the hole avoided paying the admission fee, but the rides at Palisades each required payment inside the park by coin or ticket, so they still had to pay. The kids thought they were getting something over the Park, but it ended up being another way to generate revenue.
If buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t theft. I mean, I’m not totally on board with the statement, but I like its use in these situations.
I always wonder how many people they’re not only driving away, but never sign up in the first place because of these tactics. The most recent system I have is a Nintendo Game Cube. Every once in a while I’d look into a Playstation or XBox or whatever else is out there and I’m always put off by the subscription model they use. But even if that didn’t bother me, it seems like there’s story after story after story of people losing access to games (or gaming systems) they’ve paid for or otherwise getting ripped off.
Can it be right that PSN is not available in 177 countries? There are 195 members of the UN, not including the Vatican and Palestine. Only 20 countries in the world can access PSN? Something seems wrong here.
(Not a reflection on @Smapti, who is only quoting Steam.)
This is not in the news, it’s a thing that happened in my life, but it’s too good not to share.
My son’s therapy place called us Wednesday to cancel for the day. It seems a guy driving a dump truck noticed his garbage was on fire, and for some reason believed that the therapy building was a fire station. So he dumped his flaming garbage in front of the “fire station” and drove away.
Leaving the staff at the therapy center to discover a literal garbage fire in their parking lot.