Allegations of Fraud in 2020 US Election

[wareyin]

I was refuting Sceptic Ginger's false assertion that the claims were piddly and didn't amount to thousands of votes.

Do you assume that because a claim is grander that it therefore is more likely to be true?

Biden won Michigan by some 145,000 votes. How many votes does your civil case claim are fraudulent? I do note that they are claiming heavily Democratic Detroit fabricated votes to appear heavily Democratic. Why do you keep basing your hopes on such transparent nonsense?

 

[shuttlt]

As they are just unsubstantiated claims, they amount to zero votes right now.

Indeed, but that isn't what we were talking about. Sceptic Ginger wrongly stated that the claims were "piddly" and didn't amount to thousands of votes. That was incorrect. You guys have horse blinders on if you think that the claims themselves that Trump is going to court over aren't of a scale to swing the election. Whether he will succeed is another question, but one we will have to wait for. You should direct your objections to Sceptic Ginger if you want to object to talking about claims.

 

[No Other]

Go back to the hypothetical example I gave: districts of 1000 +/- 10%, a close race in which all districts report between 30% and 70% for each candidate. Let's do the arithmetic. The smallest number of votes cast in any district for either candidate is 270, and the largest is 770. Benford's Law predicts that the most common leading digit must be 1, yet in this instance the leading digit 1 cannot occur at all. Benford's Law will therefore flag this as a suspect election no matter what the actual distribution of leading digits.

Since this was a close election in which the counting was split into more or less similar sized districts, we have to take any analysis on the basis of Benford's Law with a pinch of salt.

Using Benford's Law on the second digit is probably more valid. Since the original claim quite blatantly misrepresented a single cherry-picked example of a second digit analysis, this suggests to me that (a) this was the worst example they could find to further their agenda, and (b) overall a second-digit Benford's Law analysis doesn't suggest any major red flags. But that's just my opinion, and therefore worth very little.

Dave

First, I do not have a dog in the race.
Second, Benford's Law is strictly a process and the results need to be interpreted (which you did).
Third, "thank you" for going through with my request.
Fourth, your Universe never had a magnitude of numbers if a "1" was never present... which means that Benford's Law cannot be applied to the scenario provided.
Fifth, I know a tad about Benford's Law (no expert, never a need to apply it, used it only in class because it was an assignment) but I am clueless about the "second-digit".

If you feel the second-digit process is more suited to evaluate voter fraud; I yield to your better judgement.

I don't work with Math any more than my neighbor, nowadays. What you conducted is why I still enjoy results. Answers should not be predetermined, by conducting this exercise and performing an operation (I take for granted it was properly carried through) the result becomes the focus of whether the election merits a secondary look-see... in the case you ran, the evaluation of your results speaks for itself.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Indeed, but that isn't what we were talking about. Sceptic Ginger wrongly stated that the claims were "piddly" and didn't amount to thousands of votes. That was incorrect. You guys have horse blinders on if you think that the claims themselves that Trump is going to court over aren't of a scale to swing the election. Whether he will succeed is another question, but one we will have to wait for. You should direct your objections to Sceptic Ginger if you want to object to talking about claims.

Would your position be correct if there was one claim that aliens came down and altered 10 million ballots?

 

[Dave Rogers]

Indeed, but that isn't what we were talking about. Sceptic Ginger wrongly stated that the claims were "piddly" and didn't amount to thousands of votes. That was incorrect.

I think Skeptic Ginger was commenting on the claims presented in the thread up to that point. OK, now you've presented a new one that claims tens of thousands of fake votes, which shows that at least Trump's team have decided not to waste their own time quite as much as they're wasting everybody else's.

Dave

 

[shuttlt]

Would your position be correct if there was one claim that aliens came down and altered 10 million ballots?

If Sceptic Ginger stated that there were no claims that aliens had come down and altered 10 million ballots and I pointed to such a claim, then yes... I would be right and Sceptic Ginger would be wrong.

 

[BobTheCoward]

If Sceptic Ginger stated that there were no claims that aliens had come down and altered 10 million ballots and I pointed to such a claim, then yes... I would be right and Sceptic Ginger would be wrong.

Not what I asked. If SG made the original assertion, and you presented the alien claim, would SG be wrong?

 

[wareyin]

Indeed, but that isn't what we were talking about. Sceptic Ginger wrongly stated that the claims were "piddly" and didn't amount to thousands of votes. That was incorrect. You guys have horse blinders on if you think that the claims themselves that Trump is going to court over aren't of a scale to swing the election. Whether he will succeed is another question, but one we will have to wait for. You should direct your objections to Sceptic Ginger if you want to object to talking about claims.

Skeptic Ginger^* appears to have been talking about the claims presented. At that time, they were all piddly. Now you present a larger one that does not invalidate SG's assessment of the claims presented at the time she posted, but are attempting to somehow blame her. Dirty pool.

^*I note that the more often your claims are refuted, the more often you begin misspelling other user's names. That's often actioned here, so on the off chance that this is not deliberate try to take more care please.

 

[shuttlt]

I think Skeptic Ginger was commenting on the claims presented in the thread up to that point. OK, now you've presented a new one that claims tens of thousands of fake votes, which shows that at least Trump's team have decided not to waste their own time quite as much as they're wasting everybody else's.

Dave

There are other claims amounting to thousands of votes. The one I just posted was filed on the 8th. It isn't new. Again, you guys have horse blinders on if you aren't aware of this stuff.

 

[bonzombiekitty]

For the people who want a high level of the Benford's law stuff; Matt Parker, an australian mathematician and "math communicator", has a video on Benford's law and how it relates to the US election.

 

[shuttlt]

Not what I asked. If SG made the original assertion, and you presented the alien claim, would SG be wrong?

Don't play stupid games. Skeptic Ginger was wrong. That is all there is too it. If you want to go down this rabbit hole, go down it without me.

Edited by zooterkin: 

Fixed members's name.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Don't play stupid games. Sceptic Ginger was wrong. That is all there is too it. If you want to go down this rabbit hole, go down it without me.

Not a game. I am absolutely serious.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Fourth, your Universe never had a magnitude of numbers if a "1" was never present... which means that Benford's Law cannot be applied to the scenario provided.

Good, we're getting somewhere. Now, how do we tell whether a set of election results falls into the category that Benford's Law can be applied to, or to the category that Benford's Law cannot be applied to? Because, of course, these things are never a black/white boundary; it's trivially simple to construct an example where the polling numbers just barely span an order of magnitude, but, because the distribution is weighted towards the centre, there are relatively few examples at either end of the distribution, and if the ends of the distribution happen to fall on values where the leading digit is 1, for example, we'll see a gross deviation from Benford's Law because there will be fewer 1's, 2's and 9's than expected.

Are you starting to see the problem? Benford's Law can be used to indicate the possibility of faked data, by noting that the distribution deviates from that expected, if and only if the data range is suitable; and the result of an unsuitable data range is that the distribution deviates from Benford's Law.

Now if you go back to the original claim, there's one example of Biden data that's flagged as suspect. The main deviation visible is that the proportion of 1's and 2's in the distribution is much lower than expected; but this is exactly what would be predicted by a data range too small for Benford's Law to be applicable. Meanwhile, some of the Trump data shown deviates just as much from Benford's Law, but this shows up as an excessive representation of 1's in the data, which is what would be expected from a small data range centred on a value with a leading digit of 1.

So we've established that some data ranges cannot be examined using Benford's Law, we've observed that these ranges will give the sort of deviations seen in the data presented, and there isn't enough information given in the claim to determine whether this is due to a data range that's too small. Overall, that makes the claim practically worthless in the absence of corroborating information.

Dave

 

[TurkeysGhost]

There are other claims amounting to thousands of votes. The one I just posted was filed on the 8th. It isn't new. Again, you guys have horse blinders on if you aren't aware of this stuff.

There are two categories of Republican claims about the vote.

- Allegations about massive vote fraud involving thousands of ballots which could conceivably flip the election, of which there is absolutely no evidence beyond the unsubstantiated claims of sore-loser Republicans. This includes claims of mystery boxes of Biden ballots, swarms of ineligible voters, backdating late ballots, etc.

- Petty accusations from poll watchers about the ballot counting process that, even in cases where it seems like it may be true, would not affect the election outcome. This includes whining about being asked not to stand close to people during a respiratory pandemic, rooms being at capacity, and poll workers treating Republican watchers as the nuisance they undoubtedly were.

Between the unsubstantiated, absurd claims of a vote fraud conspiracy and all the petty whining from sore losers, I'm not seeing anything that amounts to a real chance of a legal intervention.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Evil and wrong has decided on masse that the existence of its evil and wrongness is "just a matter of opinion."

 

[shuttlt]

Not that you care about claims, but here is another similar lawsuit:
https://cdn.donaldjtrump.com/public...rump-v.-benson-w.d.-mich.-complaint-final.pdf

If something substantial doesn't come out refuting the claims from the poll watchers, and nothing comes of this, then I don't see what the purpose of having poll watchers is.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Not that you care about claims, but here is another similar lawsuit:
https://cdn.donaldjtrump.com/public...rump-v.-benson-w.d.-mich.-complaint-final.pdf

If something substantial doesn't come out refuting the claims from the poll watchers, and nothing comes of this, then I don't see what the purpose of having poll watchers is.

Thanks, it's pretty funny to have a brief summary of Republicans crying.

Imagine swearing an affidavit that people cheered when you got ejected for being an insufferable baby.

 

[shuttlt]

Thanks, it's pretty funny to have a brief summary of Republicans crying.

Imagine swearing an affidavit that people cheered when you got ejected for being an insufferable baby.

I'm not sure that it speaks to the ballot counters being quite as impartial as one might like.

 

[pgwenthold]

Good news, GoFundMe put the campaign on hold before Hopkins could withdraw any of that money. Looks like recanting before you get the money was a mistake!

He's guilty of GoFundMe Fraud...

 

[johnny karate]

There is no minimum number. It could be 1, it could be 100,000,000. That's why it is a political question.

No, it’s a critical thought question.

And according to you, potentially 1 person could make an unsubstantiated claim and that would satisfy the threshold of then treating that claim as if it might be true, absent any evidence to support it.

Which means that if 1 person accused you of pedophilia, despite any supporting evidence, a criminal investigation should be launched to look into your alleged pedophilia.

Agreed?

If not, why not?