Trump's wishlist for election security "improvements" is a mix of actually good nonpartisan measures advocated for by experts (prioritizing the use of hand marked paper ballots) and nakedly partisan restrictions on voting (cumbersome citizenship verification, restrictions on mail-in voting, etc), plus some crazy stuff that's not particularly partisan, but not helpful, either.
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@mattblaze
Crazy ideas? From our batshit-crazy president? I never saw that coming.
(But thanks for watching it, so that some of us didn't have to.)
@mattblaze Yeah, I remember when it felt like all of tech was screaming against using more technology in elections, long before it became partisan.
So much more important to get the answer right, and paper counts fast anyway.
And if someone wants to challenge things, robust pencil marks best every other evidence hands down. But I am an Aussie and hearing about Bush v Gore, hanging chads, dimpled chads and counting machines where the answer changed each run seemed stuff of comedy.
@mattblaze @bmacDonald94 Is there a link to that fool’s obituary yet?
@donhawkins @bmacDonald94 I'm sorry, but I'm trying to actually look at a serious issue of public policy about which I have specialized expertise. If you want random shouting and generalities, you'll need to find it elsewhere.
@mattblaze @bmacDonald94 Hey Prof, I’m not one of your students. tRump’s obituary will serve the greater good of an entire planet. If you doubt my claim, prove me wrong. If you want to pontificate on lesser matters have at it, but if you can’t handle the feedback, oh well, this isn’t your classroom.
I expect that many of these will come up in his speech tonight, and it will be confusing, because some of them will actually make sense, while others will be in the "wait, what?" category.
Announcing “declassification” and release of documents related to election system vulnerabilities and other intelligence. Something about China compromise of voter registration data. Previously “suppressed” by “deep state”.
So far this seems to be about voter registration data, which includes some non-public PII but is mostly public, and not about voting systems or tabulators.
@mattblaze You expected this to make sense? 🤣 This is word salad in service of election fraud. He'll say any stupid thing he can think of.
Now he’s talking mostly about Chinese influence operations, as opposed to technical attacks against voting systems. And now he’s talking about Chinese fake ballots.
Back to voting systems vulnerabilities, which are already well known.
Shifted to complaining about TV networks not covering the speech. Wants their licenses revoked.
DHS will notify states whose voter registration data was compromised (by “China”) and work to patch vulnerabilities.
Asserts without evidence that mail-in ballots are “inherently corrupt”.
Advocates for SAVE Act.
And that’s it.
No actual new policy initiatives announced. Just the release of these new documents (which I’ve not yet looked at).
No new executive orders announced, either. Basically nothing new or surprising here, though again, I’ve not yet looked at the docs.
He appeared to have been reading from prepared remarks on a teleprompter the whole time, and didn’t seem to veer off script much.
Anyway, not much here. Much more substance (and much more concerning) was last week’s FEMA grants announcement (mandating specific election “reforms” as a precondition for getting FEMA aid).
Normally, the US president claiming that our elections shouldn’t be trusted would be a four alarm fire, but here in 2026, it’s just a Thursday evening.
@mattblaze In ordinary times, the President addressing the nation would be something worth paying attention to. But everyone knows that what he says are a convoluted collection of senile rambling and lies, and that is simply not news.
![Robert [KJ5ELX] :donor:](https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/accounts/avatars/115/833/042/784/456/710/original/6c4929fda05c7451.gif "Robert [KJ5ELX] :donor:")
@mattblaze all I'm hearing is screeching noises.
@mattblaze The overarching theme, however, will be “We have to do these things because Democrats cheat, like the way they cheated to win in 2020 blah blah blah.”
@20002ist There's also a chance it will be "China is rigging our elections".
@mattblaze Said in that especially sneering “CHYYYY-na” voice he uses when being extra racist.
