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Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

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Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#391

Post by m0dest »

aaplok wrote: post #98
gmaster1440 wrote: post #69

Earlier 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?

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…

If you were forced against your will to aid in this type of fraud, might you not intentionally include a subtle error in your work that reveals its illegitimacy to a careful observer?

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#392

Post by tptacek »

foobarqux wrote: post #389
tptacek wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think it's even a plausible mistake. Remember, to make the mistake, you have to retain the original raw vote total , but discard the original raw per-candidate totals , then recompute them from the rounded percentages and the retained original total. That doesn't make sense, for reasons having nothing to do with my level of trust in the election authority. It's several steps of extra effort for a resul…

I explained in another comment that these are the two most important numbers in an election and the two numbers everyone cites. Moreover, you might naively assume that they capture all the information about the election because, especially if you are not a STEM major and maybe even then, you might think you can just multiply the numbers to get the per-candidate tallies. And actually for most purposes it might be fine…

Just to be clear: across the thread, you can watch the video of the election authority reading these specific numbers, with great ceremony; it's not like this is a number that bounced through reporters at news outlets or something.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#393

Post by suzzer99 »

cmg wrote: post #278
suzzer99 wrote: post #17

More on this. The Carter Foundation, the only impartial observers who were in Venezuela for the election, and who previously defended Venezuela's election system following Chavez's 2004 win, has called on Maduro's government to release local vote tallies, which apparently it is never going to do: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/world/americas/venezuela-...

[flagged]

The Carter Foundation stood up to the US govt in 2004, when they validated Chavez's win. Maybe they became un-impartial since then. But you're assuming a lot.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#394

Post by lazyeye »

cheema33 wrote: post #269
lazyeye wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if related but also a book on this as well:- https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Your-Vote-Inside-Election/dp... Whether or not there was election fraud I don't know. All I know is I cannot trust anything the mainstream media has to say on the topic (or any other topic for that matter).

Instead of reading conspiratorial books from authors with a profit motive, ask a simple question. If there was election fraud, how come the conservative super majority in the supreme court is not all over it? Ask for evidence first, before putting your faith in conspiracy theories, from books or movies. If you believe in things without evidence, and then vote based on that, we're all screwed. This is the path to ideo…

I said I dont know if there was election fraud? I'm guessing there almost certainly was some level of election fraud, whether it was sufficient to sway the election I don't know.

You seem to be arguing that if it appears in a book, then it's defacto a conspiracy theory driven by the profit motive. (The assumption being that everyone you disagree with is greedy and manipulative whilst your motives are pure of course). Books can outline evidence too? Maybe you should read the book first before jumping to uninformed conclusions yourself.

And anyone with eyes and a brain can see the media lies constantly (by obsfucation, cherry-picking, deflection etc). So again, I don't know what the truth is but I certainly would never accept the media narrative on face value.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#395

Post by foobarqux »

lolinder wrote: post #388
foobarqux wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recollection is that turnout is usually quoted in both percentage and absolute numbers but quoting it as a percentage requires external data (population demographics) which presumably isn't in the electioneering department. Why do you have such a hard time believing that election results (e.g. for a union, for school president etc) might be communicated like "55 to 45, 3000 people voted"?

Because I've literally never seen percentages without tallies reported in any context. It's apparently so uncommon that your hypothetical person who created these clearly-not-real numbers felt the need to go backfill them. Explain that. If it's so unnecessary to report the tallies and people only want to hear the percentages, why did your hypothetical person go back and backfill them?

Pretty much every headline number does not show tallies (it's impossible to fit in a headline in any case). It's often included in a more detailed analysis further in an article or segment which the vast majority of people don't read. My point is that they are obviously far less important numbers and not the "headline" numbers. So one person (the supplier) could easily have decided (or misunderstood that) the detailed numbers were not required and another person (the consumer) decided that they needed or wanted them because they are conventionally or should be reported.

Remember too that this was not the final completed tally so someone may not have supplied detailed results for intermediate reporting.

If you've ever worked at a big organization it really isn't hard to understand that the left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#396

Post by foobarqux »

tptacek wrote: post #392
foobarqux wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I explained in another comment that these are the two most important numbers in an election and the two numbers everyone cites. Moreover, you might naively assume that they capture all the information about the election because, especially if you are not a STEM major and maybe even then, you might think you can just multiply the numbers to get the per-candidate tallies. And actually for most purposes it might be fine…

Just to be clear: across the thread, you can watch the video of the election authority reading these specific numbers, with great ceremony; it's not like this is a number that bounced through reporters at news outlets or something.

I don't know what to tell you except that typically the person doing the PR (in any country and field) often doesn't have a clue about the details of the process that generated the results they are reporting, despite any ceremony (in fact the ceremony is often intended to hide that fact). They usually have as much to do with producing the numbers as Jake Tapper does when he gets the numbers displayed on his teleprompter to read out.

And even if they did it wouldn't be obvious why they would think to care about whether the tallies are accurate to a tenth of a percent if the difference between candidates was much larger than that. They would think you were mental if you started a fuss about whether the intermediate result was really or 212,345 or 212,399, given that the main point was to declare a clear winner.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#397

Post by suzzer99 »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #372

I find it quite amusing to watch people declare the Venezuela election stolen by the very same metrics they loudly proclaimed meant absolutely nothing in the 2020 US elections. At this point, it's not a hard bet to think I'll have more mirth coming my way in November.

There was a lot more light shone on the US elections. Over 60 cases were brought by Trump supporters, many before Republican judges, some of whome were even Trump appointees. All fraud cases were dismissed out of hand for lack of evidence. The only case not dismissed was about time allowed to vote.

If something was there, it would have come out. You have to get into Alex Jones level of deep state conspiracy to think all those judges and election officials were in on it.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jan/08/joe-biden/...

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#399

Post by mannykannot »

foobarqux wrote: post #361
lolinder wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are universally reported in raw numbers accompanied by percentages, as indeed they were here. The raw numbers are universally understood to be derived from the percentages and not vice versa. The votes are the ground truth. That's how elections always work. The votes are what counts, the percentages are an abstraction to make the votes easier to parse. Any government agency that doesn't operate that way does…

First these were intermediate results. Second virtually no one reads or understands raw tallies, I don't know anyone who would or could quote them in any election. The final result, the result that is published as a headline in the newspaper are the rounded percentages. No one is saying that the percentages are not derived from the raw tallies they are saying that it might be that somewhere in the game of telephone t…

> Virtually no one reads or understands raw tallies...

I believe virtually anyone could look at the raw tallies and see which is the largest, and that a majority could calculate the percentages by themselves, if they were so inclined. This was direct election plurality voting, not some sort of proportional voting scheme, and even if it were, having the raw tallies in the public domain is essential to transparency, verification and legitimacy.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#400

Post by tptacek »

foobarqux wrote: post #396
tptacek wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear: across the thread, you can watch the video of the election authority reading these specific numbers, with great ceremony; it's not like this is a number that bounced through reporters at news outlets or something.

I don't know what to tell you except that typically the person doing the PR (in any country and field) often doesn't have a clue about the details of the process that generated the results they are reporting, despite any ceremony (in fact the ceremony is often intended to hide that fact). They usually have as much to do with producing the numbers as Jake Tapper does when he gets the numbers displayed on his telepromp…

It's not a PR person reading the numbers. It's the President of the CNE!
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