Matt BlazeApr 11, 2025

Trump's official denouncement of former CISA director Chris Krebs (in the form of a "Presidential Memorandum") is chilling in substance and utterly Stalinesque in tone. By threatening anyone who hires him, it aims to render Krebs effectively unemployable.

I said it then, and I will repeat it now: There is simply no evidence that the 2020 election was "hacked". Krebs's forthright clarity about this in November, 2020 was a brave and important act of public service.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addressing-risks-from-chris-krebs-and-government-censorship/

Addressing Risks from Chris Krebs and Government Censorship

 MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES The Federal Government has a constitutional duty and a moral responsibility to respect and

The White House
Show threadBill ZaumenApr 11, 2025
@mattblaze I thought the vote was skewed by billionaires throwing in a lot of money at the last minute, the fault of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, but there is no evidence whatsoever of any problem with counting the votes. It is easy to tell: you randomly select a sample of ballots (say, 10,000) and see if they agree with what the machines recorded. If more than a trivial fraction are wrong, you will detect that with a high level of confidence.
Show threadWorikApr 21, 2025

@bzdev @mattblaze

> you randomly select a sample of ballots (say, 10,000) and see if they agree with what the machines recorded.

That seems true, but is mistaken.

The machines do not record votes randomly, they are highly selective. By geography.

By carefully selecting which machines I use in the comparison I could prove anything

So you need to have a random selection of machines, too

I have done a lot of work in NZ on polling booths. Not random at all

Show threadMatt BlazeApr 21, 2025
@worik @bzdev There is a mature body of work specifically on obtaining measurable and arbitrarily high confidence in (unreliable) computer-tallied election outcomes in a mathematically rigorous way. Google “Risk Limiting Audits” (see Stark’s work in particular). No need to re-invent this from scratch.
Show threadWorik

@mattblaze @bzdev

True

My point is it is not simple

Apr 21, 2025 at 11:33pmWeb
Show threadBill ZaumenApr 22, 2025

@worik @mattblaze It is more complicated if you do *everything* by machine. It is simple if you use paper ballots to record the vote. Then you just have to make sure the tabulating machines are working reliably.

In California, we get paper ballots mailed to us. We can fill them out at home, mail them, leave them in a drop box, or go to a polling location. A ballot cannot be changed retroactively by some random guy with a computer and a network connection.