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The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

markessien.com

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Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#101

Post by davedx »

rqtwteye wrote: post #63

I still don't understand how we ended up with PDF as sort of standard to archive data. PDF is already pretty bad for things like manuals but for things like spreadsheets we basically collect the data, then we destroy all the structure by putting it in into POF, and later on we painstakingly try to restore the data from PDF which is often almost impossible to do with accuracy. It just shows that bad solutions often wi…

It depends. There are PDFs with rasterized images of text (like in the article, when it’s a scan or photo of a document), then there are PDFs with vector positioned text runs (when it’s usually a result of some digital process). The latter are way easier to process than the former.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#102

Post by charles_f »

redman25 wrote: post #62

This might be a sensitive question but I wonder if something like this would work in the United States? With all of the fears of election interference why not trust but verify?

Would you trust the recount? I mean, the only way to engage the number of people you need to do that kind of recount is by having them very pissed, so most likely feeling like their party was wronged and therefore the thing is partisan by essence. If you're on the winning party you wouldn't trust the numbers the others give you anyhow, so what's the point

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#103

Post by MichaelZuo »

adzm wrote: post #97
SilverCode wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better option would be to use the TIFF format. You can use it as a container format to store lossless and lossy image formats, and handles multiple images in a single container. It was the standard for scanners until PDF seemed to dominate the scene.

Except who knows if your application that supports TIFF files actually supports the features you want (multiple images, the compression format, etc)

Reminds me of USB-C.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#104

Post by salawat »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #81
rqtwteye wrote: post #63

I still don't understand how we ended up with PDF as sort of standard to archive data. PDF is already pretty bad for things like manuals but for things like spreadsheets we basically collect the data, then we destroy all the structure by putting it in into POF, and later on we painstakingly try to restore the data from PDF which is often almost impossible to do with accuracy. It just shows that bad solutions often wi…

I've thought about this and come round to think that the flaws of PDF are actually essential to the success of the document format. - Non-responsive (compared to HTML). Allows PDFs to serve as a common standard between other document formats with different resizing logic, like Latex and Word. - Difficultly of network access from code running inside document. Allows PDFs to generally operate offline. Nobody's brave en…

>Difficultly of network access from code running inside document. Allows PDFs to generally operate offline. Nobody's brave enough to try to write a single page application in a PDF.

You can absolutely do so. Most times however, the desire is to embed the latest cut of info into the PDF, then hand it off to somebody who will not have network access.

t. Been there, done that. Had the end product thrown out because of Adobe's licensing terms. I also met one of the people responsible for the tooling I had to suffer through. I have their address, but they apologized, and explained the internal politics at the time; so I've chilled on the whole crushing their genitalia with a large wrench bit.

Long story short: doable, but

  Do Not Follow. 
  This is not a place of honor. 
  No great deed was once commemorated here
  That which remains is repulsive to us, in our time, as it will be in yours.
Seriously. If I could fill this post with spikes and sick faces, I would.

  Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
XFA was the dream of madmen, and sadists, that decent men thought they could wrangle some positive utility out of. They were wrong.

The trefoil is not an angel. The weird ring things are symbols for infectious waste.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#105

Post by churchill »

churchill wrote: post #29

Oh, and Mark didn't mention that Bola Ahmed Tinubu was indicted for heroin charges in the US in 2003, forfeited $460k & is just too old to run a democracy this size. Atiku Abubakar (second candidate) was a former VP and the president he served under (Obasanjo) still insists the dude remains a monument to corruption. There's been a coordinated campaign at all levels to rig this election massively and we saw voter inti…

Proofs:

To explain the $460k he forfeited to the feds for his heroin trafficking indictment [0][1], Tinubu claims to have worked at Deloitte as a consultant & made $850k in pre-tax bonuses a year. Problem is, Deloitte claims he's never worked for them [2] and a director at Deloitte earns $340k, according to Glassdoor [3].

[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61732548 [1]: https://www.scribd.com/document/345742027/Bola-Tinubu-Heroin [2]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhhgxX2WQAAWOVo?format=jpg [3]: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Deloitte-Director-Salaries-...

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#106

Post by varenc »

rqtwteye wrote: post #63

I still don't understand how we ended up with PDF as sort of standard to archive data. PDF is already pretty bad for things like manuals but for things like spreadsheets we basically collect the data, then we destroy all the structure by putting it in into POF, and later on we painstakingly try to restore the data from PDF which is often almost impossible to do with accuracy. It just shows that bad solutions often wi…

For this particular case, the use of PDFs seems irrelevant. Photos were just taken of each polling unit’s results. These photos happened to then be embedded into PDFs for distribution, but the core underlying data is just an image embedded into that PDF. No important data was destroyed when these photos were placed into PDFs.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#107

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

>> We had a brainstorming meeting, and decided to try a new approach. We would simply ask the Obidients to help us do the conversion. If hundreds of Obidients did the transcription, it would go fast.

What would guarantee that the Obidients would not, in turn, try to inflate the score of the Labor candidate?

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#108

Post by crazygringo »

sd9 wrote: post #80
crazygringo wrote: post #76

First of all, what a fantastic and inspiring read. But, I'm left greatly confused -- the article never states whether this changed the result. It says that halfway through counting Obi was in the lead, but nothing about when finished counting. And when I look at the spreadsheet, the last row (#3380) appears to be the totals, which lists: APC LP PDP NNPP 149014 85748 329030 8305 Which shows LP (Obi) in third place, ju…

Those are the results for just one state, Adamawa. However, like you I don't know what the overall results are; I agree that the article could make this clearer.

Oh thanks for clarifying. Turns out the link to the folder for all the states is here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/173oHgms6wYy5WKz_i3Lh...

But there doesn't appear to be any file that calculates the nationwide totals.

It just seems like such a strange omission but I'm on mobile and can't add up the numbers from across a ton of different files myself.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#109

Post by infinityio »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #99

I've done stuff like this semi manually. Use pdftotext to get the text tables out of the pdf, eyeball it and massage with emacs keyboard macros, and in some cases python scripts. It's not that big a deal but it is somewhat ad hoc. I know that OCR software is able to read stuff like magazine articles and figure out column layout, embedded charts, etc. It's weird if is nothing to do that with a pdf. Maybe I'll look aro…

unfortunately in this case the text content was handwritten, not computer-generated

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#110

Post by pjc50 »

redman25 wrote: post #62

This might be a sensitive question but I wonder if something like this would work in the United States? With all of the fears of election interference why not trust but verify?

Genuinely the US would do better if it had paper elections with a handcount with observers. The system works in the UK just fine. Unfortunately, there's a category of people in both the US and Nigeria who use "election interference" to mean "accurately counting the votes".
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