OT: Current Affairs and Politics

[Poupou Escobar]

Forensic accounting eh...

He's possibly correct that the distribution of votes is anomalous, but he's hopped out of his lane by making an assessment of intent. Biden winning doesn't mean he's more likely to have committed fraud. You can commit fraud and still lose.

This touches on why science isn't useful for convincing people, since the people that generally need convincing generally can't understand the science. Also, scientists don't tend to get into science because they are good at convincing people. Instead there are entire professions (journalists, politicians, even lawyers) full of people whose primary skill is to sell narratives. These are the ones most likely to seize on science they barely understand in order to support their agendas.

And that's why we're all f**ked.

 

[I'm a loser baby...]

He's possibly correct that the distribution of votes is anomalous, but he's hopped out of his lane by making an assessment of intent. Biden winning doesn't mean he's more likely to have committed fraud. You can commit fraud and still lose.

This touches on why science isn't useful for convincing people, since the people that generally need convincing generally can't understand the science. Also, scientists don't tend to get into science because they are good at convincing people. Instead there are entire professions (journalists, politicians, even lawyers) full of people whose primary skill is to sell narratives. These are the ones most likely to seize on science they barely understand in order to support their agendas.

And that's why we're all f**ked.

A little out of his lane but it sounds like he's had experience not only with identifying fraud but also the perpetrators. I didn't like the explanation though. But if you could break up the state into counties and assess where the anomalies occurred, who won and what the past voting history of that county is, I reckon you could get a fair idea of what happened. And if you can't do it for counties you could still do it for states. Of course then yeah, you've got to convince people it's not just f**ken bullshit.

 

[strider]

A little out of his lane but it sounds like he's had experience not only with identifying fraud but also the perpetrators. I didn't like the explanation though. But if you could break up the state into counties and assess where the anomalies occurred, who won and what the past voting history of that county is, I reckon you could get a fair idea of what happened. And if you can't do it for counties you could still do it for states. Of course then yeah, you've got to convince people it's not just f**ken bullshit.

I'd like to see him do it for various states .... some are supposedly "legit" - do they satisfy this law?

 

[Kornstar]

The nuance of this is that Canberra pollies have a reputation of misogyny; that is that their speech or behavior reflects and fosters a lack of respect and absence of equality. When a reporter asked the female cabinet minister if she thought that Canberra pollie men were merkins, ScoMo interrupted her and talked over the top of her. His lack of respect at the time that she was being asked about the broader lack of respect is comical.

If you think that is over the top PC stuff then each to their own.

The reaction has been over the top. Should he have done it? Probably not but you could tell he was fired up about it and sometimes as someone in power you need to say what you need to say when you need to say it.

We live in an imperfect world with imperfect people.......sometimes you just f**k up. If you think he wouldn't have done it if it were a male standing there you are kidding yourself.

Our economy has been f**ked by a pandemic and we are worried about this shit? FFS!

 

[Gary Gutful]

It's getting messy

Fake news.

 

[strider]

A bit more on the analysis of voting data:

This is quite interesting .... I would like to see more states .... ie ones that are supposedly legit to prove the point of what legit looks like

I know people here have an aversion to clicking and viewing things - so decided to post a few of the images here

These are supposedly legit
- the consistent line is absentee/postals and settles in a consistent line

These are apparently suss
- the consistent line (absentees/postals) has clear jumps ... it shouldn't because these should be a consistent ratio of Dem to Rep votes

 

[I'm a loser baby...]

I'd like to see him do it for various states .... some are supposedly "legit" - do they satisfy this law?

I would imagine so. They'd have to if anyone could take it seriously. I think he said he's going to do more analysis so maybe we'll see.

 

[Gronk]

The reaction has been over the top. Should he have done it? Probably not but you could tell he was fired up about it and sometimes as someone in power you need to say what you need to say when you need to say it.

We live in an imperfect world with imperfect people.......sometimes you just f**k up. If you think he wouldn't have done it if it were a male standing there you are kidding yourself.

Our economy has been f**ked by a pandemic and we are worried about this shit? FFS!

 

[Barry O'Speedwagon]

Forensic accounting eh...

Seriously. the guy either doesn't undersand stats or is being a little disingenuous. Benfords Law is definitely a thing, and is used in audit (by audit firms and the tax department). But it is a risk indicator, not something that can determine that a particular set of numbers has been manipulated. It is also typically focussed on the frequencies of the first 2 digits unless you have a massive sample (and large numbers in the observations).

 

[I'm a loser baby...]

Seriously. the guy either doesn't undersand stats or is being a little disingenuous. Benfords Law is definitely a thing, and is used in audit (by audit firms and the tax department). But it is a risk indicator, not something that can determine that a particular set of numbers has been manipulated. It is also typically focussed on the frequencies of the first 2 digits unless you have a massive sample (and large numbers in the observations).

I've never heard of it. But even if it isn't typically used in this way can it not be? As a layman I'd think that once you get the sample size to a certain amount it should work. And I saw in the comments he says the sample is tens of millions for Georgia. No idea how he's broken it down to get that, given the size of the state. He does seem to mention when looking at them the relationship of 1's and 2's, if that's what you mean.

 

[Barry O'Speedwagon]

I've never heard of it. But even if it isn't typically used in this way can it not be? As a layman I'd think that once you get the sample size to a certain amount it should work. And I saw in the comments he says the sample is tens of millions for Georgia. No idea how he's broken it down to get that, given the size of the state. He does seem to mention when looking at them the relationship of 1's and 2's, if that's what you mean.

The sample isn't equal to the voting population, because then you'd just be looking at numbers that can = 1 or 0 and Benfords Law becomes irrelevant. Benfords Law becomes relevant when you are sampling numbers for which some observations naturally have, say, 3 digts and others 2 digits (or some 6 digts and others 5 or less digits). But, anyway, my central point was with respect to his characterisation of what deviations from Benfords Law can tell you. It can tell you that one set of numebrs has a higher risk of manipluation than another, but it cannot tell you that a particular set of numbers has been manipulated. It's certainly not an irrelevant statistic, but it is not proof of anything and it is prone to misuse. The Law also becomes less useful when some groups of observations naturally have fewer digits than others (for example when regions have different voting populations).

 

[I'm a loser baby...]

The sample isn't equal to the voting population, because then you'd just be looking at numbers that can = 1 or 0 and Benfords Law becomes irrelevant. Benfords Law becomes relevant when you are sampling numbers for which some observations naturally have, say, 3 digts and others 2 digits (or some 6 digts and others 5 or less digits). But, anyway, my central point was with respect to his characterisation of what deviations from Benfords Law can tell you. It can tell you that one set of numebrs has a higher risk of manipluation than another, but it cannot tell you that a particular set of numbers has been manipulated. It's certainly not an irrelevant statistic, but it is not proof of anything and it is prone to misuse. The Law also becomes less useful when some groups of observations naturally have fewer digits than others (for example when regions have different voting populations).

OK but if you had an army of forensic accountants and assuming they're all decent at their job and not corrupt, could you use them to examine the entire election and get a reasonable idea about the level of fraud, where, and by which side?

 

[Bandwagon]

It's all shit

Trumps little adventure here will fall apart, and the GOP will be left with deciding whether it's worth trying to gain the college through faithless electors or not.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

 

[Barry O'Speedwagon]

OK but if you had an army of forensic accountants and assuming they're all decent at their job and not corrupt, could you use them to examine the entire election and get a reasonable idea about the level of fraud, where, and by which side?

Not really, unless fraud was extreme and stupid, and of a very particular type. The method has no power, for instance, to detect fraud relating to inelligible / dead electors voting , people voting twice, valid ballot papers being destroyed. It has some power when intermediaries are making up the details of summary data. For instance, if there's a business that is running a ponzi scheme that requires creating fase evidence of revenues, and they do so by fabricating invoices, the perpetrators tend to randomise all the digits in the amounts invoiced. The distribution of 1st, 2nd digits etc over a large sample will have too few 1's and 2s in the early positions.

 

[Bandwagon]

Maths guy who explains maths for a living explains why this whole deal is bunkum.

 

[Hollywood Jesus]

These are apparently suss
- the consistent line (absentees/postals) has clear jumps ... it shouldn't because these should be a consistent ratio of Dem to Rep votes

Actually, an ever so slight lean to R (down) as rural votes come in later.

And the jumps make sense from a fraud point of view"
* Let the in person run and see where everything sits;
* Let the postals start to come in, see how they trend, and you can get yourself a projection;
* Insert ballots at 4am to bump to where you need to overcome the trend.

Virginia is weird, though, unless that was going way different than they ever thought it would (as in it was going to flip R pretty nicely, which is wierd).

 

[Hollywood Jesus]

And in MI, apparently 130+ sworn affidavits for one county (which I think is Wayne County).

 

[Hollywood Jesus]

Chairman of the FEC. Unsure of any political affiliation or supposed partisanship with this guy:

 

[strider]

Maths guy who explains maths for a living explains why this whole deal is bunkum.

Yeah that first benfords video just seemed like a merkin making shit up. It didnt even seem like what he was doing fit the law ... he only had 150 counties or some shit and it wasnt far off matching anyway