Earlier quoted context omitted.
This would also be fairly trivial to fake if you wanted to appear to be under attack.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you wouldn't have to fake anything if you just didn't use electronic voting. Simply give a ballot to every voter and have them fill it out. Especially nowadays, as pretty much every election in every nation will come under cyber attack precisely because they are using electronic voting and hackers can manipulate the votes. If I were being ungenerous, I would say all the politici…
Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
321–330 of 536 posts
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue in this post has nothing to do with any of the outside election observers. You could replace the Carter Foundation with the CIA itself and you'd still be left with the same problem, which is that these vote counts are fictitious.
The comment I’m replying to says they’re “the only impartial observers who were in Venezuela for the election,” so I think the point stands - given their funding and connection to the US government and international capital, they can’t be considered impartial in this situation.
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#323God, I love mathematicians!
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#324Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
In light of recent analyses of suspicious elections (Iran, Russia, Venezuela), it seems harder than it sounds to avoid discernible patterns. On the other hand, the goal is to get away with fraud, not to convince an international community who will likely look for any confirmation of their suspicion. It would be interesting to look for patterns in a (presumably) fair election like the recent British one for comparison…
> On the other hand, the goal is to get away with fraud, not to convince an international community who will likely look for any confirmation of their suspicion. Despite my joke in a sibling comment, this is key. When you're a politician everything is power relations. Sometimes it's necessary to show that you have the power to semi-obviously rig an election. Your bargaining position is different if it requires milita…
The type no one wants to even be seen trying to challenge.
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#326Let's approach this step-by-step using combinatorics:
1) First, let's consider the total number of possible arrangements: We have 26 digits in total, and the order matters. So, the total number of arrangements is: 10^26 (as each position can be filled by any digit from 0 to 9)
2) Now, let's count the favorable arrangements:
a) We need:
- 10 nines (including two blocks of 4 consecutive nines)
- 5 ones
- 4 zeros
- 7 other digits (26 - 10 - 5 - 4 = 7)
b) Let's start by placing the two blocks of 4 consecutive nines:
We have 19 positions to place the first block (26 - 4 - 3 = 19, as we need to leave room for the second block)
Then we have 15 positions for the second block
So, there are 19 * 15 = 285 ways to place these blocks
c) We need to place 2 more nines:
We have 18 positions left, so there are C(18,2) = 153 ways to do this
d) Now, we need to place 5 ones in the remaining 16 positions:
This can be done in C(16,5) = 4368 ways
e) Next, place 4 zeros in the remaining 11 positions:
This can be done in C(11,4) = 330 ways
f) Finally, we need to fill the remaining 7 positions with the other digits:
There are 7! = 5040 ways to arrange these
g) For these last 7 digits, we can choose any digit except 0, 1, and 9:
So we have 7^7 = 823543 possibilities for what these digits could be
3) Putting it all together:
The number of favorable outcomes is:
285 * 153 * 4368 * 330 * 5040 * 823543 = 2.51654 × 10^174) Therefore, the probability is: (2.51654 × 10^17) / (10^26) = 2.51654 × 10^-9
So, the probability is approximately 0.00000000251654 or about 1 in 397,371,070,190.
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citation needed
I love that this comment came up directly after (at the time I'm writing this comment) "Math doesn't care about your feelings."
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I'm in charge of forging a presidential election, how difficult is it for me to use realistic, "ugly" numbers to sell it more effectively?
Not difficult at all. Just pick the approximate numbers you want and then introduce a random error of a few percent. (Normal, uniform, doesn't really matter). This is also not hard for statistics experts to detect, but it's much harder to prove (aka you've got plausible deniability). One wonders why they didn't even bother to do fraud slightly better.
Think of it this way - who has more power in a relationship? The one who is really good at cheating and hiding it? Or the the one who doesn’t even try to hide it, but suffers no consequences?
Just look at how many comments are trying to figure out how the numbers could be legitimate, and how unlikely it is that Maduro is going to actually be removed from power.
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#329Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#330I recall having read about elections in Africa and the troubles they faced. I can't find it now, but there was one particular website offering a very detailed but rigorous approach to determining the legitimacy of elections. I'll offer this article from the BBC as a stand in for the criteria (from 2016): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190 Vote rigging: How to spot the tell-tale signs 1. Too many voters 2.…
This criteria is erroneous as the 2020 US election proved. The UN updated its Election Observation standards, and Venezuela's election mostly passes them.