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Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

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Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#451

Post by goodcanadian »

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.…

One more tell tale sign is if a particular candidate's vote count correlates to voter turnout. That is a good sign of ballot box stuffing. [i.e. a candidate gets a higher percentage of the vote in districts with higher turnout]

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#452

Post by weberer »

Axsuul wrote: post #403
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US we have known-flawed closed-source machines where the company executives that make them also make clearly political statements that favor the side that used to be against those machines. I have zero confidence they’re going to leap frog the US in election security. Retro. Paper, no mail, vote one day on a holiday, count by that night, all manual all reviewed. This just is not somewhere we need a high tech s…

We do need a better solution because running elections is very expensive while voter participation is not great if you have to show up in person.

I disagree. I think the bar is low enough already. All you have to do is show up to the closest school. Its so easy that 10 year olds do it every day.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#453

Post by mihaaly »

user3939382 wrote: post #258
mihaaly wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking that the US state department controls math - and the Venezuelan vote system's integrity is above mathematics - is a new low. A joke comes to mind: Children are giggling and misbehaving in class so the math teacher storms out: - If you do not pay attention then 80% of the class will fail the tests! Someone from back row: - Bollocks! We aren't that many in the class! Was that you from the back row?

I didn't say "US state department controls math" that's a nice strawman. I said there's a reasonable explanation for the anomaly but the real reason you're seeing this is because of the State Dept's dissatisfaction with the election. I'd hope at least the crowd on HN would be smart enough not to be duped by the establishment but I guess not.

Of course you didn't say that, that was an irony you silly, you just do not understand math and draw out sensless mass manipulation bollocks from your desperation hat as a consequence. Not understanding the obvious.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#454

Post by lupusreal »

ithkuil wrote: post #443
dinobones wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there are 2 things that may not make this no longer so surprising. 1) The Maduro government is more like a large gang that is holding a population hostage, than a government. All major businesses/imports/exports are owned by people connected to the Maduro regime. They are extorting remissions out of the population because they're the only ones who can import products. The government is so incompetent, it no longer…

Why didn't they outsource the election count rigging to Russian or Chinese? Because they didn't know they would need help?

That would significantly weaken whatever negotiating position they have with either country.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#455

Post by ajnin »

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…

When I try to explain the issue, it boils down to this : the results look like they have been cooked. And the probability of that hapening by chance is 1 in 100 million.

Mathematically, if votes are random, with 10,058,774 voters you have 10,058,774^2 ~= 1e14 possibilities of different results for 3 candidates (Maduro, Gonzalez and "Other"). On the other hand, the number of possible results that land exactly on the closest integer to be a round 0.1 percentage point is 1000^2 = 1e6. So the probability of the actual votes landing on a round 0.1 percentage point purely by chance is 1000^2/10,058,774^2 ~= 1 in 100 million.

Of course the votes are not entirely random, but they have a random element, so it gives a rough idea of the reality.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#456

Post by Skeime »

foobarqux wrote: post #395
lolinder wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 detaile…

It is inconceivable to me that in a competently-run real election, you would not transfer actual vote tallies at any point in the (internal) process. This is true for intermediate results just like it is true for final results. If percentages are calculated at all, it is to gain insight into your local results.

(I volunteer at a polling station. We count the votes, and submit the raw counts to the next level. Then, we might do a quick calculation of the percentages, just to see how our voting district did. I can also go to my municipality's website and see the results of my polling station, and for the entire municipality. There are absolute numbers, which are reported to the next level, and the website also shows percentages, again, to gain insight into the municipality's results. Even if partial results are reported to the next level, this absolutely happens in the form of "these districts with this number of eligible voters have been counted; these are the absolute numbers".)

Everybody in the chain of responsibility should understand that the absolute numbers are what counts. And even if some people don't, the system must be set up in a way where you cannot transfer anything else. If there is even a serious possibility that someone might re-create voter counts from percentages, your system is a failure, and here it seems to have happened at the highest level.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#457

Post by Axsuul »

weberer wrote: post #452
Axsuul wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do need a better solution because running elections is very expensive while voter participation is not great if you have to show up in person.

I disagree. I think the bar is low enough already. All you have to do is show up to the closest school. Its so easy that 10 year olds do it every day.

10 year olds don't have jobs and responsibilities.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#459

Post by krapp »

_joel wrote: post #458
guywithahat wrote: post #348

This is why you don’t vote away your right to bear arms

Yea, be awful if, say the US, was on the precipice of slipping into a dictaorship. Thank god they've got guns, that'll make everything better!

Yes, an armed society is a polite society, and no one is more polite than, say, American police or the ATF or FBI or IRS.

If you see an American walk into a school or a hotel with a gun, you know everything is going to be A-OK.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#460

Post by tim333 »

It's all nice looking for suspicious patterns but a bit pointless when the election is very obviously rigged (107% of votes counted etc) and Maduro is like I control the army what you going to do about it?

The latter is a more interesting question. There must be some way to get vote rigging dictators out?

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