Pro-Trump activists swamp election officials with sprawling records requests

[Peacetrain]

https://news.yahoo.com/pro-trump-activists-swamp-election-110416623.html

Reuters) - Pro-Trump operatives are flooding local officials with public-records requests to seek evidence for the former president’s false stolen-election claims and to gather intelligence on voting machines and voters, adding to the chaos rocking the U.S. election system.

The Maricopa County Recorder's Office in Arizona, an election battleground state, has fielded 498 public records requests this year - 130 more than all of last year. Officials in Washoe County, Nevada, have fielded 88 public records requests, two-thirds more than in all of 2021. And the number of requests to North Carolina’s state elections board have already nearly equaled last year’s total of 229.

The surge of requests is overwhelming staffs that oversee elections in some jurisdictions, fueling baseless voter-fraud allegations and raising concerns about the inadvertent release of information that could be used to hack voting systems, according to a dozen election officials interviewed by Reuters.

[RussBLib]

1. Another one of TFG's stunts?

Get people all riled up and gum up the election process?

Perhaps need a way to differentiate between reasonable and frivolous requests .

[Peacetrain]

2. My hope is that they have pushed the needle so far that they lose any

power they ever had, and they are just sent packing out the door

[Chainfire]

3. I would hire one person to deal with the requests and forbid them any help.

We should learn from big business:

"Thank you for calling our voter fraud department, your call is very important to us. All of our agents are busy assisting other customers at this time...the wait time is......18 months. You can stay on the line or leave a number and we will call you back at the first opportunity." Cue the elevator music.

[Peacetrain]

4. +1000

[lpbk2713]

5. "There are 372 people ahead of you."

"Thank you for waiting."

[FlyingPiggy]

14. YESSSSS!!! Exactly this!!

[notinkansas]

6. I certainly hope fees are charged for these requests.

Also - shouldn't there be some time limits? Especially for elections related records.

[SheilaAnn]

7. Was just going to say that. Fees and time limits on these requests.

[questionseverything]

8. If "released information " can lead to hacking, we shouldn't be using that machine to start with

If the information is public record it should be published on the website then anyone can access it

Transparency is important for democracy

[Volaris]

10. I'm of the opinion that ALL voting machine code should be public access for view only,

So that anyone can run mocks on it. Lock it 24 hours before election day, but have its operation viewable (and recordable) in real time.

Any reasonably taught community College it dept should be able to build this, imo

[questionseverything]

11. If we are going to use voting machines, they should be open source but

We need to hand count the top two federal races and maybe one random down ballot race

Hand counting is the only proper check for the machines

The idea that a recount is rerunning ballots through a machine “checks” a machine is illogical

[Volaris]

12. It's just me maybe, but if the code is open source and viewable in real time,

Seems like enough eyes looking at it, would catch any 'issues'; set up a formal complaint system, where if enough peeps all saw the same thing, THEN do a hand recount...

And to that effect, the machine should print me a reciept copy of my ballot, so that IF there's a problem, I can return that double-signed reciept to the polling place for the recount.

ALSO also, if it's a federal election, and I can produce rest receipt, we should get an AUTOMATIC ten percent reduction on our federal taxes for the year (because more people would then be bothered to vote, I think).

[questionseverything]

13. Even with open source a citizen needs special expertise to oversee their own elections

That’s not good enough for democracy

Remember votes are counted in precincts, smaller units

So counting a couple of races wouldn’t be a big deal

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

9. More dotard chaos

[Celerity]

15. kick for visibility