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The paper did mention (IIRC) that the ballot counts themselves didn't appear to have any tendency to align with "round" numbers (1250, 1300, etc) which they lik

• amooeba 10y ago
  (One of the authors here.) Actually the ballot counts do have some tendency to align with round numbers. We did not discuss this in the paper because we felt that this "anomaly" can easily be contested, precisely as @jcalvinowens argued up the thread (it is written in our discussion section too). So what we say instead is that the round percentages anomaly persists even if we exclude all ballot stations with round ballot counts, i.e. it cannot be explained as a by-product of round counts. There are other problems associated with round ballot counts. Here is a funny one: a sizable number of polling stations reported round number of counted ballots, coinciding exactly with the total number of ballots received by the polling station prior to the election day (this information is available too). As if so many people came to vote that every single ballot was used up, turnout being close to 100%. There is little doubt that it was all made up out of thin air.