Allegations of Fraud in 2020 US Election

[Ziggurat]

Now that you’ve come out as a member of Team Voter Fraud, do you have any actual evidence to present?

Well, yes. That link shows a statistical analysis of voting results which violate Benford's Law. Given that it is only Biden's votes which show this strong deviation, not Trump's or other candidates, that is itself evidence of fraud.

 

[wareyin]

Well, yes. That link shows a statistical analysis of voting results which violate Benford's Law. Given that it is only Biden's votes which show this strong deviation, not Trump's or other candidates, that is itself evidence of fraud.

Is there some reason to assume votes will follow Benfords Law, while US populations don't?


Eta: also is there a compelling reason to assume "Himilaya Australia" got the numbers correct on his personal and obscure blog?

 

[johnny karate]

Well, yes. That link shows a statistical analysis of voting results which violate Benford's Law. Given that it is only Biden's votes which show this strong deviation, not Trump's or other candidates, that is itself evidence of fraud.

Will you be taking this iron-clad evidence to the proper authorities?

 

[uke2se]

Will you be taking this iron-clad evidence to the proper authorities?

Please don't. We don't have to take part in this ****, and doing so now could be harmful. Ignore him.

Please note, I'm not saying that you should ignore what the Trumpkins are trying to do to your country, but simply that directly engaging them when they are trying to sow distrust in democracy by endlessly discussing **** like this is actually causing harm.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Election results also generally follow Benford's Law. But according to this source, the results for votes for Biden in a number of key cities... doesn't.

It's not entirely clear what the numbers are whose leading digits have been compared to Benford's Law here. It's also notable that no regression analysis is quoted, just a series of pictures where the criterion for "obeys Benford's Law" seems to have been set at "monotonically decreases with increasing digit value"; several examples that are claimed to obey Benford's Law, including one of Trump's, are actually very much more skewed to a leading digit of 1 than Benford would predict. And, of course, there's the cherry picking effect; a very small number of results from a huge sample are presented, only one of which is claimed to violate Benford (though, in fact, it's just the only one that violates it in an arbitrarily chosen fashion, as commented above); taken from all the possible data sets which include all the voting districts in the USA, I'd be surprised if some of them didn't look as far off the expected distribution as Biden's in Milwaukee, WI or Trump's in Miami-Dade.

Without a lot more detail and some more rigorous statistical analysis than a "Look at this carefully chosen single example" this isn't very convincing.

Dave

 

[TurkeysGhost]

This is from the Court of Appeals in the State of Michigan. The Donald Trump Legal Team cannot even file appeals the right way. They have reached **** show level of legal competency at this point. This is the most basic of tasks - filing an appeal accordingly.

https://twitter.com/aayoub/status/1325850686790266881

Trump team legal filings being rejected for failing to follow basic legal guidelines. They have 21 days to fix their defective filing, but it's pretty funny the level of legal incompetence they are bringing to the table for this desperate fight.

Hare-brained legal arguments improperly filed, this is what all the right wingers in denial are relying on to save their golden boy.

 

[slyjoe]

https://twitter.com/aayoub/status/1325850686790266881

Trump team legal filings being rejected for failing to follow basic legal guidelines. They have 21 days to fix their defective filing, but it's pretty funny the level of legal incompetence they are bringing to the table for this desperate fight.

Hare-brained legal arguments improperly filed, this is what all the right wingers in denial are relying on to save their golden boy.

Sounds familiar. Didn't this happen to another one of their lawsuits?

 

[Upchurch]

Anyone here familiar with Benford's Law? It's a mathematical rule governing many sorts of distributions which exhibit scale invariance. Basically, the takehome of the mathematical rule is that for such distributions, the odds that a number in this distribution will begin with a 1 is higher than the odds it will begin with a 2, the odds it begins with a 2 is higher than the odds that it begins with a 3, and so on.

Benford's Law gets used in forensic accounting a lot, because accounting figures normally should follow Benford's Law. But when people artificially generate numbers, they don't tend to generate numbers which follow Benford's Law. So if you take the accounts of a company and look at all the spending items, and it doesn't follow Benford's Law, then that's very suggestive statistical evidence that someone is cooking the books, and you had better look closer.

Election results also generally follow Benford's Law. But according to this source, the results for votes for Biden in a number of key cities... doesn't.

Related to Stack Overflow

I'll address just the second charts, because they are straight out of How To Lie With Statistics.

As commenters have noted, the vertical scales are different. Narrow vertical scales make changes look larger. While wide vertical scales smooth out changes. Biden's graph is using a more narrow scale than Trump's.

Put them all together in one graph with the same scale and they don't look so different anymore.

[See link for referenced charts]

I had to eyeball the numbers from the graphs, but more precise numbers won't change the outcome. I don't even know if the numbers are correct. I can say with some certainty that the graphs are deliberately constructed to sell a lie. One or the other scale is a natural choice, either 0 to max or min to max. Someone had to choose to use different vertical axes for each graph.

 

[Ziggurat]

Is there some reason to assume votes will follow Benfords Law, while US populations don't?

We don't have to assume votes follow Benford's Law, we can observe that they do. And US populations do follow Benford's Law.

 

[slyjoe]

Just like Trump's votes did.

 

[Bob001]

Could I suggest that we start by addressing the following post?

There's a nice solid list of allegations to get stuck into there.

Dave

The first step should be for the poster to provide a source for each of these claims. Quick searches reveal that most are false or exaggerated right-wing screeds that have already been debunked.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Anyone here familiar with Benford's Law? It's a mathematical rule governing many sorts of distributions which exhibit scale invariance. Basically, the takehome of the mathematical rule is that for such distributions, the odds that a number in this distribution will begin with a 1 is higher than the odds it will begin with a 2, the odds it begins with a 2 is higher than the odds that it begins with a 3, and so on.

Benford's Law gets used in forensic accounting a lot, because accounting figures normally should follow Benford's Law. But when people artificially generate numbers, they don't tend to generate numbers which follow Benford's Law. So if you take the accounts of a company and look at all the spending items, and it doesn't follow Benford's Law, then that's very suggestive statistical evidence that someone is cooking the books, and you had better look closer.

Election results also generally follow Benford's Law. But according to this source, the results for votes for Biden in a number of key cities... doesn't.

Cool story. Do you consider it evidence of fraud ?
NM - missed where you already said you do.

 

[acbytesla]

His claims about how the party operates in certain large cities they've been entrenched in for decades?

It's consistent with other info I've heard over the years, and it seems to be based on his first hand experiences.

So it seems fairly believable.

In other words, you believe all the conspiracy theory bs without a shred of evidence. Good one Tank!

More than 4 million Americans voted for Biden over Trump. So please please please keep up the whining about a few thousand questionable votes cast here and there. You're only highlighting how ridiculous that Trump ever became President since he was outvoted in that election by 3 million votes.

The system sucks. I agree. Just not in the way you are complaining about.

Trump is just whining so he can get money from the rubes. You're nothing more than a mark to him.

 

[johnny karate]

We don't have to assume votes follow Benford's Law, we can observe that they do. And US populations do follow Benford's Law.

You’ve claimed that evidence of voter fraud exists.

Have you presented this evidence to the proper authorities?

 

[Checkmite]

Looks like Blagojevich isn't the only ex-con the Trump campaign is using for a "witness". Evidently, one of the individuals portrayed at Giuliani's parking-lot-next-to-the-porn-shop press conference as a Philadelphian ballot-observer who was denied access, is actually a convicted sex offender from New Jersey

“It’s such a shame. This is a democracy,” Daryl Brooks, who said he was a GOP poll watcher, said at the press conference, held at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Northeast Philadelphia. “They did not allow us to see anything. Was it corrupt or not? But give us an opportunity as poll watchers to view all the documents — all of the ballots.”

Trenton political insiders watched with bemusement as Brooks took the podium.

Brooks was incarcerated in the 1990s on charges of sexual assault, lewdness and endangering the welfare of a minor for exposing himself to two girls ages 7 and 11, according to news accounts.

Brooks has run for various offices, including U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

“I started watching it and all of a sudden I was like, ‘there’s New Jersey’s perennial candidate claiming to live in Philadelphia and Giuliani claiming him to be a poll watcher and Philadelphia resident," Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora said in a phone interview.

James Gee, chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), also said he immediately recognized Brooks.

“Yeah, I know Daryl. It’s so fitting that he would be there,” Gee said.

 

[Armitage72]

https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1325629745002917890

Simply awful behavior. nobody should call 1 (888) 503-3526 and do this rude thing. That number is only for real, sincere reports of voter fraud.

Someone should report a loud-mouthed fat guy in orange clown makeup declaring himself the winner and then trying to stop the votes from being counted. That seems suspicious.

 

[Ziggurat]

I'll address just the second charts, because they are straight out of How To Lie With Statistics.

As commenters have noted, the vertical scales are different.

Of course he's addressing the second charts, not the first ones. But the first ones, the first digit distribution (not the second digit distribution) are the really damning ones. And adjusting the vertical scale can't rescue them.

You'd know that if you understood Benford's Law.

Furthermore, I don't know where those second digit graphs came from, but they aren't part of the link I gave, so even assuming dishonesty on the part of whoever made those graphs, it's not really relevant to my link.

 

[Paul2]

https://twitter.com/aayoub/status/1325850686790266881

Trump team legal filings being rejected for failing to follow basic legal guidelines. They have 21 days to fix their defective filing, but it's pretty funny the level of legal incompetence they are bringing to the table for this desperate fight.

Hare-brained legal arguments improperly filed, this is what all the right wingers in denial are relying on to save their golden boy.

Which is greater, their authoritarianism or their incompetence?

 

[Meadmaker]

Anyone here familiar with Benford's Law? It's a mathematical rule governing many sorts of distributions which exhibit scale invariance. Basically, the takehome of the mathematical rule is that for such distributions, the odds that a number in this distribution will begin with a 1 is higher than the odds it will begin with a 2, the odds it begins with a 2 is higher than the odds that it begins with a 3, and so on.

Benford's Law gets used in forensic accounting a lot, because accounting figures normally should follow Benford's Law. But when people artificially generate numbers, they don't tend to generate numbers which follow Benford's Law. So if you take the accounts of a company and look at all the spending items, and it doesn't follow Benford's Law, then that's very suggestive statistical evidence that someone is cooking the books, and you had better look closer.

Election results also generally follow Benford's Law. But according to this source, the results for votes for Biden in a number of key cities... doesn't.

I just heard some fellow named Charlie Kirk talking about this. I had never heard of Charlie until last week. I think my local right wing radio station has eliminated the first hour do Dennis Praeger and replaced it with an hour of Charlie Kirk. That's too bad. Dennis was mostly sane.

I had never heard of Benford's law until I saw it on a Netflix documentary this summer. Fascinating stuff, but it's the kind of thing that is just ripe for exploitation by the stupid. It really opens the doors for pseudoscience, and I'm pretty sure that's what we are seeing here.

You say "Election results also generally follow Benford's law". I doubt it. it might be, but I doubt it. Why? Because the key element for data sets that do, in fact, follow Benford's law is that, as you said, they must be scale invariant. More specifically, they have to have distributions of numbers that range across several orders of magnitude.

Far be it from me to say that it is impossible to do a Benford's law analysis of the 2020 election results, but my objection to any such claim will be similar to my objection tp "statistically impossible" results claims from my most recent messages. This is a numerical claim. I'll believe it when I see numbers. The claim itself is meaningless without the numbers to back it up, so I'll want to see the numbers. They have to exist in order for the claim to mean anything.

 

[Ziggurat]

You’ve claimed that evidence of voter fraud exists.

Have you presented this evidence to the proper authorities?

You seem to assume it hasn't been or won't be presented. I very much doubt that.