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This is of concern to the community given the apparent overlap with the technical expertise of a DOGE employee, Ethan Shaotran, and his prior work for a Musk sp

This is of concern to the community given the apparent overlap with the technical expertise of a DOGE employee, Ethan Shaotran, and his prior work for a Musk sponsored hackathon where he created software that could spoof ballot tabulation. https://github.com/DevrathIyer/ballotproof/tree/master https://github.com/DevrathIyer/ballotproof/tree/master Apparently, Shaotran removed his name from the repo and is now listed as a private user, but it can be found in the archive of the devpost page linked from the repo: https://devpost.com/software/ballotproof-vision https://devpost.com/software/ballotproof-vision https://web.archive.org/web/20250204131222/https://devpost.com/software/ballotproof-vision https://web.archive.org/web/20250204131222/https://devpost.c... Info from: https://bsky.app/profile/cartwright776.bsky.social/post/3lhr4zni7ts2z https://bsky.app/profile/cartwright776.bsky.social/post/3lhr... Could this be used to spoof the results, and are there artifacts that could be discovered to directly link it or rule it out? Here is an image from the Election Truth Alliance analysis that shows a possible artifact: https://img1.wsimg.com/isteam/ip/9087f51c-d3bd-4002-9943-79706c6e82a3/somethingiswrong2024-04%20(3)-16ff714.png/:/cr=t:0%25,l:0%25,w:100%25,h:100%25/rs=w:1209,cg:true https://img1.wsimg.com/isteam/ip/9087f51c-d3bd-4002-9943-797... PDF of their analysis: https://electiontruthalliance.org/clark-county%2C-nv https://electiontruthalliance.org/clark-county%2C-nv

Ancalagon 2y ago
Who are these sociopaths man like why would you create that
- caspper69 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - rcpt 2y ago
    Don't forget that DT's "mishandled documents" were actually top secret information about election security wrt Russia. Really would like to know what all those meetings between Vlad and Elon in 2024 were about. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-russia-intelligence-trump-dg/ https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-rus...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
patcon 2y ago
The repo seems to describe something doing the opposite, no? This is someone who wanted to ensure ballots were counted, not someone motivated to spoof them, right? EDIT: posted my concern on bsky https://bsky.app/profile/patcon.bsky.social/post/3lhrwuw6dy22j https://bsky.app/profile/patcon.bsky.social/post/3lhrwuw6dy2...
- rcpt 2y ago
  There is nothing spooky or nefarious about the existence of that test suite. But that this skill set gets you into E's inner circle definitely goes onto the ever-growing pile of circumstantial evidence that something is not right.
  - smsm42 2y ago
    Your point is if you're interested in writing code to verify the validity of elections, that is evidence to the suspicion your employer sonehow corrupted the election? That does not sound like a sane line of reasoning.
    - rcpt 2y ago
      My point is that in the context of Elon and the 2024 election, where there is objectively a lot of suspicious activity, the fact that his inner circle contains people with expertise in generating ballots is also suspicious. Yes I will conceed that all this talk is circumstantial. It's like Lab Leak (even the desire to gaslight anyone who talks about it)
      - smsm42 2y ago
        > where there is objectively a lot of suspicious activity, The word "objectively" does a lot of work here, and most of it is unpaid. Every election has irregularities, and every election has the losing side casting suspicions around. No, I literally mean every single one. We have search engines now. Just go and look up. It's literally every time. Sometimes, those suspicions turn true - there are really people who conduct fraud in elections, in various ways. Most often, though, those suspicions are thrown around by partisans unable to comprehend how their side, being obviously morally superior, the only sane side and widely popular, still lost the election. In other words, they are just junk. Without a substantial evidence base, any amount of them do not constitute any evidentiary base. Zero times millions is still the same zero. > people with expertise in generating ballots Did you ever actually see a real US election ballot? Generating something like that is beyond trivial. There are many official sites that just let you download a sample ballot. Even if that ballot is somehow modified from the actual one in subtle ways, the actual one is quite simple too. It may be a problem to get the paper exactly right if they check that, but having the code to generate a ballot does not help you there in any way. And also generating something like that would be pretty useless by itself, if you have electoral fraud in mind, because the problem is not producing the paper, it's getting it into the system and getting it counted and not getting caught while doing that. Summarily, this "expertise" does not enable you in any non-trivial way to perpetrate election fraud, and does not make any hard part of that any easier. Also, you can find people with such expertise - and better - at any design and print shop. They can reproduce any of it - and much more complex designs - without any problem, that's literally what they do all day. > Yes I will conceed that all this talk is circumstantial. No, "circumstantial" is way too generous a word for this. "Empty fantasies" is more fitting.
jquery 2y ago
I’ve been skeptical of claims that Musk rigged the election, despite Trump basically bragging that he did. I figured he was just trying to “own the libs” and make us get mad over nothing. Since Trump is extremely concerned about election security I’m sure he will send teams of people to investigate these anomalies.
GuB-42 2y ago
> Could this be used to spoof the results I don't really understand how would opens source software that checks the validity of ballots, or even generate fake ballots help in committing election fraud? The hard part is getting the fake ballot to the counting location, how the fake ballots is made, be it by machine or by hand is not particularly relevant, anyone can do that.

Ancalagon 2y ago

Who are these sociopaths man like why would you create that

caspper69 2y ago
[flagged]
- rcpt 2y ago
  Don't forget that DT's "mishandled documents" were actually top secret information about election security wrt Russia. Really would like to know what all those meetings between Vlad and Elon in 2024 were about. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-russia-intelligence-trump-dg/ https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-rus...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

patcon 2y ago

The repo seems to describe something doing the opposite, no? This is someone who wanted to ensure ballots were counted, not someone motivated to spoof them, right? EDIT: posted my concern on bsky https://bsky.app/profile/patcon.bsky.social/post/3lhrwuw6dy22j https://bsky.app/profile/patcon.bsky.social/post/3lhrwuw6dy2...

rcpt 2y ago
There is nothing spooky or nefarious about the existence of that test suite. But that this skill set gets you into E's inner circle definitely goes onto the ever-growing pile of circumstantial evidence that something is not right.
- smsm42 2y ago
  Your point is if you're interested in writing code to verify the validity of elections, that is evidence to the suspicion your employer sonehow corrupted the election? That does not sound like a sane line of reasoning.
  - rcpt 2y ago
    My point is that in the context of Elon and the 2024 election, where there is objectively a lot of suspicious activity, the fact that his inner circle contains people with expertise in generating ballots is also suspicious. Yes I will conceed that all this talk is circumstantial. It's like Lab Leak (even the desire to gaslight anyone who talks about it)
    - smsm42 2y ago
      > where there is objectively a lot of suspicious activity, The word "objectively" does a lot of work here, and most of it is unpaid. Every election has irregularities, and every election has the losing side casting suspicions around. No, I literally mean every single one. We have search engines now. Just go and look up. It's literally every time. Sometimes, those suspicions turn true - there are really people who conduct fraud in elections, in various ways. Most often, though, those suspicions are thrown around by partisans unable to comprehend how their side, being obviously morally superior, the only sane side and widely popular, still lost the election. In other words, they are just junk. Without a substantial evidence base, any amount of them do not constitute any evidentiary base. Zero times millions is still the same zero. > people with expertise in generating ballots Did you ever actually see a real US election ballot? Generating something like that is beyond trivial. There are many official sites that just let you download a sample ballot. Even if that ballot is somehow modified from the actual one in subtle ways, the actual one is quite simple too. It may be a problem to get the paper exactly right if they check that, but having the code to generate a ballot does not help you there in any way. And also generating something like that would be pretty useless by itself, if you have electoral fraud in mind, because the problem is not producing the paper, it's getting it into the system and getting it counted and not getting caught while doing that. Summarily, this "expertise" does not enable you in any non-trivial way to perpetrate election fraud, and does not make any hard part of that any easier. Also, you can find people with such expertise - and better - at any design and print shop. They can reproduce any of it - and much more complex designs - without any problem, that's literally what they do all day. > Yes I will conceed that all this talk is circumstantial. No, "circumstantial" is way too generous a word for this. "Empty fantasies" is more fitting.

jquery 2y ago

I’ve been skeptical of claims that Musk rigged the election, despite Trump basically bragging that he did. I figured he was just trying to “own the libs” and make us get mad over nothing. Since Trump is extremely concerned about election security I’m sure he will send teams of people to investigate these anomalies.

GuB-42 2y ago

> Could this be used to spoof the results I don't really understand how would opens source software that checks the validity of ballots, or even generate fake ballots help in committing election fraud? The hard part is getting the fake ballot to the counting location, how the fake ballots is made, be it by machine or by hand is not particularly relevant, anyone can do that.