So once you successfully vote in person (other than by provisional ballot), your vote is cast and cannot be "revoked". Ditto if you received an acknowledgement that your mail-in ballot was accepted.There are weaknesses in our election infrastructure, but canceling individuals' ballots once they've been cast is not one of them.

This seems like a good place to re-up an academic job at Georgetown that will be a great opportunity for someone.We've got an open position for a Professor of Computer Science, Ethics, and Society. This will be a senior appointment (with a named chair) in CS, with a joint research appointment in the recently formed Center for Digital Ethics.I'm part of both CS and CDE, and I've found Georgetown to be an amazing place for interdisciplinary work (and amazing students).https://apply.interfolio.com/129971

Also, if you've got this romantic idea that you're going to be some kind of superspy underground resistance operative staying one step ahead of The Man with your clever technology countermeasures, consider that ACTUAL TRAINED CIA SPIES have trouble doing this properly in practice, even for just a few weeks. See this talk from Blackhat 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWtbwMp7Zh8

One of the less wonderful features of large scale social media is that if you share how you’re feeling or coping with something, some people will use that as an invitation to criticize your character, your intelligence, your perspective, and/or your intentions.That effect seems to be being amplified by an order of magnitude right now. Some are trolls, others are just people being raw at the moment.

BREAKING: Just like earlier, no one knows anything yet. The polls aren't even closed anywhere yet. Have a nice dinner. Maybe a nap.

Please be extra kind to election workers today. They're doing vitally important work with long hours and low pay, and have to deal with all kinds of crap from irate citizens and, occasionally, fascist thugs.

@mattblaze Good luck America. Hopes for The Great Wave of Kamala

@gregtitus In some states (not all), you can cast an in-person ballot on election day that overrides your mail-in ballot. In order to allow that, they can't process mail in ballots until they know who voted in person.

The DC Department of Buildings just issued an emergency stop work order for all construction near Howard University (site of Harris's watch party), apparently at the request of the Secret Service. Notably, they ask that "anything that can be used as a projectile" be locked down.It's not unusual to have high security near Secret Service events, but I've never seen this specific request before.Map (pdf): https://mpdc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mpdc/Road%20Restrictions%202024%20Election%20Night%20Watch%20Party%20v1%209.3x14%20Layout.pdf

Woke up this morning to a bunch of trolls in my mentions calling me "arrogant" for calling myself an "expert" in elections.Sadly, this place reminds me more and more of Twitter sometimes.For the record, and without apology, I am, in fact, an expert in election security and election procedures. I'm not the ONLY expert in this topic, and I'm certainly wrong about stuff occasionally, but it's just silly to try to make me hesitant to claim expertise in the area I focus on in my day job.

@[email protected] indeed. Here's a post on @[email protected]' blog on dealing with election disinfo.https://about.iftas.org/2024/10/29/5-ways-to-fight-election-disinformation-on-bluesky-and-the-fediverse/ #uspol

@UrNotTheBossOfUs @mattblaze His policies are INSAAAAAAANE!

@mattblaze Are the tech crew union? Hmm…

Reminder: tonight (Sunday morning 2am) is the end of Daylight Saving Time for 2024 in the US.Unless you take action to roll it over, the hour that you deposited in March will be automatically refunded to you. Many experts recommend taking advantage of favorable market conditions and investing your hour in a diversified index fund instead.

Reminder: Down-ballot contests matter.There's so much attention paid to "swing states" and the presidential race that people outside those states sometimes wonder if there's any point in voting.Yes there is! House and Senate seats are often tightly contested even if a state's electoral votes for president aren't, and those can affect the national balance of power just as much as president. And state and local offices will affect your daily life directly.Vote! Even if you live in DC!

We are being bombarded with disinformation in the run up to the election, some of it AI generated and some of it human generated. But this is nothing compared with what we'll likely be seeing after the polls close.

My talk at Columbia today, "Making Elections More Trustworthy", was recorded and is up on the web. (If you've seen me speak recently, it was probably some variant of this; it's kind of my stump speech lately).https://www.cs.columbia.edu/distinguished-lectures/2024-Fall/Matt_Blaze.mp4

Gave a talk at Columbia today and was on their campus for first time since the recent protests. It’s totally locked down now. ID and official invitation required to enter campus, guards everywhere. Felt more like East Berlin than a university.

In a bit of good news (or at least avoidance of catastrophically bad news), the copyright office just renewed (for another three years) our DMCA exemption that permits reverse engineering for good faith security research. This exemption, among many other good things, is what makes it possible for us to hold the Voting Village every year.https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2024/2024_Section_1201_Registers_Recommendation.pdf

The Washington Post today gave a master class in reputation squandering.