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Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

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Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#341
post #299

[flagged]

>it seems like there's no evidence of the government posting these vote tallies They were released at a press conference. They read out both the numbers and the percentages. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7g4y4M4s8 It is still plausible that this is an Excel error, but it's certainly suspicious.

http://www.sunai.gob.ve/sunai-web/public/index.php/publicaci... according to the acronym that’s some superintendent related to internal audits, that seems pretty official.

But still won’t stop the “the US manipulated the results crowd”, nothing will.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#343
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the mile long rap sheet though? The group that's alleging fraud (AltaVista) is using images of printed receipts from different voting places as a sample to estimate the final vote. That group also said it's same technique resulted in election outcomes that are within 2 points or less of the announced outcome for 2021, 2018, and 2015. This seems like a new and unique accusation for Venezuela Source: https://www…

> What's the mile long rap sheet though? Venezuela’s terrible electoral record post Chavez.

And the fact the gov quietly funds roving mobs of bike gangs to intimidate the populace. On top of that they completely control 10% of the Venezulas cities.

> Human Rights Watch described colectivos as "armed gangs who use violence with impunity" to harass political opponents of the Venezuelan government.[10][11] Amnesty International calls them "armed pro-government supporters who are tolerated or supported by the authorities".[12] Colectivos have attacked anti-government protesters[1] and Venezuelan opposition television staff, sent death threats to journalists, and once tear-gassed the Vatican envoy.[10] Through violence and intimidation, by 2019 colectivos increasingly became a means of quashing the opposition and maintaining political power;[9][13] Maduro called on them during the 2019 Venezuelan blackouts.[14][15]

And that in poor areas these armed gangs are directly involved in bringing people to voting stations

> Every member of a colectivo is required to bring ten individuals to vote at polls during elections.[34] Over time, colectivos became more heavily armed and their criminal activity increased.[3] A small number of groups maintain community and cultural functions; most are "criminal gangs with immense social control", who "work alongside the security forces, often doing their dirty work for them", according to InSight Crime.[6] Members can be difficult to identify because they often wear masks and do not have license plates on their motorcycles.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colectivo_(Venezuela)

The fact there were armed guards around the voting stations

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#344

This is a bit of an aside, but as a geopolitical news junkie, what I keep searching on Google News is: Venezuela election Lula How his government reacts is going to be a major factor. Given Lula's past dedication to Chavezism, his post-election reaction has made me hopeful for change in Venezuela. What is directly related to TFA is that both the USA and Brazil want to see the voting data. https://www.reuters.com/worl…

> Given Lula's past dedication to (sic) Chavezism Brazil has quasi-presidential system, but it's Chamber of Deputies has the actual power. In the 2000s, Lula's PT was the largest party (usually around 20-25% of the total seats) and could as such strongarm smaller leftist parties into a governing coalition with an absolute majority. Lula won the presidential election in 2022, but his party PT was the 3rd largest, and…

> As someone who worked in the space, stop. It's a waste of time as you're not in a position to make changes, nor are you reading primary or peer reviewed secondary sources. If you insist on continuing,

You could have cut this out of your comment, and made your point much more effectively without the elitism.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless done carefully this will almost certainly fail Benford’s Law. Manipulating statistics is harder than you think.

The Biden election in 2020 also failed Benford's law - unless you're suggesting that one was fake, it seems that failing Benford's law is okay.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#346
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chilean intelligence being the black hand behind the protestors rising up against a stolen election is pretty far fetched, South American countries haven't meddled to that level in one another since the XIX century, which was more of a diplomatic free for all in much of the world, so you also saw secret treaties, sponsored coups, puppet Governments, and all that. Maduro had promised to let international observers in,…

I'd love to have election observers here, but it would be political suicide for any politician to suggest it. Most Americans detest the idea that any influence from outside could improve anything here.

I don't have this feeling. As a single data point, the vast majority of my friends, both democratic and republican, are concerned about the other party pulling some tricks and would welcome as much independent transparency as possible; international observers and anything else. My 2c.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the addendum to the article they provide a perfectly plausible explanation: namely that (only) rounded percentages were provided to an intermediary and from there they back-calculated the counts. Given that the US has claimed vote rigging in the past in Venezuela without evidence contrary to the determination of international observers (and has and is trying to overthrow the government to install a US-bac…

They reported vote counts for both candidates that were fictitious. I don't understand how anybody can rationalize that. I'm no fan of Maduro but I care about the politics of the region a lot less than I do about the mathematics of the situation. It's alarming to see people try to back-rationalize how these numbers could have been legitimate because, for instance (elsewhere on this thread), "it would have been easy f…

As I and others (including in the original article) have explained it is a plausible result to create legitimately. Given the context that unsubstantiated vote-rigging allegations have occurred in the past (and the dire consequences of destabilizing a government based on false claims) extreme skepticism is warranted.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#349
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Carter Center doesn't allege made up numbers. They alleged short voter registration deadlines, few places to register, minimal public information about voting, excessive legal requirements for citizens abroad. As well as inequality in the resources each candidate had access to: > The electoral campaign was impacted by unequal conditions among candidates. The campaign of the incumbent president was well funded and…

I'm sorry, but I don't know what any of this has to do with the vote counts reported here, which are mathematically guaranteed to be fictitious.

The vote count is always fictitious. The tolerances on counting a vote aren't that detailed - if someone says that a candidate got ~10 million votes and gives a figure accurate to a single vote that isn't a true number. I've had family members help count votes and I can guarantee that mistakes are made, and there is the obvious point that in a multi-million person election there is probably going to be fraud in there somewhere.

So the question here isn't whether the NEC is publishing the true figure - because from its perspective it knows that it isn't, especially not a provisional vote. The question is what forms of inaccuracy are present and why. It obviously isn't adding up raw vote totals, but that still leaves two options here - fraud and appalling sloppiness (back-calculating totals from a reasonable %).

I'd lean to fraud, but if the people close to the action aren't alleging anything yet then maybe it is sloppiness.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#350

The point of the article which I missed: the issue here is that the vote totals are very close to their 0.1% place roundings after multiplying the total votes times the percentages, suggesting that the vote totals were simply faked by taking the total votes and multiplying them by percentages precise only to the 0.1% place. I had mistakenly thought the quoted twitter post found it weird that the vote totals had the s…

> the issue here is that the vote totals are very close to their 0.1% place roundings after multiplying the total votes times the percentages

That's right, but the conclusion is a bit stronger than just "very close". There was no other integer that could have been closer, which is consistent with them rounding their fraudulent vote count up/down to the nearest integer.

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