a Zeleny

Yes, they removed my news snippet of Twitter Files… and censorship. #OhTheIrony It was @elonmusk commenting on MSM.

Good instincts. I’m a little rusty, but… Fraction Magic and the GEMS lineage In 2016, @BevHarrisWrites and programmer Bennie Smith documented that the GEMS central tabulator (Global Election Management System) stores vote counts as floating-point doubles rather than integers. This allows fractional weighting of votes or precise redistribution of results across precincts. Standard reports show only whole numbers, so the fractional values are hidden by default. They demonstrated the capability on real databases, including the Alaska 2004 presidential polling results. GEMS originated with Global Election Systems (Vancouver), was acquired by Diebold (~2002) and became Diebold Election Systems, then Premier Election Solutions. After ES&S acquired Premier in 2009, antitrust requirements led Dominion to acquire the Premier assets (including GEMS IP) in 2010. GEMS-related code continued under both ES&S and Dominion. Harris obtained Diebold/GEMS files in 2003 from an unprotected FTP site used by the company. She has stated that some source-code comments were in Serbian and that the system had international file-transfer ties. Serbian developers Harris has documented Serbian developers working on Dominion systems via LinkedIn and company records. These include nationals based in Serbia and in Dominion’s Toronto office working on ImageCast tabulators, Election Management System testing, and related projects. Dominion has long maintained a Belgrade software-development office and posted openings there. This is separate from the Smartmatic founders (Venezuelan engineers incorporated in Delaware in 2000). The Serbian connection is with Dominion and the earlier GEMS lineage. Smartmatic, Sequoia, and later ownership Smartmatic was incorporated in Delaware in April 2000 by Venezuelan engineers Antonio Mugica, Alfredo José Anzola, and Roger Piñate. It acquired Sequoia Voting Systems in 2005 and divested ownership in 2007 under CFIUS scrutiny related to foreign ownership of U.S. election equipment, while retaining residual IP and some contractual interests. Dominion acquired Sequoia assets in 2010. The companies state they have no current ownership relationship or shared software; residual code questions are difficult to verify independently due to proprietary systems. ES&S and Hart InterCivic are separate firms. Indictments In August 2024 the U.S. Department of Justice charged three Smartmatic executives, including co-founder Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez, with Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations and money laundering. The allegations involve more than $1 million in bribes (2015–2018) to a Philippine election official to obtain and retain contracts related to the 2016 Philippine elections. In October 2025 a superseding indictment added Smartmatic’s parent company (SGO Corporation Limited) as a corporate defendant on related FCPA and money-laundering charges. The defendants have pleaded not guilty. These are foreign-bribery charges, not U.S. election-rigging charges. Company denials of shared code or claims of robust security are not reliable on their face. The combination of proprietary code, foreign-developer involvement documented by Harris, residual IP questions from the Sequoia transactions, and criminal charges against Smartmatic executives and the parent company for election-related corruption abroad is the factual record. Fraction Magic itself remains a documented design feature of the GEMS tabulator that creates a high-precision mechanism for redistributing results if access is obtained. And yes, includes foreign programming.

BREAKING: In a 6-5 vote, the Ninth Circuit reinstated its earlier ruling lifting restrictions on the Trump administration's efforts to have states set aside suspected noncitizen ballots, allowing it to resume such requests and warn election officials of prosecution.

Behold, CNN fake news in all of its glory. October 31, 2024. Trump criticized Liz Cheney (and others) for being warmongers who constantly push for war from the comfort of nice buildings in DC. Then he said the line about wondering if Cheney would still be so bravely calling for war if she was the one facing the guns. At no point did Trump call for Liz Cheney to be executed by a firing squad, but virtually every host on CNN said that he did. Lying to its viewers about a candidate right before a Presidential election. Is that what a "news organization" is supposed to do? Erin Burnette even said the word "quote," blatantly lying because it wasn't a real quote. This is CNN.

The new frontier of artificial intelligence belongs to us, not doomers. Under President Trump, the United States will remain AI DOMINANT.

🚨1/The bill Bernie Sanders introduced was drafted in London.🇬🇧 Its drafter, ControlAI, admitted it to TIME. Its funder — sole publicly named — is Jaan Tallinn, who led Anthropic’s Series A and sits on Anthropic’s board as an observer. Neither Sanders nor the UK sponsor disclosed it. 🧵👇

Just this morning, the New York Times reported that China's spy chief wants his government to have more oversight of the AI industry. As I said on Friday on @MSNOWNews: the Trump administration has a huge opportunity to enlist China in the effort to rein in AI when President Xi visits in two weeks. They should take it. ms.now/news/news-analysis/hi…

Foreign accounts can drive the conversation on American AI policy. We have the data. Coxon's resignation post from Anthropic received 165M views and sparked a "groundswell of urgency over AI regulation in Congress" (per today's front page WSJ) Coxon's post reveals some interesting hidden patterns about who is amplifying our political debates online. It drew 76% of its reposts (spreading the news) from foreign countries. The top two were India and Indonesia. In contrast, when @ParkerThayer, an investigative researcher, posted his own analysis (expressing serious skepticism about the circumstances of the post and alleging that its amplification was coordinated), he got 6.6M views and drew most of its engagement from the U.S., with only 34% from foreign countries, led by Canada and the UK. Sure, people overseas have a stake in what the U.S. chooses to do on AI. But ultimately it is us Americans who will decide our own public policy. Don't be fooled by what's trending. A big thank you to @ElonMusk and X for making country of origin visible, which makes analyses like this even possible. Last year's “Great Unmasking" on X was the first time anyone shined a spotlight onto this subject. As much of our political conversation shifts online, it will be increasingly important to understand where engagement is coming from. Source (with more analyses of foreign influence): DigitalBorders.com

NEW: Canadian Unifor Union President Lana Payne has urged Carney to leverage the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act to PUNISH companies that shift Canadian jobs and production to the U.S. (fines up up to $1.5 million individuals face up to $150,000 plus five years’ imprisonment This has never been used before in the history of Canada. These people are so angry they are proposing Chinese/ North Korean style capital controls.

It’s Lake Ontario.

Now that the docs are out and crises thankfully are averted, let’s discuss the absolute craziness that was EIP/VP. It’s important. EIP flagging of “Sunrise Zoom Calls” videos (around the 2020 election period): Screenshots of EIP tickets and related emails show a GEC staffer submitting URLs of videos/tweets claiming to depict federal employees/contractors (DoD, DoE, DoL, DHS, etc.) discussing plans to leak information, shut down DC, or label results a “coup.” The staffer noted a potential domestic nexus and limited ability to investigate further, but still routed the material into the EIP system. Platforms (including TikTok) took action; EIP tracked nearly half a million related tweets as a top “misinformation narrative.” Internal records depict pressure for quick platform removals and excitement over follow-through. @e__strobel • Emails on GEC-EIP coordination: Exchanges between GEC personnel and EIP/Stanford contacts about Slack channels, ticket labels, data agreements, and focusing on content “originating with or amplified by foreign actors,” while still handling material with domestic elements. There are also later press-related emails acknowledging limited GEC involvement with EIP (few claims focused on foreign actors). • “Gendered disinformation” report and related items (July 2022 timeframe): An internal GEC report (produced with international partners, including references to EU/EEAS collaborators) on “gendered disinformation.” It frames the concept as weaponized by state/non-state actors using stereotypes to silence women and shape discourse. It collected cases and is described as informing responses to “patriarchal, traditional, and anti-gender values.” Rogers highlights how this overlapped with domestic backlash against Nina Jankowicz and the short-lived DHS Disinformation Governance Board, labeling American criticism and the board’s collapse as examples of “gendered disinformation” with “substantial direct impact in the United States.” Related internal shares include articles questioning Jankowicz’s qualifications and notes that some officials privately shared public concerns. @undersecpd @mtaibbi @shellenberger @SteveHiltonx

I don’t dismiss the possibility of serious reproductive impacts or reduced fertility. Long-term effects were never fully studied before mass rollout, and residual uncertainty remains. But the most useful work right now is not arguing every worst-case number. It’s fixing the permission structures that allowed residual risk to be known privately while public messaging projected confidence; which, allowed true side-effect information to be restricted. Three concrete, high-leverage fixes: 1. Reform Bayh-Dole-era royalty arrangements so government scientists cannot receive opaque payments from inventions developed with public funds while they still hold decision-making power. Real-time disclosure of amounts, sources, and related licensing. 2. Reinstate stronger domestic limits on government-produced messaging (Smith-Mundt style firewall). Reduce the formal capacity to shape the information environment at home. 3. Tighten the Federal Advisory Committee Act so advisory structures cannot operate with weak transparency, unbalanced membership, or easy work-arounds. Raise the cost of using “expertise” as a vehicle for opaque influence. These change the incentive landscape for everyone who comes after. Long-term studies can and should continue, but without these repairs first, we have no reliable expectation that inconvenient findings will be fully disclosed or protected from the same selective presentation and restriction we already saw. The structural fixes are what make future accountability possible. The task is ensuring the same sequence cannot be repeated. That is achievable now. @SenRonJohnson @RandPaul @SecKennedy

Justice Alito fires back at Justice Jackson, calling her solo dissent "baseless and insulting" and "utterly irresponsible" after she accused the majority of abandoning principle for power.