Patriocracy: A lesson in information and misinformation
Duncan Buell points out that non-science nonsense slips into the movie Patriocracy. It is an ever present danger. Our minds are easily tricked.
View ArticleBook Review: Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America
When it comes to election integrity, we note the many articles on elections and election reform are often emotional, subjective, one-sided, or inappropriately balanced. The same lack of rigor is often...
View ArticleGoodbye Sandy, Goodbye Science, Goodbye Secret Voting
Like other disruptive events, storm Sandy is being used to justify very questionable emergency voting changes in New Jersey. The Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey has announced virtually unlimited fax...
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Worse than Hurricane Sandy? As bad as climate denial?
A new ZD-Net Editorial: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come Summary: Believe it or not, most states have some provisions for allowing people to vote over the Internet. The pressure...
View ArticleIgnore this post – it is based on facts and reason.
Like Don Quixote, we have spend almost seven years tilting at myths. Unlike Don, we arm our posts with facts and reason. According to a new report, that is a losing strategy. Note: That report itself...
View ArticleNon-Science: “What you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” - Mark Twain Non-Science Nonsense is bad enough. But even worse is what we all thing is true...
View ArticleTop security official, spouts NonScience Nonsense
Comey’s problem is the nearly universal agreement among cryptographers, technologists and security experts that there is no way to give the government access to encrypted communications without poking...
View ArticleNonScience Nonsense, another claim of electronic voting security
In late June a respected source published a non-peer-reviewed article: The case for election technology Which despite its title is actually a marketing piece disguised as science, not for election...
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Sierra Club pitches nonscience nonsense for obscure company
It seems that for the Sierra Club, reason and science end at the edge of the environment. They are now touting a product for Internet voting from a company that simultaneously claims that they have a...
View ArticleSkeptics Guide Part 2: Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence
A couple of weeks ago, based on claims that exit polls showed that the primary was stolen from Bernie Sanders, I said: "I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary...
View ArticleA Meeting, A Hearing, and Lots of Nonsense
In the last two weeks there was a meeting of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and a hearing of the House Science and Technology Committee on "Cyber and Voting Machine Attacks". In total there...
View ArticleAnother Annotation: Don’t stop being concerned about election integrity.
Lately the news is filled with Donald Trump saying the election is rigged and with election officials and others saying that is impossible. We continue to disagree with both. As we have said: The...
View ArticleTrick n Tweet: The Age of the Unsound Bite
I was going to write a post discussing the allegations of "widespread illegal immigrant voter fraud". Yet, voter fraud is not the problem; Russian hacking is not the problem; Immigrants are not the...
View ArticleSurprising statements by Denise Merrill and Neil Jenkins
Denise Merrill, Secretary of the State and President of the National Association of Secretaries of State and Neil Jenkins from Homeland Security spoke on NPR on election integrity. <listen> We...
View ArticleBeware the vendor/technologist offering a panacea
The general public, legislators, business people, and many technologists - all of us - often miss-estimate the potential and applicability of technologies. I remember in 2004, my congressman, told an...
View ArticleNonscience Nonsense, insults our intelligence and the Granite State
Coverage by Alternet: The GOP Is Plowing Ahead with an Audacious Effort to Hijack the Vote and Rig Elections <read> "Plowing" is apt. They are really piling it on. It could be worse. They may...
View ArticleWhat we don’t understand seems all but impossible and fictional
Like you I don't know a lot about brain surgery, flying a jet, or hacking a cell-phone. Off-hand I often think of all of those somewhere on a spectrum from taking years to learn, to almost impossible,...
View ArticleSee a problem, propose a solution you want that might make the problem worse
There were long lines for Election Day Registration (EDR) and it took a whole 10 hours to count enough votes to determine the Governor in Connecticut. Our EDR is a problem, but waiting ten hours for...
View ArticleBlockchain a technology with great claims, without documented success
Blockchain has been wildly mis-sold, but underneath it is a database with performance and scalability issues and a lot of baggage. Any claim made for blockchain could be made for databases, or simply...
View ArticleDo you need a blockchain? (Probably not!)
Blockchains are the latest technology to enter the mainstream. A blockchain powers and makes BitCoin possible. Many are treating blockchains as the next big breakthrough in technology. There is even a...
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