[Cryptography] Have you seen...

[Bill Frantz]

On 4/4/16 at 12:53 AM, gnu at toad.com (John Gilmore) wrote:

>We do see this sort of thing in California elections.  A favorite
>trick for defeating close initiatives is to buy a bunch of media time
>in the last week before the election, and put out endless repetitions
>of high impact ads full of lies told by credible people.  The ads are
>tested on focus groups for the biggest short-term impact, regardless
>of their long term truth or convincingness.  By the time the other
>side can respond, bam, it's election day and their voter support has
>dropped below 49.99%, and the initiative loses.  And who cares if
>the voters find that they have been lied to -- two days AFTER
>the election?  Elections don't get rerun just because politicians
>tell lies, that's expected.  Sorry, you lost, bye.

I am hoping that the move toward voting by mail will spread the 
voting over a long enough period that this strategy won't work 
as well. Voting by mail brings up its own vulnerabilities, but 
security is tradeoffs.

Cheers - Bill

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