Regarding using Benford's law to determine election fraud, here's a link to a 2012 master thesis that basically says it is not that good of a test to determine fraud https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/557850/Brown_georgetown_0076M_11716.pdf

regarding the Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai video, I'm not so sure of his analysis: 1) I don't necessarily believe the curve isn't linear through out, he says it's flat then slopes down after the 20 percent mark but I think it could just as easily be linearly sloping down through out 2) I think there is way that seems reasonable the line slopes down linearly, mainly that there are some percentage of Democrats that want to vote for

Trump and some percentage of Republicans that do NOT want to vote for Trump and as the precinct leans more Republican then the vote from straight line Republican skews more downward

3) when it compares to a mostly Democratic county the high end on the horizontal axis is 20 percent and to properly compare them you need to put them on the same scale as the Republican counties and when you do I don't think you'll see any difference

I do think all states should get rid of straight line party voting option. If for no other reason than folks can't do this analysis.

Also I think his recommendations about more transparency and greater access to data and the ability to audit are all good things

@daddy Kevin yeah precisely why I wouldn't pay much attention to the Benford's law thing in regards this subject

@DrSammyD huh? I just looked at your data and it doesn't look Shiva's data

yeah but you did it for MI as a whole and it looks okay

actually I think what Romney said has some truth to it ... I know of several folks that voted the way Romney describes

I'm not sure on that one ... never lived in any of those states, but I get the impression that MI is different because of Detroit

@realz I think you've put this Benford's law issue to rest ... I work with numbers every day and have for many decades, generally those statistical methods are good for evaluating measurements of physical processes (temperature, wind velocity, etc.) but when you look at numbers associated with human behavior then you'll find many time statistical methods don't readily apply, just take the polling predictions versus the election results both in 2016 and 2020

I think Benford's law may be invalidated based on what is being measured ... consider for example a particular voting precinct, the voters in that precinct are relatively fixed, most of them consistently vote one way or another and very few change from election to election

so the variation in the number of possible combination of vote outcomes is limited

also different regions or precincts will be strongly influenced towards one party or another

what do outer space aliens have to do with election2020? did they rig the election?

lol

the word mostly was not needed in that last statement

what about leap years?

is this what you're referring to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_election#:~:text=4%20Proposed%20alterations-,Electoral%20College%20overview,and%20the%20District%20of%20Columbia.

thanks, watching on Twitter now

watching it now or listening to it while I generate a simulation of Dr. Shiva's data

it's a spreadsheet and here's a screenshot

essentially I assumed something like 5 percent of Dems vote for Trump and 30 percent of Reps don't vote for Trump, all Reps vote for Reps downline and no Dems vote for Reps downline

zoom on chart

I'm trying to mimic his graph ... my number is a ratio of total trump votes/rep votes downline

the above/below is percent above or below 1.0 ratio

that's the y-axis

x-axis is percent Republican

my point is that with just some simple assumptions about human voting patterns I can get a graph to mimic what he plotted

I could dynamically change the percent of Reps that defect from Trump based on how Republican the precinct is, etc. ... maybe adjust the Dems voting for Trump etc. ... probably get any kind of curve you with just a few tweaks here and there

Again just some simple assumptions about folks voting in that particular county could explain Dr. Shiva's data

@DrSammyD did a big data grab and looked for Dr. Shiva's pattern on a county-by-county basis for every state and didn't see that pattern BUT my point is that a local level, within a county say if you just make some simple assumptions about they way folks vote in that county then you can get some peculiarities that over a larger dataset you would not expect

well MI allows for voting straight party by filling in just one box, what about the other states?

Dr. Shiva talked about it in his video on just MI precincts so now I'm wondering how he broke the data out

no, I mean what exactly was he plotting

yeah that's what I thought and tried to model ... point is if just a small percentage of Dems broke with straight party vote and voted for Trump you can get something like what he plotted

yeah I'm not buying his analysis and with a simple model and spreadsheet I can get a curve that does something like what the data shows

x-axis is percentage Republican so to the left is heavy Democrat, if just a small percentage of Democrats break with party and vote Trump then on the left of the graph you get more Trump votes than downline Republican ... then if a fraction of Republican vote party downline but NOT Trump as you move right towards heavier Republican precincts you less Trump votes than downline Republican ... adjust the relative percentages and you can put the break over point anywhere you want

I'm looking at a similar pattern for the right side of his graph in GA

Right, that's what I did

not sure what you're asking but the point is that the horizontal axis is percent Republican, so as you move left there are more Democrats voting and less Democrats voting as you move right ... what he observed was a downward trend of Trump votes divided by Republican downline votes AND what he said was if say Romney's analysis is correct that some Republicans voted party downline but NOT for Trump that you would have a flat curve under the 1.0 ratio line but what Dr. Shiva failed to account for is that even if a small percentage of Democrats break from straight party and vote Trump then you can get a curve or trend line similar to what he observed

Finally, I'm not buying he claim that the shape of the trend line is evidence of election fraud ... he claims it's evidence of a computer algorithm but I claim it could be just evidence of voter preferences within a particular county

regarding % republican I assume "voted" because I believe that's all the data he had (I assume the ballot data is secret and thus you won't know if the vote cast was registered Republican or not)

okay then back to the court cases, I found this video useful to summarize the court cases currently in play https://youtu.be/h6pI3-nWmSQ

to what end? to detect possible voter fraud? I don't think so

> If 100% of Michigan counties matched this trend, you might be onto something--that the more Republican a county was, the more the voters disfavored Trump. However, if this pattern exists in only a few counties, then we are looking at a serious problem.

why? there are any number things which might explain this other than voter fraud'

for example, suppose there is a Republican candidate that was liked by voters in the county but didn't get along with Trump and/or some of Trump positions ... if John McCain was still alive you could see folks in AZ voting for him but not for Trump

another example might be that some business in that county had to lay workers off due to say the tariffs that Trump placed on China, again the Republicans might like their local candidates and not like Trump

Now I don't know anything about these counties because I don't live anywhere near MI and never have ... BUT I don't consider this particular voting pattern evidence of fraud and I don't think a court would either ... Dr. Shiva seemed to suggest you could never get this pattern and was able to simulate this by making a couple simple assumptions about human behavior in the county, so mathematically it is certainly possible

yes and a county-to-county comparison showed NO such pattern

I think you've re-made my point for me

@DrSammyD did the analysis and has posted it twice

> @meglide https://bitcadia.github.io/DownBallot/index.html

works for me

I think what may be somewhat unique to MI is that they allow you to vote straight party by checking just one box (or filling in just one oval) whereas this is option is not available in most other states

yes precisely ... and I took issue with Dr. Shiva's assertion that the particular pattern he was seeing had to be the result of fraud speculating that it was a computer algorithm, whereas I claim just some simple assumptions about voter patterns in that county could produce that same pattern ... as why that voter pattern should exist and what motivates humans to vote that way I don't know, my interest was that the mathematics allow for it and so you're now in the realm of trying to explain human behavior

yeah well not probable is NOT the same as not possible, just because something is unlikely doesn't mean it didn't happen and to go to court and prove something you're going to need something more tangible

dead people voting is not possible, live people voting peculiarly ... well maybe in this day and age it is to be expected

yes audit territory is a key ... GA is going to recount all the ballots by hand, if the results are significantly different than the computer counted results then that might point to some monkey business with the computer ... note I'm assuming you have both parties involved in the counting so as to counter-balance people's biases

lol

yeah somewhere along the way investigative journalism died out

I guess it didn't sell well ... probably easier to produce partisan opinion pieces that it is to really dig for the truth

yeah I said it for a reason

> I also would say there's 2 different types of things that need to be proven in this election:
>
> * Fraud: any specific cases of fraud must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt with criminal charges against individuals
> ...
@stevesirag I would point out that you don't have to prove criminal charges to get ballots throw-out or recounted or etc. Regardless of intent of those involved if certain rules weren't followed or certain standards weren't adhered to then there is the potential for a court to address it ... that being said a court is going to be very reluctant to address it if there is no potential for a change in the overall result. For example if you lost by 10k votes and you're only disputing 1k votes then the court may acknowledge a problem but not address the problem because those 1k votes can't change the outcome ... if however you lost by only 100 votes then those 1k disputed votes can change the outcome and the court would most likely address the issue

yes, we assume the election is fair unless proven otherwise ... and maybe the good that can come from this election is a reevaluation of that assumption ... we've known forever that every election contains some small instances of fraud or irregularities (intention or not) but we rarely institute election reform to correct for these

my understanding is that state courts would handle the later, I'm assuming most all states have laws/rules that say dead folks can't vote ... how the courts would handle the redress would be dependent on the circumstances

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pennsylvania-court-secretary-of-state-changed-deadline

> @meglide I think the courts should address all of it whether it changes the outcome or not...it is possible that the 3rd party candidates had votes taken from them as well due to these glitches and if everyone just focuses on the 2 parties, they will miss those votes, which could potentially still swing the election in favor of one of the 2 party candidates. For instance in PA, about 50-60k jorgensen votes were given to Biden due to an error from their names being mistaken for the other...if this was fraudulent, and they should go back to Jorgensen, then this is enough to put Trump ahead even if his votes weren't part of the transaction.
@Winter personally I think they should also but that's not what I've been told the courts do ... if there is evidence of a crime they may certainly prosecute that person but remedies for procedural mistakes may not happen ... that said, see my post, PA court ruled deadline extension lacked authority and those ballots may not be counted.

> No, the more heavily partisan a county is, the more likely the split voter is to vote for the opposite President
@DrSammyD agreed ... just like everyone hates Congress but likes their members of Congress 🙄

> The problem as I see it is that the split voter in Michigan is implausibly more likely to vote Biden than in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and even Illinois
@DrSammyD not so sure of that, doesn't MI have a Republican dominated state legislature and a Democratic governor? seems like the perfect place to get that kind of split?

@DrSammyD didn't know that ... interesting

> The closest I can find are Fulton and Dekalb in GA
@DrSammyD that hand count in GA should tell us something

aliens ... he said "aliens"

> Hi Robert, I asked during the Youtube cast: Why are the VP voting results not published? (my friend in WA said he voted Trump + Harris, is he BSing me?)
@TaxpayerDave that's correct you vote for the package Pres and VP together

> @meglide so he is BS-ing me. He could not vote Trump and Kamala
@TaxpayerDave https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_election_in_Washington,_2020

oh no 🙄

Nov 5th was last time he spoke in public ... he appeared in public Wed for Veterans Day ceremony

He tweeted this out 11 hours ago (looks like something he would tweet) https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1326926226888544256

oh and I guess this is why I can't find the source for his tweet: https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/oan-forced-to-delete-fake-story-about-voter-fraud-after-trump-promotes-the-conspiracy-theory/

lol

> @DrSammyD Does 'split ticket' include the ballots that were blank downballot?
@stevesirag that's a good question that I've been wondering myself and whether there's a legitimate reason for it, seems possible that either party could have recruited folks to just to vote top of the ticket, voting down ballot can be more of a hassle, in addition to the candidates and there are also many bond issues, and etc. So there could have been a push to just go in and vote top of the ticket because we gotta support or oppose one candidate or another

> @meglide
>
> ... Not that we have the hard proof of this...
@stevesirag yeah that's the deal isn't it

> We do have evidence
@stevesirag then bring it before and see if it is sufficient to get a favorable court ruling on it ... my guess is that it is not

before a court that is

> You can count on them to do what's popular in their state
@DrSammyD which will translate into letting the popular vote of their state stand absent of substantial election fraud

interesting ... in GA about 46k voted for Pres that did NOT vote in the Senate race and Biden got about 100k more votes than the Dem candidate for Senate .... margin of "victory" for Biden over Trump about 14k

> That could just be dems voting straight ticket and GOP not
@Elzam nope that total count includes 3rd party candidates on the ballot

total votes for Pres (all candidates) minus total votes for Sen (all candidates) = 46k

keep looking at the numbers ... not exactly what you just said

almost every vote for Rep Sen was also vote for Trump

you're catching on

difference between Trump and Biden is only 14k

> It's not suspicious
@Elzam not saying it is just saying it is interesting

I'm trying to discern what the Sen runoff will be like

also if the Rep gets just 50 percent or over then no runoff

this Rep stands at 49.71 percent

because Pres is determined by federal election law and Sen is state election law

well actually it's more complicated ...