Matt Blaze
mattblaze@federate.social
Sigh. The "election truth" people are still going full steam ahead, collecting unwitting supporters who want to believe the 2024 election outcome was hacked.
I'm not going to link to it - I don't want to amplify them - but here's a brief thread on how they're being misleading and outright dishonest in their claims
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First, I would LOVE to believe the "election truth" people who claim the 2024 presidential race results have suspicious anomalies that indicate fraud. Politics aside, it would vindicate longstanding warnings from my colleagues and I that many US election systems have serious vulnerabilities.
But there's just nothing there.
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Asserting that a presidential election outcome was altered is an *extraordinary* claim, one that requires significant, compelling evidence to back up. But the "evidence" being presented is just nonsense: A bunch of statistics about "voting patters" that don't actually show anything surprising or suspicious.
There's a reason that Harris and Walz, who supposedly had their offices stolen from them, want nothing to do with these claims.
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If you read their claims, what they're doing is "analyzing" precinct and mail-in voting tallies from different places and claiming the results show "suspicious patterns".
Except:
- They aren't actually suspicious. They're readily explained by unsurprising demographic differences.
- Even if they *were* "suspicious", that's not how you show fraud.
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They also have no credible theory of how the massive-scale fraud they believe happened was supposedly carried out, either technically or logistically. They just make vague observations about a few know vulnerabilities in some systems, with no indication that even these were actually exploited.
It's supremely weak tea.
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They're conning statistically unsophisticated, disappointed voters with impressive-looking, but meaningless, "analysis" that tell people what they want to believe.
If you push back, they challenge you to prove a negative - "if this is wrong, just show there WASN'T fraud".
That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.
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There ARE real vulnerabilities in some of our election infrastructure, and this is absolutely a problem that we should fix (and on which significant progress has been made). But the mere existence of vulnerabilities is not evidence of fraud.
Always be skeptical of those telling you what you want to hear.
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The only differences between these claims about 2024 and the claims that the election was stolen from Trump in 2020 are:
- The losing candidate isn't amplifying the BS this time.
- No one stormed the Capitol this time
- No one is offering discount coupons for lumpy mail-order pillows this time.
Otherwise, it's just "Stop the Steal" with the names changed around.
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For context, I'm an election security expert with over two decades of experience doing research on and analysis of voting systems. I've led comprehensive security assessments on behalf of states of their voting tech. I've testified in congress multiple times about election vulnerabilities. I run a major election security conference.
I would LOVE to see real evidence of election system vulnerabilities being exploited to rig elections.
But these claims are, sadly, just BS.
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I should also note that what they're raising money (naturally) to sue for is not actually possible. They want a "recount" of the 2024 election.
The election was long ago certified, the deadlines for recounts long past in every jurisdiction, and the new officerholder long sworn in. It's over, legally speaking.
The only ways to remove a sitting president are via impeachment, 25A, resignation, death, or expiration of the term. There's no such thing as a mid-term "recount".
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Another thing the 2024 election deniers are doing (and another reprise from Stop the Steal in 2020) is pointing to ordinary local mishaps as evidence of a national-scale conspiracy. ("There were bomb threats at several polling stations!" "A precinct opened 30 minutes late in Springfield!", etc).
Elections are large scale human endeavors that are logistically extraordinary complex. ALL elections have small mishaps and irregularities. They don't generally affect the outcome or demonstrate fraud.
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@mattblaze that reminds me of how there were claims of voting fraud based on an anomaly in a specific visualization
basically, a municipality is not the same as a voting district, but some places reporting on the voting results still reported it by municipality
mail-in ballots have their own counting locations in germany, and in smaller municipalities these may be shared between multiple municipalities (of the same district).
voters are registered to a specific polling location, which doesn’t change even if you request a mail-in ballot or vote early. this essentially means that mail-in ballot locations have 0 registered voters, but still have valid votes.
and in a town sharing a mail-in ballot location with two towns of similar size, assuming 80% of eligible voters vote, and 1/3 by mail (both values are similar to the national average last federal election here), you’d get a “participation rate” of 133%. this naturally disappears if you look at the raw election statistics (by polling location), or by voting district
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