Ballot printer questions in Arizona

American Thinker ^ | 24 Dec, 2022 | Maker S. Mark

[MtnClimber]

I am pretty technical. I was surprised that shrink to fit became a talking point at the hearing on Thursday in Maricopa County.

I primarily know of one program that offers a shrink to fit option: Excel. Shrink to fit is, in my understanding, an application-level setting. Some copiers have a shrink to fit option, but it takes a literal picture and resizes it. That process does take some time and computing resources, and that copier is usually on the expensive side of the equation.

What I missed Thursday is where they allege that the shrink to fit option was set. If they are alleging that it was set in the voting application software, the software should have audit trails for changes, and we should be able to see if that was indeed the case.

If they are alleging that the change was made in the printer, then did anyone check the printer manual to see if that was indeed an option?

I have worked with Oki, Brother, HP, Epson, etc., and I can't remember the printers generally having a shrink to fit option. Printers are designed to receive data and print it. There is only so much processing power in a printer, and typically, printers just don't have the processing power required to resize an image. That is ultimately what shrink to fit does. It performs an image-resizing function.

If it was not the printer configuration, then did someone check the application to see if it has a shrink to fit option? For example, Microsoft Word does not have that option in the print settings. Microsoft PowerPoint does not have a shrink to fit option.

I know that the lawyers were throwing a curve with this admission, but just because you are familiar with shrink to fit in Excel...

[silent majority rising]

Thanks. The author’s ‘experience’ seems to be like looking through a keyhole from twenty feet and saying that he witnessed a murder. Is this what is classified as a news story these days?

[ByteMercenary]

Resizing a digital file that represents a ballot is not done in a printer. Any resizing is done in the computer by software and then the data is sent to the printer. It is not a trivial task. Adobe Acrobat, Windoze Work/Excel, and many other applications can do it with the help of formatting libraries that are available to the program in the form of ‘.dll’ or ‘.so’ files. These are easily detectable during even a light forensic exam of a computer.

There is absolutely no reason for these type libraries to exist on a ballot tabulating machine.

[MayflowerMadam]

“There is absolutely no reason for these type libraries to exist on a ballot tabulating machine.”

Exactly. I wonder how tech savvy the judge is. I don’t think Kari’s team explained this well enough.

[grame]

Wasn’t there some discussion about being patriotic if we waited and all voted on Election Day?

[Chode]

It was NOT on accident...

[Flick Lives]

I think the writer is mistaken and that shrink-to-fit is a normal printer feature.

However, any program for printing scannable ballots must be precise about the scale it prints at. If someone uses the wrong printer settings for ballots in Republican areas, that is not a plausible mistake.

—

Exactly.

And it’s not just that a ballot is printed at a certain size, it it whether or not the scanning machines can process it correctly.

In a legit election process, a reference ballot would be printed and then fed into the scanner to see if it was readable.

[joe fonebone]

This is far worse than shrink to fit...
Both the large and small ballots fit on the same paper.
If you look at the ballots, the margins have been re-sized.
Re-size the margins, THEN shrink to fit margins.
This cannot be done by accident.

[Ouderkirk]

I would have to know what “printers” were being used.

Commercial printers, have RIP (Raster Image Processor) servers which are used to align the images as the page passes under the the print head. Think like the horzontal hold function on the old tube stye TV’s. as the “picture” rolls over the image remains. The faster it rolls, the more processing power is needed to to maintain the image.

Most non-commercial printers, the driver software is limited to commercially available paper (8 1/2 x 11, A4 etc.) and ICC color profiles. 8 1/2 x 20” paper is not necessarily available at Staples or Walmart, and your standard printer won’t accept it. Most ballots are produced on commercial “roll to cut” machines with a 9 1/2” roll and then post printing, continuous slit to width and then cut to length based on the profile used at the “stacker” .

This system used in Arizona where the ballot is produced Pint on Demand, and then scanned is very peculiar. Almost as if it was designed to do exactly what it did.

[cpdiii]

I have worked with Oki, Brother, HP, Epson, etc., and I can't remember the printers generally having a shrink to fit option. Printers are designed to receive data and print it. There is only so much processing power in a printer, and typically, printers just don't have the processing power required to resize an image

My printer on its own will not do this. If I send it from my computer, I can make it any size I want.

[Pollard]

Sometimes there's a percentage you can set. I print my shipping labels at the library and ended up with some labels that were half sized because the last person to print something had changed the setting to 50%.

Seems like the AZ ballots were printed at 110% or something. That made the print output for what was a 19 inch ballot print to approx 20 inch.

Here's my print dialog for this browser.

There's also a choice of paper size and the 19 inch ballots would have to be a custom paper size setting. That's a different dialog and is not the browser but System Print Dialog to manage/add custom paper sizes.

Of course this is browser/system settings. Every program that one would commonly print from has some kind of print settings. A program made to print ballots on demand would definitely allow for custom paper settings.

With so many ballot printers having issues, I'd say there were settings that were changed via the network. The alternative of 30, 40 individuals doing it per location doesn't seem likely. I think someone did it via network and the individual people per location were conveniently not trained to deal with it.

Hobbs' job was to set things up, like training people. Guess she sure did set things up.

[logi_cal869]

“What I missed Thursday is where they allege that the shrink to fit option was set.”

---

One point:

IT DOESN’T MATTER.

2 things the wrong size paper accomplishes:

1.Ballot print jobs sent to the printer will not print due to an error message (e.g., “Load correct size media”).

2. Tabulators will eject the ballots without scanning any votes whatsoever with an error (none of the data - including the barcodes AND the vote selections - are in the right locations) and they end up in the ‘adjudication’ batch (the ‘black bags/boxes’ I’ve read about prior). ‘Adjudication’ is where they change the ballots ONSCREEN (digitally). THIS is why chain of custody is so damned important. It is also why they manipulated the election to stay outside the ‘automatic recount’ total...’just enough’ to win.

I believe that it WAS nefarious, that they (correctly) believed no one would notice the sizing issue and that someone ultimately effed up in MC by not setting things properly so that the ballots would print normally.

Insofar as ‘logs’: It is unlikely that their software would register such a change based upon what I’ve read, which most certainly would have used a PDF print driver (containing the mistaken print setting in question).

I want the vendor to testify as to who requested the wrong size media (I assure you that the vendor noticed the change and that an email or phone conversation likely followed to confirm the change).

I also want the software vendor to testify as to the number of rejected ballots which ended up on adjudication...a total which MUST match up to the number of ballots in the so-called ‘black bags’.

The ballot discrepancy is not a clue: It is the tell.

[Tekgeek]

I thought Jarrett testified that there were only 20 inch ballot images created for the election, and that no 19 inch ballot images existed. He even confirmed it’s his team that does the creating and he signs off.

So if the defense is testifying that only 20 inch images exist, AND there is only 20 inch paper, they why is shrink to fit even being talked about?

The only way I see shrink to fit being relevant in any way is if some of the machines were actually fed with 19 inch ballots, and they were trying to shrink the 20 inch image.

[cuban leaf]

PDF has an equivalent.

[dsrtsage]

Makes you wonder how many votes demonrats get this way if they can skew the image just enough to read the wrong candidate without it being noticeable to a casual glance

[TexasGator]

KS 365

[kvanbrunt2]

Most likely the printer driver software. My canon has a “fit to page” option and i have seen this on my old HP’s as well. There is usually a scale option.

[Pollard]

Exactly. I wonder how tech savvy the judge is. I don’t think Kari’s team explained this well enough.

That's a problem with our side in general. The left is light years ahead of us in tech stuff.

[kvanbrunt2]

I think the writer is mistaken and that shrink-to-fit is a normal printer feature.

However, any program for printing scannable ballots must be precise about the scale it prints at. If someone uses the wrong printer settings for ballots in Republican areas, that is not a plausible mistake.>>>. Yes the printing should be at a job shop. They know how to print and they will perform to spec. and you QA the results. i’ve had tons of paper printed in my carreer. each year. There are no process controls with elections therefor they are all fraudulent.

[12chachacha]

Shrink to fit is a computer printer software application, it’s not in the printer itself.

[moovova]

"Honestly folks, the "I voted AND I saved a tree!" program was instituted with all good intentions."