Notices by Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social), page 3

So the risk here is not so much that disinformation will actually result in a legitimately elected president being denied office; I suppose that's *possible*, but a lot would have to come together for that to work.

The real risk - and the intended threat - is that widespread and lingering unfounded doubt about the election's integrity will consume so much attention that the government can't govern (especially with regard to foreign policy) at full capacity.

In particular, I expect less of the wildly fantastic "Venezuelan hackers used Italian Satellites to flip votes via China", which at this point just about no one is fooled by, but a lot more of taking mundane, normal election activities (someone moving a box of ballots) and casting it in a falsely sinister light.

That stuff is very easy to generate and time consuming to refute. The only way to win is to not get sucked in in the first place.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Remember that elections are extremely complex events, and each jurisdiction - over 5000 in the US! - does things a little differently, governed by state law and local practice. When someone shows you video or other "proof" of some supposed nefarious activity in a place you aren't specifically familiar with, be skeptical. If there's wrongdoing, there are avenues for them to come forward and prove it.

I've gotten a few people suggesting that post-election disinformation is no big deal; it was just a few malcontents, the right president was inaugurated, etc.

I think that's being very selective about recent history. Spurious claims of election fraud were hugely disruptive to the transition of power, in ways that had significant potential to have been much worse than they ended up being. Even to this day a significant number of people believe the election, if not stolen, was compromised.

Four years ago, even before the polls closed, we were bombarded with false and misleading claims of election irregularities and fraud. Most of it was obvious (to experts in elections) BS - vote-flipping satellites and the like - but it was exhausting to deal with from sheer volume. And it convinced enough people that we had a literal insurrection attempt.

This year I expect at least the same volume of disinformation, but that it will be of better quality and less obvious.

Be ready.

When people say "government should be run like a business" I wonder which business they're thinking of. Enron? Lehman Brothers? Pets.com? Boeing?

One thing I will not miss about election season (which is pretty much everything, but especially) is the barrage of text messages that make me feel like I have a slightly inept stalker by mentioning an address I used to live at in a swing state.

The tone is “it would be a shame if something happened to you if you didn’t vote” with a photo attached of a child leaving for school from a house where I no longer actually live.

Wait 'till RFK Jr finds out about dihydrogen monoxide, an industrial solvent currently found in many processed foods that can cause death or permanent brain injury after as little as four minutes of exposure.

"I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J67wKhddWu4

https://med-mastodon.com/@luckytran/113416113524577949

60 years ago, this was so obviously loonypants that it needed no qualification as satire. Now it's a central plank in a major party's platform.

But in case you missed it above... sigh.

Reminder: tonight (Sunday morning 2am) is the end of Daylight Saving Time for 2024 in the US.

Unless you take action to roll it over, the hour that you deposited in March will be automatically refunded to you. Many experts recommend taking advantage of favorable market conditions and investing your hour in a diversified index fund instead.

This year's Flu, COVID, and RSV jabs accomplished. Immune superpower recharging in progress.

My talk at Columbia today, "Making Elections More Trustworthy", was recorded and is up on the web. (If you've seen me speak recently, it was probably some variant of this; it's kind of my stump speech lately).

https://www.cs.columbia.edu/distinguished-lectures/2024-Fall/Matt_Blaze.mp4

Reminder: Down-ballot contests matter.

There's so much attention paid to "swing states" and the presidential race that people outside those states sometimes wonder if there's any point in voting.

Yes there is! House and Senate seats are often tightly contested even if a state's electoral votes for president aren't, and those can affect the national balance of power just as much as president. And state and local offices will affect your daily life directly.

Vote! Even if you live in DC!

@powersoffour yep. Checkpoints at every campus entrance. Outsiders need a barcode and ID to enter.

Gave a talk at Columbia today and was on their campus for first time since the recent protests. It’s totally locked down now. ID and official invitation required to enter campus, guards everywhere. Felt more like East Berlin than a university.

In a bit of good news (or at least avoidance of catastrophically bad news), the copyright office just renewed (for another three years) our DMCA exemption that permits reverse engineering for good faith security research. This exemption, among many other good things, is what makes it possible for us to hold the Voting Village every year.

https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2024/2024_Section_1201_Registers_Recommendation.pdf

The Washington Post today gave a master class in reputation squandering.