In the conservative world of science, passionate debates occur far more often than most people would imagine. But it’s rare that scientists vent their frustration in the staid seminars of professional conventions. So when a lone skeptic stood up in San Francisco this week to ridicule a panel discussing the science of stealing elections (Yes there is one!) and the moderator asked him to be quiet, it was surprising to hear an entire audience of Ph.D.s give the moderator a round of applause.
What was even more surprising was that the massive weight of evidence that our elections are being stolen—convincing even to particle physicists—has been simply stonewalled by the mainstream media. In the world of science (especially at a convention as "conventional" as the American Association for the Advancement of Science) it takes a lot of credibility to even get on the program. While Ph.Ds tend to vote democratic, they don’t tend to "make waves" (except in the endless presentations on oceanography.) So a symposium entitled "Are we a democracy?" at such a meeting is doubly significant.
The symposium was organized by Stephanie Frank Singer, from Campaign Scientific LLC, in Philadelphia, PA. While its stated goal was "to present progress and describe open problems in this scientific field, the content and context of what the scientists said were a lot different.
Barbara Simons, a retired IBM computer scientist, was the most neutral. Any computerized voting system must present a ballot, record a ballot, and count a ballot—ideally in separate systems. But the current machines do all those functions together, making accountability impossible. Her solution: paper ballots! (Remember, this is coming from a Ph.D. computer scientist!) But her second choice is the old, "tried and true," op scan, which is marked by hand and then recorded separately. It remains as a paper record for recount.
David Griscom, a retired physicist from the Naval Research Lab, described an incredible story of fraud in a precinct in Arizona. Steven Freeman, from University of Pennsylvania, examined 8 separate measures of voting accuracy and found evidence of tampering in all of them.
And Josh Mitteldorf, of Temple University, concluded:
The machinery of our elections is not only corruptible but has been corrupted...enough to entrench in power the [people or organizations] who were responsible.
But where’s the news? Yes, Rolling Stone actually published the Robert Kennedy article about voter fraud in Ohio. But virtually none of the mainstream media followed up on the story. Freeman described how his repeated efforts to get some press for his research died.
In the words of one of the presenters, the discussion has been banished to the "unreliable world of the Internet, where contributors don’t need credibility!" (Well, so much for my faith in science! Sidenote: I sat at breakfast with a Ph.D. Psychologist from a major university who had never heard of You Tube. So take it for what it's worth.)
But if this is "as good as it gets," then it’s the responsibility of this medium to make change happens.