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Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

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Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#431

Post by uoaei »

culi wrote: post #373
olalonde wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this Venezuelan news article[0], several did: > Well-known pollsters in the Venezuelan political sphere, such as Datanálisis, Datincorp, Delphos, and Consultores 21, along with the emerging Poder y Estrategia, indicated that Urrutia had more than 50% of voting intentions. [0] https://www.lapatilla.com/2024/07/15/la-guerra-de-encuestas-...

Thanks for the article. I had to translate as my Spanish isn't very good. These seem to be the main points > Surveys of career-marking firms in the Venezuelan political environment, such as Datanalisis, Datincorp, Delphos and Consultores 21, as well as the incipient Power and Strategy, by political scientist Ricardo Ríos, claim that the postulate of anti-chavismo accumulates more than 50 percent of the intention to v…

which makes all this commentary all the more appalling.

rationalism requires more than poorly-informed guesses. rationalism allows for the distinct and non-negligible possibility that surveys are gamed by manipulating the wording of the questions and/or who is asked to respond.

skepticism is more than toeing the line of whatever country you think is morally righteous

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#432

Post by zyklu5 »

dinobones wrote: post #22

Here's this re-explained with a simpler example. Imagine you have 1,000 votes. You want to show that your political party got 60% of the vote, so, you claim: My party: 600 votes Opposition: 300 votes Other: 100 votes Presto, we got a good breakdown. The people will buy it.... It makes sense that 600 is exactly 60% of 1,000, because this was an artificial example. But in the real world, we don't get 1,000 votes. We ge…

This is not correct since you can claim the above for any number of votes actually obtained (if you asked someone to pick a number from 1 to 10 million, any number the person picks (assuming iid picks) will be by definition 10^-7).

The problem is more subtle.

There are around 10,000 integers n such that n/10058774 when rounded to 3 decimal places gives 0.512. Of those 10,000 this particular one has the smallest rounding error. That's what gives one the sense that probably they started with the clean fraction 0.512 and then worked their way to the tally.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#433

Post by liendolucas »

Yesterday there were news regarding 4 misterious flights from Cuba to Venezuela. Apparently a technical chinese team went there to rig the legitimate results, hence the delay to reveal them. Obviously unverifiable but I wouldn't be surprised to be true.

Source: https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2024/07/31/grave-denuncia-...

As an argentinian and having lived the so called "K" period I can only say that we were extremely lucky not ending like Venezuela did (we are still facing a really hard time thanks to 20 years of robberies). For me, this period along with this so called "bolivarian revolution" (whatever that means) will forever be a reminder of how dangerous populism and empty political fanatisms can be. A model that can only spread poverty, corruption, and permanently fracture society just like in Argentina.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#434

Post by xenospn »

sien wrote: post #233
colimbarna wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Note to self: Next time I want to rig election results, generate a random integer between 54.2% and 54.3% of the vote and count it as the winner's vote, subtract from total pool, wash rinse repeat.

It's remarkable that they don't do this. The sheer incompetence of the Maduro government and other governments that rig election results is surprising.

Have you ever heard a politician speak? Not surprising at all.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#435

Post by sieabahlpark »

GolberThorce wrote: post #318
notjoemama wrote: post #84

I 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.

[dead]

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#437

Post by gorgoiler »

m0dest wrote: post #391
aaplok wrote: post #98

Earlier 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…

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?

E. Goldstein wins with 51.2HELPIMTRAPPEDINANELECTIONRIGGINGBUNKER% of the vote!

One would have to take care with the analysis because humans are actually trapped in vote counting bunkers (or local sports halls more likely) in legitimate elections. Any analysis that simply concludes votes were subject to the foibles of hand counting wouldn’t be very useful.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#438

Post by kirmerzlikin »

notjoemama wrote: post #84

I 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.…

Last year there was this HN post about people's efforts to validate results of the Nigerian elections.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35272227

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#439

Post by jose_zap »

key1234 wrote: post #370
akdev1l wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a literal website posted by the opposition. 1. Aggregated reports: https://resultadosconvzla.com/ 2. Raw images of the voting records: https://resultadospresidencialesvenezuela2024.com/ The second requires a Venezuelan ID as input as it will identify the specific voting record for the person. I gathered all the records and put them in an archive: https://public.akdev.xyz/ganovzla2024.tar.gz The voting record…

How did Astavista gather these records? If they are submitted by the voters and if the research group is opposition funded, it could very well be that more opposition voters submitted? Genuine question because this is such a huge discrepancy and surely if its true, Maduro can't get away with it and he must know.

The electoral system in Venezuela mandates electronic voting. By law, each machine must print its results before sending the tally to a central server.

Multiple copies are printed. One goes to the CNE, another goes to the military, and several others are given to witnesses representing different political parties.

Each copy must be signed by all the witnesses, including the representative from the CNE.

The opposition candidate gathered as much as 80% of the total printouts and made them available for everyone to see and analyze.

Printouts can be validated because the result is digitally signed with a key that is known to the political parties and other organizations. The signature is at the end of each printout.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#440

Post by agroot12 »

dinobones wrote: post #22

Here's this re-explained with a simpler example. Imagine you have 1,000 votes. You want to show that your political party got 60% of the vote, so, you claim: My party: 600 votes Opposition: 300 votes Other: 100 votes Presto, we got a good breakdown. The people will buy it.... It makes sense that 600 is exactly 60% of 1,000, because this was an artificial example. But in the real world, we don't get 1,000 votes. We ge…

You are right that it is unlikely that one candidate gets the number of votes that exactly matches a certain percentage with one decimal (1:10.000 as per the source article).

But it's even more unlikely and astonishing that the second candidate also gets a number of votes corresponding to a percentage with one decimal!

This is highly suspicious if the vote counts are presented as official result.

But as mentioned in the comments, we cannot be sure that someone was given the total vote count, and the percentages rounded to one decimal, and thought it would be helpful to recalculate how many votes each candidate must have gotten.

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