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The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

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

#71

Post by SilverCode »

codeulike wrote: post #66
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…

these are just photos embedded in a PDF, which actually isn't that bad an idea, because it lets you scan multiple pages and join them together as a 'document' (not sure if the documents in OP had several pages, but if you've scanned/photographed a multi-page document, PDF is not that bad of a solution)

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.

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

#72

Post by sd9 »

mmmuhd wrote: post #46
bmsleight_ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on " he clearly lack support". Bonus points for facts over opinions.

Clearly means even his Vice Presidential Candidate could not win his own polling unit, polling unit, not ward, not Local Government, not State. https://punchng.com/nigeriaelections2023-datti-loses-polling...

I was naturally skeptical of the punchng article, so I crosschecked it against OP's CSV. The votes in the article do agree with OP's CSV (although the number of accredited voters differs slightly).

The crosschecked results are in KADUNA_crosschecked on line 3800. The image is here: https://inec-cvr-cache.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/cached/res...

Accredited voters: 276, Registered voters: 750, APC: 98, LP: 54, PDP: 102, NNPP: 11

All that said, I don't think that the results for 276 voters in one polling unit in one ward in one local government area in one state is clear evidence that Obi lacks support. If anything, the fact that OP's CSV matches a (potentially biased) news article gives me more faith in OP's tallies and claims.

(Aside: it seems _easier_ to lose an election in your own polling unit, where variance plays a larger part, than it is to lose on a wider scale.)

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

#73

Post by gdelfino01 »

nivenkos wrote: post #26

This is a great example of why electronic voting is important and can help secure democracy.

You introduce technology to increase transparency and fight corruption. You increase transparency by having video recordings of human counting votes linked to the electronic record of the totals.

When you introduce technology to eliminate manual counting and paper trails, then transparency is eliminated and you give a green light to fraud, corruption, very juicy contracts and death.

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

#74

Post by logifail »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #56
logifail wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a great example of why electronic voting is important and can help secure democracy. If those in power are against change, I wouldn't want to have to put my trust in electronic voting if I was hoping for change. I was left with the impression that it is the paper records in this story that led to the unravelling of an attempt to forge the results. Long live paper ballots.

> I was left with the impression that it is the paper records in this story that led to the unravelling of an attempt to forge the results. The manual tallying of paper records is what lead to the attempt to forge the results in the first place. If the results were electronically tallied to generate an official result, then they wouldn't need to recount the whole election to verify the result, just doing a statistica…

> If the results were electronically tallied to generate an official result

Electronic voting doesn't make bad politicians less bad. In this instance, the bad guys were prepared to deliberately remove CCTV so when they sent their goons out at night to shoot protestors there would be no evidence.

"Electronic tallies" are never going to give a free and fair election if those in power are prepared to go that far. Safer to stick with paper ballots and election observers equipped with Mark I eyeballs.

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

#76

Post by crazygringo »

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, just like the official results.

So what point is the article trying to make at the end of the day? Or have I misunderstood the numbers?

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

#77

Post by chrisfinazzo »

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's old, and sometimes things don't come out right, but this is one way out of that hornet's nest.

https://tabula.technology

There's also a CLI if that is more to your liking. If that doesn't do it, there's always the brute-force option of scripting in your language of choice to pull the data out.

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

#78

Post by muyuu »

londons_explore wrote: post #33

The votes surprise me... In many regions one party gets 90+% of the vote. Assuming the numbers are correct, then it suggests that most people are easily swayed by their local peers. Is that common in say the USA?

It happens in the US too. Tribalism and ideological clustering are so similar, they are being used interchangeably these days. But in some traditional countries there are literal clans and tribes voting in blocks.

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

#79

Post by crazygringo »

londons_explore wrote: post #33

The votes surprise me... In many regions one party gets 90+% of the vote. Assuming the numbers are correct, then it suggests that most people are easily swayed by their local peers. Is that common in say the USA?

> it suggests that most people are easily swayed by their local peers.

That feels like a particularly uncharitable interpretation to me.

I think it's more along the lines of that parties and their policies have very different impacts on different regions. So it makes sense to vote on what is beneficial to your region, and a lot of people will agree on that.

So it's not about susceptibility to being "swayed", but genuine policy affecting regions differently.

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

#80

Post by sd9 »

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.

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