Matt Blaze

Ninth Circuit Panel Seems Skeptical of DOJ’s Attempt to Force California to Segregate Ballots from Purported Noncitizens [Updated from Just Completed Oral Argument] electionlawblog.org/2026/ninth-c...

Hacking a voting machine (as suggested in the teaser) isn't the problem. That's how you find and fix weaknesses. The problem is that they were told not to tell the vendor (or anyone else) what they found, so the result could be kept on the shelf and used to cast doubt on election outcomes. Yikes.

One of the properties of elections in democracies is that your candidate might lose. If it’s impossible for your candidate to lose, it’s probably not a democracy. This remains true regardless of where on the political spectrum your candidate stands.

Despite claims circulating on YouTube , etc, aren’t any actual “statistical oddities” in either the 2020 or 2024 election tallies, something which becomes clear once one actually digs in to the claims. Sorry, but there’s just nothing here.

There’s no point in continuing this discussion. You acknowledge that you are aware of no evidence other than your “feeling” that the election was stolen, and yet appear to be uninterested in exploring whether those feelings have any factual basis. I can’t really add anything here.

Huh? It’s POSSIBLE (in the sense of not violating any laws of physics) that an election could be hacked, which is why there’s an active community of technologists and policymakers working to better secure them. But the “Elon Musk used his satellites to steal the election” theories are nonsensical.

Other than disliking the outcome, there is simply no evidence to support the notion that 2024 (or 2020 or any other election in living memory) has been stolen via technological attacks. It’s certainly POSSIBLE some credible evidence could come to light, but thus far, none has.

My ophthalmologist has advised me against rolling my eyes as hard as I would be otherwise inclined.

You seem to have a theory that some computers were compromised to alter the 2024 election. What computers? What is their role in the election? Where are they located? How would compromising them alter an election outcome? Please be specific. You’re making an EXTRAORDINARY claim.

As for Elon Musk, the claims that he somehow used “satellites” to hack the election just make no sense. Starlink is an ISP; it provides internet connectivity. I am not aware of any particular way where a compromised ISP would facilitate altering vote tallies. It’s just not how these systems work.

I run the Voting Village, the election security conference you keep referring to. It’s true that there are vulnerabilities in parts of election infrastructure. But there’s simply no evidence whatsoever that either the 2020 or 2024 presidential elections were hacked or compromised. None.

If she’s here illegally, we wouldn’t want her fleeing the country, after all! BTW, I believe as a member of congress she’s entitled to an “official” passport for government travel, and possibly a diplomatic passport under some circumstances.

Heathrow airport has special corridors reserved for passengers with antlers, which seems very thoughtful of them but also oddly specific.

The postmark situation has gotten significantly worse. Apparently mail is now routinely postmarked at sorting stations, not at local post offices as used to be the case. So it may be dated later. You can apparently still request at hand stamp at at retail window, but that requires standing on line.

I get the impression that you aren’t reading or understanding the words in my posts, so I’m not going to bother sending any more of them to you.

If you think I’m some sort of apologist for the administration or the postal service, I invite you to to Google me. I’m just trying to do my part to help the election be free and fair. And that requires knowing what’s actually happening, not just accepting what someone finds “obvious”.

By all reports, the USPS has been complying with the court’s injunction and has been accepting and delivering election mail for the November general election. Any evidence of systemic destruction or refusal to deliver ballots would be a very big deal and extremely newsworthy.

Personally, I would regard returning my ballot by mail this year to be a last resort if I had other options available. But not everyone does (especially rural voters in exclusively vote-my-mail states).

Yeah, that was one of the reports I was thinking of. As far as I can tell, there’s been a general degradation of service, but not focused on election-mail specifically. And fortunately, by all indications they’ve been complying with the injunction on the new election mail rules.

There’s some data suggesting that USPS service has degraded in the past few years, and that’s certainly something to keep an eye on. But these one-off anecdotes are pretty meaningless. Isolated mishaps, incompetence, and mistakes happen in any large organization or operation. Nothing is perfect.

Maybe Elon Musk has SECRET MAGICAL POWERS, unconstrained by physics, engineering, or how elections are organized. If so, that would indeed be disturbing news. But I am aware of no evidence that he (or anyone else) actually possesses supernatural capabilities, for better or worse.

I admire the dedication of Sen. McConnell, coming back as he did from the dead to distract from Trump's loss on mail voting in the Supreme Court this evening.

It sure would make a lot of election administrators' weekends go a bit easier if the Supreme Court ruled today, rather than next week, rejecting the government's request to put its disenfranchising USPS rules into effect for the already-begun 2026 elections.

"Building Safer Technology: A Field Guide to Failing Well" is here and you can get it wherever books are sold (35% discount code for you in this thread). I've spent 20 years dealing with terrible things on the Internet and I've learned a lot about how to build things which really *work*.

See the full playlist (24 talks!) here: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Philip Stark on RLAs: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVGO... Wareham and Gulati on investigating Puerto Rican election systems: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja3Q... Marks & Springer on de-anonymizing the secret ballot in Georgia: www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8sG...

A few (of many) notable highlights from the Voting VIllage: EFF's Tori Noble on the DMCA and election security research: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FNg... Josh Benaloh on End-to-End-Verifiable elections: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyND...

Didn't Eisenhower warn us about the Military/Ballroom Complex?

Videos from all the talks at the Voting Village at #DEFCON34 are now up! A YouTube playlist can be found here: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... Big thanks to all our speakers for their contributions to a terrific program this year, and a special shoutout to George Balbona, our heroic videographer.

Wow, the person who came across as a bad-faith troll turned out to be a bad-faith troll. Who’d have imagined?