Texas paper is done

The Texas paper has been sent in for peer-review. If all goes well, a few months from now, it will appear and I’ll have 3 peer-reviewed scientific journals articles on the subject of voter roll algorithms. Because it is in review, I can’t say too much here, but will say a few things as a proof of life.

I have tried to let my papers speak for themselves instead of going into the details here. This may have created the impression that I’m not doing much voter roll research these days. Far from it. I have been very busy on this for almost all of the last year.

Some reportage and comments about my papers contain errors. The easiest way to determine whether a report about my research is consistent with my findings, go to either Jerome Corsi’s site, to see my papers along with some commentary from Dr. Corsi, or my ResearchGate page, where you’ll find all of my papers on election research and other subjects, but no commentary.

One comment annoyed me because it was so silly, yet it adopted a patronizing tone of superior wisdom. In it, the poster pointed out something called “apophenia.” It refers to the tendency to see meaningful connections where none exist. In this case, the suggestion was that the algorithmic side effects (patterns) that I have uncovered in multiple states are due to random correspondences, rather than design. Whether or not they are meaningful in the contect of election fraud is a separate subject. The point wasn’t that the algorithms weren’t meaningful, but they were random.

The poster gave some reasons for this belief that are about as convincing as a shut-in saying that mail boxes don’t exist because he’s never seen one inside his house. This is what happens when you rely on secondhand reports instead of going to the source.

I have seen some reports on my own work that would make me dubious if I wasn’t familiar with the underlying material. Unfortunately, the nature of the algorithms is so complicated that most people have a hard time understanding them. And of course, that is their purpose: to confuse.

When the Texas report comes out, you will see that they definitely used an unusually complicated algorithm to assign ID numbers in Harris County (Houston). This algorithm creates a minimum of 8 well-hidden binary data channels that can be used to covertly store information. Whether they were used that way remains to be seen, but the fact it is there (and not in other counties I checked) raises serious questions related to security and maladministration.

The image at the top of this article is for people who think they know about these things without looking at the data and can explain it as simple and legitimate. To that, this warning: I was given the logical and legitimate reason for the puzzle contained in that image by someone from the county who should know the answer. He was wrong. I checked it multiple times, and 8 other related possibilities. All false. They were ridiculous on their face, but I checked anyway because that’s how I like to do things.

Too often we accept something at face value without investigation. To a large extent, we have to. Our world is so complex that no one could ever hope to personally investigate every little thing. However, this creates a responsibility to be as careful as possible about what we say. What we communicate should represent our current understanding based on available evidence and a reasonable methodology.

A reasonable methodology includes checking counter arguments, rather than looking exclusively at those things that can support our preferred position. I have found out more than once how useful this is. It can prevent an embarrassing mistake, or increase confidence in the preferred explanation.

Unfortunately, this is not how we have been taught to interact with the world around us. One of the simplest tests is something we can usually accomplish in many situations. Ask yourself, “is the claim consistent with the data?”

For instance, the claim “Trump is a racist” is inconsistent with available evidence. The same goes for “Islam is a religion of peace,” “President Zelenskyy is a hero,” “Joe Biden didn’t extort Ukraine to fire a prosecutor,” and other statements like them.

To say that the multiple algorithms I’ve found in almost a dozen states now is the result of apophenia is an admission of ignorance. This is because, while the statement is credible absent any data, it is not credible in the face of the data.

PS: I’m purposely not explaining the image, in the hope that someone will come up with the same wrong explanation I was given. If that happens, I’ll explain.