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> false claims "This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distributi

> false claims "This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distribution violations are observed with Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing states won by the Republican nominee. The results are robust to two-digit analysis, Monte Carlo simulations of p-values, broad or narrow swing state definitions, and when compared to distributions observed in 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections." - ["Detecting Anomalies in the 2020 US Presidential Election Votes with Benford’s Law" (2020)](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626)

manuelabeledo 3y ago
"Anomalous" in this context only means that there are variances between the 2022 and previous elections. It does not mean that there has been fraud.
- notahacker 3y ago
  The most startling finding, according to the graphs, was that Democrat candidates in swing states have slightly more vote counts whose leading digit was a 4 and slightly fewer starting with a 5 than the null hypothesis distribution... It's fixed, I tell you!
krapp 3y ago
This has been thoroughly debunked at this point. Benford's Law isn't useful for detecting election fraud. [0-2] [0]https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-benford-idUSKBN27Q3AI https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-benford-idUSKBN... [1]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/article/benfords-law-and-the-detection-of-election-fraud/3B1D64E822371C461AF3C61CE91AAF6D https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/a... [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25072280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25072280
defrost 3y ago
Good grief. Check the paper and references first before blindly submitting by title alone. A principal reference to that paper is [1] which strongly states: The proliferation of elections in even those states that are arguably anything but democratic has given rise to a focused interest on developing methods for detecting fraud in the official statistics of a state's election returns. Among these efforts are those that employ Benford's Law, with the most common application being an attempt to proclaim some election or another fraud free or replete with fraud. Despite its apparent utility in looking at other phenomena, Benford's Law is problematical at best as a forensic tool when applied to elections. Looking at simulations designed to model both fair and fraudulent contests as well as data drawn from elections we know, on the basis of other investigations, were either permeated by fraud or unlikely to have experienced any measurable malfeasance, we find that conformity with and deviations from Benford's Law follow no pattern. It is not simply that the Law occasionally judges a fraudulent election fair or a fair election fraudulent. Its “success rate” either way is essentially equivalent to a toss of a coin, thereby rendering it problematical at best as a forensic tool and wholly misleading at worst. Yes - that is a paper that applys Benfords Law to US Election results to see how that turns out .. but NO that paper dos not prove any fraud took place .. it jut reports what happens if Benfords Law is used. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/article/benfords-law-and-the-detection-of-election-fraud/3B1D64E822371C461AF3C61CE91AAF6D https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/a...

manuelabeledo 3y ago

"Anomalous" in this context only means that there are variances between the 2022 and previous elections. It does not mean that there has been fraud.

notahacker 3y ago
The most startling finding, according to the graphs, was that Democrat candidates in swing states have slightly more vote counts whose leading digit was a 4 and slightly fewer starting with a 5 than the null hypothesis distribution... It's fixed, I tell you!

krapp 3y ago

This has been thoroughly debunked at this point. Benford's Law isn't useful for detecting election fraud. [0-2] [0]https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-benford-idUSKBN27Q3AI https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-benford-idUSKBN... [1]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/article/benfords-law-and-the-detection-of-election-fraud/3B1D64E822371C461AF3C61CE91AAF6D https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/a... [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25072280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25072280

defrost 3y ago

Good grief. Check the paper and references first before blindly submitting by title alone. A principal reference to that paper is [1] which strongly states: The proliferation of elections in even those states that are arguably anything but democratic has given rise to a focused interest on developing methods for detecting fraud in the official statistics of a state's election returns. Among these efforts are those that employ Benford's Law, with the most common application being an attempt to proclaim some election or another fraud free or replete with fraud. Despite its apparent utility in looking at other phenomena, Benford's Law is problematical at best as a forensic tool when applied to elections. Looking at simulations designed to model both fair and fraudulent contests as well as data drawn from elections we know, on the basis of other investigations, were either permeated by fraud or unlikely to have experienced any measurable malfeasance, we find that conformity with and deviations from Benford's Law follow no pattern. It is not simply that the Law occasionally judges a fraudulent election fair or a fair election fraudulent. Its “success rate” either way is essentially equivalent to a toss of a coin, thereby rendering it problematical at best as a forensic tool and wholly misleading at worst. Yes - that is a paper that applys Benfords Law to US Election results to see how that turns out .. but NO that paper dos not prove any fraud took place .. it jut reports what happens if Benfords Law is used. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/article/benfords-law-and-the-detection-of-election-fraud/3B1D64E822371C461AF3C61CE91AAF6D https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/a...