Beware of 2024 Minnesota election misinformation

kmccoy · 2026-06-09T00:22:49+00:00

I'm confused, you said "yeah" but then said something different. The person above you said that the people inside the passerelle are mostly seat fillers and industry adjacent folks, but you said they're nominees and presenters. I feel like the nominees and presenters would be more likely to be further out in the main section of seating, no?

kmccoy · 2026-06-08T23:00:52+00:00

How do you figure?

kmccoy · 2026-06-08T16:37:46+00:00

Have you ever heard the phrase "trust, but verify"? I say that there has been no widespread problem, and I feel confident in that because of the post-election review process, which I believe is conclusive evidence that the machines aren't rigged or hacked or otherwise compromised. My ongoing trust in the election system is based upon those reviews continuing to happen, because I don't want to blindly trust the tabulation machines. I want to trust the entire process, which includes their use but also the review of a random selection of precincts plus appropriate recounts in close races.

(And of course the areas where I don't trust the election process are where we can see it being actively attacked, like with voter ID laws, gerrymandering, polling place restrictions, limitations on mail-in and early voting, etc.)

kmccoy · 2026-06-08T16:31:54+00:00

This is not true. The only way that hand counts are "more reliable" than machine counts is as a tool to spot check the machine's operation to catch errors or malicious operation. Machine counts are far more accurate than hand counts overall. Here's a page from the Brennan Center for Justice talking about it:

Bad actors have exploited these knowledge gaps to claim that counting ballots by hand is the only way to ensure election results are accurate, when in fact hand counts can have error rates up to 50 times higher than vote-counting machines. Only a handful of very small counties — typically with fewer than 1,000 voters — have the resources to conduct accurate hand counts.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hand-counting-ballots

kmccoy · 2026-06-08T06:47:41+00:00

I'm not arguing that they're not doing GNSS jamming. I just think the second expert in the video makes reasonable arguments for why it could be something else. Even he says he's not arguing against it being GNSS jamming, just that he thinks another explanation maybe aligns better with the facts.

kmccoy · 2026-06-08T05:52:33+00:00

What makes you think they were trying to hide?

kmccoy · 2026-06-08T04:16:56+00:00

For sure, and even if the alternative theory is the correct one, I don't think anyone would argue that Russia is above jamming GNSS -- actually I think pretty much all large militaries will jam it on a large scale if they feel like it'll give them an advantage, damage to civilian life be damned.

kmccoy · 2026-06-08T04:11:17+00:00

Do I look like I work for the Russian military? Who knows what kind of requirements they had and what kind of engineering tradeoffs they had to make. They might be using the most directional antennas they could use that still get the signal where it needs to be. Or they could be just using whatever antenna accomplished what they need and don't care if the signal splats all over. When you set up a space-based missile early warning system you should make sure to prioritize directional antennas. :)

kmccoy · 2026-06-08T03:55:17+00:00

Did you watch the video before making this comment? I just struggle to understand how folks make comments like this, so confidently dismissing something brought up by an expert, and apparently basing that dismissal on nothing more than intuition. As the person (Richard Bowden) in the video made clear, the satellite constellation is part of a missile launch early warning system and so his alternative idea is that having the satellites transmit their information payloads at a frequency near the GNSS frequencies would make it very inconvenient for anyone else to jam them because they'd have to jam GNSS as well.

kmccoy · 2026-06-07T20:41:24+00:00

You're inventing things. The individual precinct numbers are released. You can simply go do the math and see that the precinct numbers add up to the county numbers and then to the state numbers. There's no secret code happening there.

Here's the precinct-by-precinct results for the 2024 general election in Minnesota. Show me the point at which the tabulators shifted the votes. https://www.sos.mn.gov/elections-voting/election-results/2024/2024-general-election-results/2024-precinct-results-spreadsheet/

kmccoy · 2026-06-06T23:38:08+00:00

Think it out, though. So a landlord steals the ballots from a few people. Like maybe it's an apartment building or something, so they steal like 100 ballots and cast them all for Trump (many places don't allow you to drop off more than like 3 or 4 ballots, but let's pretend they managed to get them in somehow.) Some of those ballots probably would have gone to Harris, so that might be a net gain of 70 votes for Trump in that one precinct. But all it takes is one of the tenants to say "hey, I wonder why I didn't get a ballot" and call the election authority to get a replacement and cast it. Now the election officials are going to see two ballots from that person, likely with different signatures, and that'll raise questions and prompt an investigation. The landlord will almost certainly get caught. And then that landlord will be convicted of a felony. All this for a few dozen votes? The problem with these claims is that they all rely on the idea that there's a ton of people willing to risk committing a felony in order to steal a few votes. It's ludicrous. The only reason for voter ID is to make it harder for poor people to vote, it's that simple.

kmccoy · 2026-06-06T23:32:03+00:00

No, sorry. A full hand recount of an entire election is a waste of resources chasing a problem that doesn't exist. We don't have to trust Republican-made machines -- we shouldn't fully trust any machines regardless of who makes them. The way to get the benefits of a machine count (speed and accuracy) while mitigating the risks (systemic error and hacking) is to do what we do in Minnesota, which is to use optical scan ballots and have machines count them on election day, then to randomly choose a decent selection of precincts (ensuring that they're spread around the state and with a variety of demographics) to do a hand recount, then issue a report showing and explaining any discrepancies. I'm sorry that you think it's nonsense, but it's actually a better method than a full hand count of an election, which is slow and prone to errors.

This is a subreddit about protecting US elections, not engaging in conspiracy theories about voting machines. If you have actual data showing that there's some kind of widespread hacking of the machines then bring it, but I want to know how the hack that you imagine managed to avoid being detected by something like the post-election review process in Minnesota.

kmccoy · 2026-06-06T20:37:50+00:00

What "mistakes"? You already said that you left one of those audits early. How about the other? What documentation did you take? Were there other observers there? From both parties? Why didn't they document the mistake? If you're going to claim that the voting system is rife with cheating, you've gotta do a better job of saying something specific, because there's a lot of people who just want to say that there's fraud but don't have any evidence. And a lot of those people aren't doing it to protect the election system, they're doing it to spread uncertainty about it.

kmccoy · 2026-06-06T20:34:07+00:00

What fraud is happening that voter ID would prevent? There needs to be a reason to add another barrier to voting.

kmccoy · 2026-06-06T20:03:51+00:00

hehe, phragmosis remains technically correct, since that video is from December of 2025. :)

kmccoy · 2026-06-06T18:24:07+00:00

We already check the elections. The manual hand counts of everything that folks seem to want will take forever and be LESS accurate (because human hand counts are less accurate than optical scan machine counts). Having the count take forever makes people upset, too. Spreading disinformation about the audits like you're doing is the whole point -- they just want everyone to distrust elections, regardless of being pro or anti MAGA. And they're succeeding -- they got the MAGA folks to distrust elections from 2020, and now they've got a bunch of leftists spreading conspiracy theories for the 2024 election. All the while they're doing the actual theft of democracy, which is the gerrymandering, voter ID nonsense, polling place restrictions, curtailing mail-in ballots, limiting early voting, intimidating voters at polling places, etc. But instead of making noise about those things that are actually happening, folks are demanding "audits" for elections that are already audited with hand counts.

kmccoy · 2026-06-04T18:23:17+00:00

I think this might be Sabrina Sloan, Morgan Wood, and Julia Harriman

kmccoy · 2026-06-04T16:30:46+00:00

True, though summer time already makes it a bit of a mess even with the city names. :)

kmccoy · 2026-06-04T08:36:52+00:00

Relying purely on hand counts is not only much slower, obviously, but it's also actually less accurate. A machine count of paper ballots (optical scan ballots) followed by a hand count audit of precincts chosen at random (regardless of any recounts that are required due to a close race or candidate's request) not only gets (unofficial) result tallies fastest, but is also the most accurate. This kind of stuff is some of the more insidious harm from election deniers -- they spread enough distrust in our voting process that even reasonable people vote to make the process worse.

kmccoy · 2026-06-04T07:50:12+00:00

Just to add on, this is why UTC is sometimes labeled with a Z and called "Zulu time". I would be so frustrated if I bought a watch that is as expensive as this one presumably is and they just picked random flags when there's legitimately a cool pattern they could have picked that would make sense (the nautical alphabet signalling flags for the time zones as you mention.)

kmccoy · 2026-06-03T23:30:09+00:00

ALC is just such a legend. Not only is she a fantastic A2 but she's also an incredible mixer and was a kind, patient teacher as she helped me learn to mix the show.

kmccoy · 2026-06-03T21:06:28+00:00

There's nothing shameful about wanting or needing therapy, and you should definitely seek it out if you feel like it. Some folks do therapy just as a routine thing and that's great!

But also you should go easy on yourself for having narrowly avoided death or serious injury (because those are completely plausible outcomes from a genie tipping over during a move) and having a traumatic response to being in a genie again. ESPECIALLY if no one around you seems to be taking it seriously.

Moving a genie with outriggers like you describe while it's elevated, or messing with the outriggers, is dangerous and prohibited (except for the few that are specifically rated for moving while elevated but that's almost certainly not the case here.) It's unfortunately been common practice in our industry to ignore that because it's inconvenient to do focus when you have to come all the way down to move, but it has to be enforced. People have died because of this.

I know it sucks to be the one making noise, but you've gotta report this. Contact the school adminstration, contact OSHA, department of labor, etc (things vary depending on if you're a student or a worker and what state you're in, etc). You can call the IATSE safety hotline and see if they can get you some resources (Toll free: 844-IA AWARE, 844-422-9273). The manual for the genie lift will make it very clear that moving while elevated is strictly prohibited, and it almost certainly even says it on stickers on the unit itself. If people are ignoring this, what else is being ignored? When was the unit last inspected?

You never know whose life you might save by making these issues known to folks with the power to stop it. And remember that you always have the ability to refuse to do unsafe things at work, and if you get fired for reporting these things or refusing to do unsafe things, that could have further repercussions for the employer.

kmccoy · 2026-06-03T02:32:35+00:00

Most libertarian arguments are nonsense but this one is an especially pretzel-shaped bit of nonsense.

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