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Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

903 points by kgwgk 2y ago

aa_is_op 2y ago
God, I love mathematicians!
- acchow 2y ago
  There’s also the really powerful Benford’s Law which has been admitted in criminal court cases!
  - deleted 2y ago
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- TechDebtDevin 2y ago
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- throwaway59148 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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koube 2y ago
Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but isn't every vote total extremely unlikely if you make it precise to the exact number of votes? Like the chances of getting n+1, n+2... votes is roughly the same probability. For example the probability of getting [1,2,3,4,5,6] as the winning numbers in the lottery is the same as any random set of numbers.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  Yes. For one set. But if your next lottery is 4,5,6,7,8,9 and then 11,12,13,14,15,16 it becomes improbable. The issue here is that a bunch of the percentages imply super round numbers. The signal isn’t that there’s a round number. It’s that they’re all round numbers.
  - neura 2y ago
    I've tried to explain this a couple of times, but I keep falling back on the calculations used to show the problem (that it's not the numbers themselves, but the pattern). This comment nailed it with simply "It's that they're all round numbers". I've always been terrible at rephrasing things to make stronger points in a more concise way. Thanks! :D
- tumult 2y ago
  That’s not what this article is about. Read the article.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    FWIW, statistics is hard. Having read the article, I came away with similar questions and I appreciate the sibling comments clarifying.
    - tumult 2y ago
      Fair enough. Sorry.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  The question was "How likely is it that the votes worked out so well that they were basically even 1/10 percentages and not ugly numbers?" So for a given number of votes, which determines a split, how many times does the split come out so nice? Answer: Effectively none - there are always ugly numbers with lots of decimal places. Now that analysis comes after they conjecture that the percentages were fixed apriori. The first comment "That seems fishy" basically says this. "How can it be that we're so close to even 1/10 percentages. How can it be that we're exactly one vote off from nice 1/10 percentages"? Fishy indeed - must be rounding. And they tell you: it's very unlikely to be 1 vote off from nice 0.1% percentage splits.
  - tumult 2y ago
    Another way of writing it out: How likely is it that you'd get these votes distributions 51.2000000% 44.2000000% 04.6000000% exactly? With all of those clean 0s? Very low. But it's also possible that there was sloppy reporting and the vote counts were re-processed at some point in the chain and rounded to one decimal place.
    - neura 2y ago
      It's more that if you start with those clean, single decimal percentages and a total number of votes, you'd end up with decimals for number of votes, which isn't possible. So if you then remove the decimal from the votes, you get slightly different percentage values when taken to 7 decimal places, but the original decimals would still be the same. The chances of those numbers occurring normally for all 3 vote counts together is just ridiculously tiny.
    - deleted 2y ago
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    - achempion 2y ago
      The numbers are definitely sus, but what if they were 52.2543689% 44.2689426% 04.6345625% How likely is it that you'd get these votes distributions exactly with these exact tails? Compared to all other possibilities?
- paxys 2y ago
  The second half of the article answers this very question. Here's an example – if I generate 10 random numbers between 1 and 100, what is more likely: all ten are multiples of 10, or at least one is not a multiple of 10?
- neura 2y ago
  I think you are correct, but that's missing the point of the article's content. I'm just a programmer, not a math expert, but I believe these statements are accurate. 1. It's very easy to arrive at the provided values, if you make up some percentages that only go to a single decimal value (1/10th). Though doing so would result in vote counts that are decimal, as well. Then if you just remove the decimal from those values, the given percentages don't change enough to be incorrect, but even when taken to 7 decimal places, the new values are pretty clearly due to the rounding (44.2%: 44.1999989%, 4.6%: 4.6000039%). 2. While yes, the chance of these vote counts coming up in this kind of pattern is similar to the example you provided, even if you were using 0-9 for your example of 6 values, the total combinations is about an order of magnitude less than the total vote count provided here. 3. The finer point made is that there's a very small chance for one of the vote counts to show up as a number that so nicely fits the single decimal percentage, but in this case, all 3 vote counts fit this pattern. The calculations are shown for just 2 of the candidates (so not including the "other") resulting only a 1 in 100 million chance.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  > For example the probability of getting [1,2,3,4,5,6] as the winning numbers in the lottery is the same as any random set of numbers. Yes, but the comparison is not to "any random set of numbers" it's "all other random sets of numbers" The candidate got 52.200000% of the vote instead of any other percentage, not another specific percentage.
  - happyopossum 2y ago
    > The candidate got 52.200000% of the vote instead of any other percentage, not another specific percentage No, he got 51.1999971%. It’s right there in the second table of the article
    - ithkuil 2y ago
      Some other comment in this discussion claims that if you nudged the total count integer +-1 you'll never hit 52.20000000% exactly hinting at the possibility that they choose 52.2% exactly, then computed the total counts which would be a non-integer and then just rounded that. Once re-computing the percentage from that number you end up with the slightly less round-looking 51.1999971%.
- enoch_r 2y ago
  If the lottery administrator's daughter wins the lottery, he may say "no, no - don't you see, her probability of getting the winning numbers is exactly the same as anyone else's!" But in reality, we can say that: - her probability of winning in the world where her father is cheating is very high - her probability of winning in the world where her father isn't cheating is very low Together these two facts give us evidence about which world we're actually inhabiting - though of course we can never be completely certain! In the same way, yes, it's equally (im)probable that the winning percent will be 51.211643879% or 51.200000000%. But the latter is more likely to occur in a world where Maduro said "get me 51.2% of the votes" and someone just did that mechanically with a pocket calculator, which is good evidence about which world we live in.
- ChadNauseam 2y ago
  The other commenters point at the explanation but don't explain it rigorously IMO. Here's how I'd say it. 60% is a nice, round percentage. In an honest election, this is just as likely to be reported as any nearby percentage, like 59.7% or 60.3%. As you mention, any particular percentage is equally (and extremely) unlikely. SUppose this you estimate the chance of this occurring, given an honest election, is 1/1000. 60% however is a much more likely outcome if the election results were faked sloppily. A sloppy fake is reasonably likely to say "Well, why not just say we won 60%". Suppose you estimate the chance of this occurring, given a sloppily faked election, are 1/100. Bayes' theorem tells us that we can use this information to "update our beliefs" in favor of the election being faked sloppily and away from the election being honest. Say we previously (before seeing this evidence) thought the honest:faked odds were 5:1. That is, we felt it was 5 times more likely that it was honest than that it was sloppily faked. We can then multiply the "honest" by 1/1000 (chance of seeing this if it was honest), and the "faked" by 1/100 (chance of seeing this if it was faked), to get new odds of (5 * 1/1000):(1 * 1/100), which simplifies to 1:2. So in light of the new evidence, and assuming these numbers that I made up, it seems twice as likely that the election was faked. This exact analysis of course relies on numbers I made up, but the critical thing to see here is that as long as we're more likely to see this result given the election being faked than given it being honest, it is evidence of it being faked.
  - a0123 2y ago
    Yeah, they just forgot to report 59.869280705993% instead of 60%. They would have got away with it too, if it weren't for those cunning statisticians. They just forgot to come up with a random, credible number. Happens to the best of us I guess. To think they could have got away with it if only they hadn't forgotten. That´s what you get when you defer the dirty work to interns on their first day, I guess. Which you always rely on to stay in power. Wouldn't want to rely on competent advisers who would have reminded you to come up with a non-round number with 8 or 9 decimals.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      > They would have got away with it too Well, on this case they wouldn't. The smoking gun is their refusal to publish the counting totals, the round ratio is just some extra confirmation.
- deleted 2y ago
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casenmgreen 2y ago
If the post looks odd and makes no sense, it's because CF is blocking image loads. I think there are two screenshots which are missing in the initial text.
paxys 2y ago
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- energy123 2y ago
  If it was just 2 candidates, it would be slightly more believable, a 1 in 10,000 chance instead of 1 in 100 million chance.
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    Well, that is Maduro, a 1 in 100 million leader. There are fewer than 28 million people in Venezuela so the rest of us better watch out!
glass1122 2y ago
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- acchow 2y ago
  Which propaganda is being spread here?
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    Something something liberal western mathematics.
- sanex 2y ago
  It's even more surprising that you can't argue with chavistas since there aren't any.
  - pydry 2y ago
    There are plenty in Venezuela, all speaking Spanish to each other. You would never ever run into one online on a predominantly English speaking website or in America/Europe in person, but you might encounter one of the upper classes. I used to work with one of them. She complained that Chavez stole her family's second home. I presumed her family, like America, also supported the attempted military coup shortly after he was elected in 2002.
    - sanex 2y ago
      I spent 5 weeks in Venezuela this year.
      - pydry 2y ago
        Good for you. I spent 4 weeks there too a few years ago.
        sanex 2y ago
suzzer99 2y ago
More on this. The Carter Foundation, the only impartial observers who were in Venezuela for the election, and who previously defended Venezuela's election system following Chavez's 2004 win, has called on Maduro's government to release local vote tallies, which apparently it is never going to do: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/world/americas/venezuela-election-carter-center-democracy.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/world/americas/venezuela-...
- deleted 2y ago
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- culi 2y ago
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  - forgetfulness 2y ago
    Maduro is also saying that the mass protests he's facing are the product of Chilean-trained operatives acting against him, he says many things.
    - pydry 2y ago
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      - fsckboy 2y ago
        just because you are paranoid that everybody is out to get you doesn't mean that everybody doesn't have good reason and that you don't really deserve it
        deleted 2y ago
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      - kergonath 2y ago
        > Gee I wonder why he might be paranoid about foreign operatives trying to violently oust him Because he’s an unpopular dictator who knows fairly well for having seen it in the recent past that you can go very quickly from getting 99% of the vote in an election to dead in a ditch? In his position you’re either paranoid or dead. This does not make him a better person.
golemiprague 2y ago
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dinobones 2y ago
Here's this re-explained with a simpler example. Imagine you have 1,000 votes. You want to show that your political party got 60% of the vote, so, you claim: My party: 600 votes Opposition: 300 votes Other: 100 votes Presto, we got a good breakdown. The people will buy it.... It makes sense that 600 is exactly 60% of 1,000, because this was an artificial example. But in the real world, we don't get 1,000 votes. We get 10,058,774 votes. What are the odds that the % of votes you get is a round number like 60%, or 51.2%? They're infinitesimally small. You're much more likely to get ugly numbers, like 59.941323854% of the vote, unless you choose some artificial percentage and work backward.
- nikolay 2y ago
  What's wrong with announcing results with rounded percentages?!
  - kadoban 2y ago
    Nothing. The problem is when you obviously picked the rounded percentages that sounded good first and then calculated the number of votes from that.
    - nikolay 2y ago
      Not necessarily. If the person announcing was given the number of votes and rounded percentages, then this could explain it. For example, in my country, they always report only turnout as a percentage with a single decimal and the share of each candidate/party with up to 2 decimals, never the number of votes - who cares about the absolute numbers anyway?
      - lxgr 2y ago
        But they did report the absolute number of votes.
        nikolay 2y ago
stapled_socks 2y ago
To play the devil's advocate: It's possible that the person making the announcement was only given the rounded percentages and the total number of votes, and then "created" the number of votes per candidate to fit to the format of the announcement. That would be sloppy, but not malicious.
- solids 2y ago
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  - tomrod 2y ago
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- nikolay 2y ago
  I've never seen any preliminary results announcing numbers of votes - it's always rounded up percentages with 1 or 2 decimals.
  - ptero 2y ago
    If the vote numbers were not provided, this would not have been an issue. But in this case they did announce the vote numbers.
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    I'd say it's extremely common to announce numbers of votes both as they come in and when the final total is known. Here in the US major news networks (ABC, CNN, Fox, 270towin, and others) all have live maps that show the total number of votes + total percentages during the voting period. They usually also let you hover over the states/counties to see the percentages and votes for the particular area. E.g. here's the Fox map https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results and total votes comes first in the same font as percentages marked to the side. During the election these totals and percentages are live numbers. And in the US we're not even that interested in the popular vote since it's all about the electoral college which has historically not always aligned with the popular vote numbers anyways yet we still list the totals as they come in.
TechDebtDevin 2y ago
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danihh 2y ago
Coming from a family that lived in soviet russia (and still partly is), this reminds me of Putin’s 85% approval rating. But if you ask anybody in private, nobody voted for him…
- deleted 2y ago
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consumer451 2y ago
This is a bit of an aside, but as a geopolitical news junkie, what I keep searching on Google News is: Venezuela election Lula How his government reacts is going to be a major factor. Given Lula's past dedication to Chavezism, his post-election reaction has made me hopeful for change in Venezuela. What is directly related to TFA is that both the USA and Brazil want to see the voting data. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/biden-lula-discuss-venezuela-election-tuesday-sources-say-2024-07-30/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/biden-lula-discuss-ve...
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Given Lula's past dedication to (sic) Chavezism Brazil has quasi-presidential system, but it's Chamber of Deputies has the actual power. In the 2000s, Lula's PT was the largest party (usually around 20-25% of the total seats) and could as such strongarm smaller leftist parties into a governing coalition with an absolute majority. Lula won the presidential election in 2022, but his party PT was the 3rd largest, and center-right parties have created a vote sharing agreement with his party. The anti-Bolsonaro center-right parties have 172 seats in the Chamber, Lula's governing coalition has 226. You need 257 to have a majority. This means Lula has to severely tone down his rhetoric otherwise a subset of the independent parties would defect to Bolsonaro's coalition. > but as a geopolitical news junkie As someone who worked in the space, stop. It's a waste of time as you're not in a position to make changes, nor are you reading primary or peer reviewed secondary sources. If you insist on continuing, use a mix of - Academic books (generally HUP, OUP, UCUP though the occasion PUP is alright) - White Papers from top tier think tanks (use the UPenn Rankings [0]) - Axios and Politico - their target readership is aimed directly at those working on the Hill or Hill adjacent Just sticking with these 3 types of resources should be enough. Also, IGNORE anything on Twitter, Reddit, or HN (ironic ik). The lesswrong/credibledefense/zeihan types are all idiots ime. Using an "objective" tone doesn't make rubbish "objective" [0] - https://www.bruegel.org/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2020-Global-Go-To-Think-Tank-Index-Report-Bruegel.pdf https://www.bruegel.org/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploa...
  - shufflerofrocks 2y ago
    >Also, IGNORE anything on Twitter, Reddit, or HN (ironic ik). The lesswrong/credibledefense/zeihan types are all idiots ime. Using an "objective" tone doesn't make rubbish "objective" Not to mention these sites are FILLED to the brim with bots. Eg. In 2013, the most "reddit-addicted" area was Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, with largest amount of activity [0]. Eglin was one of the few places used in a study for testing social media manipulation by Pentagon [1] And not to mention the Russian/Chinese/Indian bots [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit... [1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644 http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644
ein0p 2y ago
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user3939382 2y ago
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- digging 2y ago
  Citation needed
  - neura 2y ago
    I love that this comment came up directly after (at the time I'm writing this comment) "Math doesn't care about your feelings."
    - user3939382 2y ago
      That has nothing to do with my comment. There's a reasonable explanation for the anomaly and none of this has anything to do with my feelings.
  - user3939382 2y ago
    Sure here you go https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2024/07/31/falsifying-vote-tallies-is-very-hard-heres-why/ https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2024/07/31/falsifying-vote... https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13801/ https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13801/ https://www.ndi.org/e-voting-guide/examples/e-voting-audits-venezuela https://www.ndi.org/e-voting-guide/examples/e-voting-audits-...
    - digging 2y ago
      I just read your first article and it's decent. As I expected, it makes no attempt to offer any evidence that the CNE has published reliable results, or that the math in TFA is faulty in any way. It simply talks about the difficulty of falsifying specific documents, and how that would make it difficult for a false report to continue when pressed (which is exactly what's happening - Maduro is pressed, and has no evidence to show). And it concludes with a pretty strong suggestion that the CNE's unverifiable tallies are, in fact, a lie. So, I appreciate the independent confirmation that Maduro's victory is a likely sham. It's also quite reassuring to note that producing actual fake ballots would, in fact, be extremely difficult - just as you claimed! That gives me hope that Maduro will fail to convince others of his victory, since it's probably a complete fabrication.
pydry 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  Ah, this is hardly the US government trying to stage their own coup. But it tracks with their history when they did try such things themselves.
  - pydry 2y ago
    It was just planned in the US and executed with logistical support from the US with a green light given by Trump (who announced he had no "direct" role in the operation).
    - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
      That’s crazy you were in the room for that decision. Can you tell us more?
      - pydry 2y ago
        ...you didnt read the article at all did you?
RND_RandoM 2y ago
Didn't they show the distribution of votes on the TV and the sum there was 106%?
- victorbjorklund 2y ago
  109%. Which of course isnt better.
- feedforward 2y ago
  That would make this whole article bogus. Actually it didn't add up to 106%, although the reality doesn't matter. That the mud the CIA, NED etc. throw on Venezuela is all that matters.
- bjourne 2y ago
  https://x.com/weegeedutchie/status/1817903230946337121 https://x.com/weegeedutchie/status/1817903230946337121 No one cared to listen to the Spanish-language broadcast where it is explained that the 4.6% is for the other candidates combined. The stats indeed sum up to 100%.
whalesalad 2y ago
Anyone else stuck in an endless "Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds." cloudflare captcha loop?
- NJRBailey 2y ago
  I get this due to a browser extension I have (in my case it is the extension FreeTree, but chances are you aren't using that). Maybe try disabling all extensions and try the captcha again?
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Are you sure you're human?
farceSpherule 2y ago
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jiveturkey 2y ago
> That seems fishy They didn't explain why and it wasn't obvious to me. I had to think embarrassingly long about it. It's because the tally by extended decimal shows that each of the 3 rows show that the tally was back-filled from a one-decimal-place desired result. With only 3 rows I'm not so sure how strongly this proves anything but it certainly is fishy. EDIT: oh wait they do explain it. But only after they stated the conclusion so matter-of-factly first. I'd stopped reading because right then and there I thought I missed some fact or point earlier, or that they otherwise were presenting it as obvious and why wasn't it obvious to me?
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Aren't percentages typically rounded? I don't see any US results where it's reported that X candidate got 51.31112341% of the vote even if that's correct. More likely they would announce 51.31% or maybe even just 51.3%. In fact, just looked up these results by CNN: https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president So Biden is reported as receiving 51.3% of the votes which is reported as exactly 81,284,666 votes. Though clearly if you sum all the votes and calculate Biden's share, you would not get exactly 51.3% but some other number, perhaps 51.31112341% (couldn't do the actual math as the page only reports Biden and Trump's votes but I believe there were other very small candidates who must have received some small number of votes). And if you took exactly 51.3% of all votes you would not get 81,284,666 but some other number close to that. So I don't follow what's suspicious here? (As to whether there was election fraud or not, that's a completely different question, not commenting on that here.) Update: Never mind the above, I had in my haste misread/misunderstood the point of the article :/ (see reply below)
- PaulStatezny 2y ago
  It seems you only skimmed the article. The concern is not rounded percentage points. The concern is that the total votes happen to be the closest integers possible to come up with exactly those single-decimal percentages. Indicating that the total votes were derived from the percentages, not from an actual tally of votes. It's HIGHLY improbable that out of 10,058,774 votes, the distribution between Maduro, Gonzalez, and "Other" would all yield percentages that are effectively 1-decimal percentages.
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    Ah, got it. I had indeed misread/misunderstood the article.
- marinmania 2y ago
  Venezuela released the vote totals https://www.albatcp.org/en/2024/07/29/cne-announced-nicolas-maduro-moros-victory-with-51-20/ https://www.albatcp.org/en/2024/07/29/cne-announced-nicolas-... Their vote totals happen to align (almost perfectly) with round percentages Fwiw most governments don't even report percentages. They just report totals and the percentages are added (by sites like CNN) for clarity https://results.elections.ny.gov/document/468?page=1 https://results.elections.ny.gov/document/468?page=1
notjoemama 2y ago
I recall having read about elections in Africa and the troubles they faced. I can't find it now, but there was one particular website offering a very detailed but rigorous approach to determining the legitimacy of elections. I'll offer this article from the BBC as a stand in for the criteria (from 2016): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190 Vote rigging: How to spot the tell-tale signs 1. Too many voters 2. A high turnout in specific areas 3. Large numbers of invalid votes 4. More votes than ballot papers issued 5. Results that don't match 6. Delay in announcing results I would encourage anyone from Venezuela to look into the history of elections in Africa. It is well documented and criteria well supported.
- the_af 2y ago
  > I would encourage anyone from Argentina Surely you meant Venezuela?
  - notjoemama 2y ago
    Thank you! I had just been reading on another site about the US and it's "involvement" in a previous election in Argentina. Appreciate the correction. Oh my, I need to step away from the computer today. :/
- sam36 2y ago
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  - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
    We're still clinging to this in 2024? Wow.
    - adamtaylor_13 2y ago
      Suppose there was legitimacy to this, which many believe, why wouldn’t we still talk about this in 2024? Are we not allowed to discuss history?
dadjoker 2y ago
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bearve 2y ago
The error in this analysis occurs due to the use of an Excel or LibreOffice spreadsheet that when the cell size is reduced it rounds to 51.2% and when it is increased it gives 51.199997136828
- energy123 2y ago
  51.199997136828 is what you get when you do =ROUND(N_votes * 0.512)/N_votes. So it may as well be 51.2%.
- phonon 2y ago
  You need an integer number of votes, so you would expect it cannot be equal to an exact fraction. But being within a single vote bound is incredibly suspicious.
paganel 2y ago
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- GaggiX 2y ago
  The US now controls mathematics, the CIA is so advanced that they are changing how mathematics works to accuse Maduro of fraud, brilliant.
ThinkBeat 2y ago
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- maduroahole 2y ago
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- colordrops 2y ago
  Most people in the US aren't even aware of the constant State Department and CIA effort to overturn democracy in Venezuela so they can appoint a US corporation friendly leader. Columbia Uni is a hotbed for State Department types. This is clearly a concerted effort to create a narrative. The US doesn't even allow external election monitors for its own elections. At least Venezuela had some level of monitoring. The hypocrisy is abject.
- culi 2y ago
  To be fair, the opposition leader was basically handpicked and funded by the US
- q1w2 2y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your comment. Maduro/Chavez were Soviet/Russia backed, and have since not only wrecked the country, but have now seized permanent dictatorial power.
webscalist 2y ago
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worstspotgain 2y ago
This should remind us that "One Person, One Vote" can all too easily slip into "One Person, One Vote, One Time." For Venezuela that one time was in ~1998.
- oceanplexian 2y ago
  I guess it might be quite ironic but if people want to vote in a dictatorship, don’t they have the right to under a true democracy?
  - worstspotgain 2y ago
    No, that's a meta-democratic vote, not a democratic vote. Many constitutions disqualify insurgents and revolutionaries from running for office for this reason. At a minimum you'd have to follow the super-majority process for amending the constitution if there is one. In practice, it's no different from having a revolution. Might as well wear the shoe if it fits. Congrats to the generalissimo dictator!
    - oceanplexian 2y ago
      In this case the question would be, do citizens in a democracy have the right to dissolve their government peaceably, provided they meet whatever threshold is required in that system (Could be a super majority, for the sake of argument)? I’d argue it must be or it’s not really a democracy.
      - worstspotgain 2y ago
        They have the "right" to have a revolution too - many countries treasure the revolutions they had. They can amend the constitution and make another democracy. They can also amend the constitution and make a dictatorship. Or just have a dictatorship without bothering. Those do not need constitutions at all. To have a vote that turns a democracy into a non-democracy is a meta-democratic vote, not a democratic vote. Abusing a democratic system to surreptitiously make a non-democratic system is just a caveat that dictators find convenient to use.
johnklos 2y ago
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- zamadatix 2y ago
  They're probably just happy to keep the site somewhat reachable during spikes like this without constantly babying it. I.e. I doubt they are interested in filtering itself as much as even less interested in alternatives.
  - johnklos 2y ago
    There are so many abuse protection companies out there that don't stigmatize non-western Internet users. Also, do we really think that Columbia's IT people are that bad? I doubt a page like this would get a substantial DDoS. Making it inaccessible to half the world, particularly much of the country that the article is about, is conceding ahead of time to the people that might want to DDoS a page like this in the first place.
    - zamadatix 2y ago
      > There are so many abuse protection companies out there that don't stigmatize non-western Internet users. And there are also cases it's apparent and relevant to grandstand about, this is not one. The DDOS pages required me to go through hoops and try several devices even browsing from the US to this US site. Not typical, sure, but it is what makes the hyper charged complaints feel particularly off center. > Also, do we really think that Columbia's IT people are that bad? Nah, they are probably great. Likely very busy and wishing they had more staff/time like most "cost center" IT teams though. > I doubt a page like this would get a substantial DDoS. Any particular page is unlikely to get a DDoS but the site as a whole is likely to get them relatively frequently (disgruntled students and the like on top of the usual gamut) which is why the entire site is fronted by a CDN and given a single protection policy rather than setting everything up for each page posted. > Making it inaccessible to half the world, particularly much of the country that the article is about, is conceding ahead of time to the people that might want to DDoS a page like this in the first place. Again, these are probably good points on a general Cloudflare rant but posting them in this case actually makes the argument sound weaker since it's a presumed cause that doesn't seem to be the actual cause. In an ideal world where we had extra IT time and could solve every problem and were talking about generalities of providers like Cloudflare I'd 100% agree with you. Sometimes reality gets in the way and it's not the reason we want to get fired up about or the reason we want to get fired up about isn't as easy or important to solve as we'd like it to be in the particular case though. Alternatively, if the topic were about Cloudflare instead of this particular school hosting this particular article I'd still agree as well. In this case it's none of the above - and why I say it's about not needing to baby it instead of an alternative. Similar load based protections for this site would also have kicked in with any provider, regardless our thoughts on Cloudflare.
osigurdson 2y ago
I think we are going to have to give up anonymity in the name of democracy. Unless you can confirm that your vote has been correctly counted, how can you ever be certain what they have done with it?
- ranon 2y ago
  Isn't this exactly what freedomtool aims to solve? https://freedomtool.org/#/doc https://freedomtool.org/#/doc
- mplewis 2y ago
  Can you think of any problems that would arise from non-anonymous voting?
  - osigurdson 2y ago
    Of course, there is the whole concept of forced votes, etc. But it seems unlikely that this could be simultaneously widespread and clandestine. Everything is a tradeoff.
feedforward 2y ago
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- sam36 2y ago
  It's also funny to see the current president removed to "preserve democracy".
  - dimpleddang 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - hypeatei 2y ago
    Removed in what way? He dropped as a presidential candidate, not from the office itself.
jijji 2y ago
some reporting [0] is claiming the opposite: 2.75 million votes for Maduro and 6.27 million for his rival, Edmundo Gonzalez. [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/government-opposition-both-claim-venezuela-election-win-official-results-2024-07-29/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/government-opposition...
EGreg 2y ago
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Waterluvian 2y ago
I used to think that there’s something terribly embarrassing about watching people like these lying in such a pathetically obvious way. Like catching my 5 year old in a lie. But I think I’m realizing that it simply doesn’t matter. They just need the “forged document” to hold up in their hands. Not to survive scrutiny.
mysore 2y ago
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MontagFTB 2y ago
This reminds me of the story how the height of Mt. Everest was first measured at exactly 29,000 feet. The surveyor’s boss at the time added two feet thinking no one would trust such an exact number.
- adin8mon 2y ago
  I wonder why he added two feet instead of three, or some decimal.
culi 2y ago
No one has yet to post the actual official statement by the CNE. It doesn't seem too unlikely that they had a total vote count as well as the percentages for each candidate and released those. It feels like people are jumping to some major conclusions in this thread
- eirikbakke 2y ago
  Here is the CNE press conference where the numbers were announced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7g4y4M4s8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7g4y4M4s8
  - culi 2y ago
    Wonderful, thanks! I really struggled to find this. Funnily enough they give different percentages. 51.1% to 44.2% round and round we go
    - tptacek 2y ago
      No. The percentages reported don't matter. These are the same absolute vote numbers; the percentage they work out to is what matters. This seems to be tripping a lot of people up.
      - culi 2y ago
        It certainly does! Watch the video. No total number is ever reported This means that "total votes" number was worked backwards by a third party. It's not even the CNE's fuckup
        tptacek 2y ago
        No. Watch the video. After Gonzalez' result, he reads the results para otros candidatos†. It's the same as the number in this post. It literally doesn't matter what else happens after this; you can reconstruct the result, after less than 2 minutes of the video's runtime. It's cooked. † as you can see, i am not a fluent speaker of Spanish, and i managed to work it out :)
wesselbindt 2y ago
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- jml7c5 2y ago
  >it seems like there's no evidence of the government posting these vote tallies They were released at a press conference. They read out both the numbers and the percentages. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7g4y4M4s8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7g4y4M4s8 It is still plausible that this is an Excel error, but it's certainly suspicious.
  - quink 2y ago
    http://www.sunai.gob.ve/sunai-web/public/index.php/publicacion/venezuela-celebra-elecciones-presidenciales-con-participacion-historica-y-reeleccion-de-nicolas-maduro http://www.sunai.gob.ve/sunai-web/public/index.php/publicaci... according to the acronym that’s some superintendent related to internal audits, that seems pretty official. But still won’t stop the “the US manipulated the results crowd”, nothing will.
AI_beffr 2y ago
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- lazyeye 2y ago
  Not sure if related but also a book on this as well:- https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Your-Vote-Inside-Election/dp/1510776699/ https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Your-Vote-Inside-Election/dp... Whether or not there was election fraud I don't know. All I know is I cannot trust anything the mainstream media has to say on the topic (or any other topic for that matter).
  - cheema33 2y ago
    Instead of reading conspiratorial books from authors with a profit motive, ask a simple question. If there was election fraud, how come the conservative super majority in the supreme court is not all over it? Ask for evidence first, before putting your faith in conspiracy theories, from books or movies. If you believe in things without evidence, and then vote based on that, we're all screwed. This is the path to ideocracy.
    - lazyeye 2y ago
      I said I dont know if there was election fraud? I'm guessing there almost certainly was some level of election fraud, whether it was sufficient to sway the election I don't know. You seem to be arguing that if it appears in a book, then it's defacto a conspiracy theory driven by the profit motive. (The assumption being that everyone you disagree with is greedy and manipulative whilst your motives are pure of course). Books can outline evidence too? Maybe you should read the book first before jumping to uninformed conclusions yourself. And anyone with eyes and a brain can see the media lies constantly (by obsfucation, cherry-picking, deflection etc). So again, I don't know what the truth is but I certainly would never accept the media narrative on face value.
    - commandlinefan 2y ago
      For the same reason that I doubt anything will come of this in Venezuela either.
nbzso 2y ago
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cokeandpepsi 2y ago
Hard to imagine a incumbant who destoryed the country while millions flee won the election, also hard to imagine he's going anywhere
atleastoptimal 2y ago
It's clear Maduro is running a near dictatorship and will do anything to keep power. The country is doing absolutely horribly, all due to mismanagement. Even with proof of fraud, he will pull whatever is needed to avoid stepping down at this point, as is the case with all autocrats.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  When a country start building statues in every major city of the current running government leader, you are already past _near dictatorship_. This is full cult of personality and dictatorship bullshit. EDIT: I saw images of venezuelans destroying statues all over the country but my partner who has been following better told me they were statues of Hugo Chavez, not Nicolás Maduro.
noobermin 2y ago
The point of the article which I missed: the issue here is that the vote totals are very close to their 0.1% place roundings after multiplying the total votes times the percentages, suggesting that the vote totals were simply faked by taking the total votes and multiplying them by percentages precise only to the 0.1% place. I had mistakenly thought the quoted twitter post found it weird that the vote totals had the same leading digits as the percentages, which absolutely makes sense when the total vote count is near a multiple of 100. For example >>> 0.5123 * 1_002_232 513443.45359999995 I had pulled an all-nighter (writing a grant proposal actually) and was steaming mad reading this and had to scroll a bit. May be a comment like this will help someone else out who might be confused.
- energy123 2y ago
  > the issue here is that the vote totals are very close to their 0.1% place roundings after multiplying the total votes times the percentages That's right, but the conclusion is a bit stronger than just "very close". There was no other integer that could have been closer, which is consistent with them rounding their fraudulent vote count up/down to the nearest integer.
  - notfed 2y ago
    Yeah, "very close" is not the right wording: "EXACTLY" is.
bjourne 2y ago
The most important part of the article is buried in the PS:es: > Commenter Ryan points out that you could also explain this data pattern as a result of sloppy post-processing, if votes were counted correctly, then reported to the nearest percentage point, and then some intermediary mistakenly multiplied the (rounded) percentages by the total vote and reported that. I have no idea; you'd want to know where those particular numbers were coming from. Author has no idea about how the vote counting process works, yet he spreads FUD. There are many plausible reasons why the tallies are "suspiciously well-rounded". The result was announced when it, according to the Venezuelan electoral commission, was clear that Maduro had an insurmountable lead. The cutoff point may just have been 51.2% with less than X% of the votes remaining. We don't know how their statistical modelling works.
throwaway14356 2y ago
if only we had secure computing devices. Imagine a useful application of blockchain. A historic first :p
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  In the US we have known-flawed closed-source machines where the company executives that make them also make clearly political statements that favor the side that used to be against those machines. I have zero confidence they’re going to leap frog the US in election security. Retro. Paper, no mail, vote one day on a holiday, count by that night, all manual all reviewed. This just is not somewhere we need a high tech solution.
  - Axsuul 2y ago
    We do need a better solution because running elections is very expensive while voter participation is not great if you have to show up in person.
    - notfed 2y ago
      That expense is worth our democracy not getting hacked.
    - weberer 2y ago
      I disagree. I think the bar is low enough already. All you have to do is show up to the closest school. Its so easy that 10 year olds do it every day.
      - Axsuul 2y ago
        10 year olds don't have jobs and responsibilities.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
    >Paper, no mail, vote one day on a holiday, count by that night, all manual all reviewed. And voter ID required
debdut 2y ago
51.1999971, 41.1999989, 4.6000039, In this 3 numbers there are total 9+9+8=26 digits, if these 3 numbers are chosen randomly, what's the probability that there are 10 9's with 2 block of 4 consecutive 9's, 5 1's, 4 0's? Let's approach this step-by-step using combinatorics: 1) First, let's consider the total number of possible arrangements: We have 26 digits in total, and the order matters. So, the total number of arrangements is: 10^26 (as each position can be filled by any digit from 0 to 9) 2) Now, let's count the favorable arrangements: a) We need: - 10 nines (including two blocks of 4 consecutive nines) - 5 ones - 4 zeros - 7 other digits (26 - 10 - 5 - 4 = 7) b) Let's start by placing the two blocks of 4 consecutive nines: We have 19 positions to place the first block (26 - 4 - 3 = 19, as we need to leave room for the second block) Then we have 15 positions for the second block So, there are 19 * 15 = 285 ways to place these blocks c) We need to place 2 more nines: We have 18 positions left, so there are C(18,2) = 153 ways to do this d) Now, we need to place 5 ones in the remaining 16 positions: This can be done in C(16,5) = 4368 ways e) Next, place 4 zeros in the remaining 11 positions: This can be done in C(11,4) = 330 ways f) Finally, we need to fill the remaining 7 positions with the other digits: There are 7! = 5040 ways to arrange these g) For these last 7 digits, we can choose any digit except 0, 1, and 9: So we have 7^7 = 823543 possibilities for what these digits could be 3) Putting it all together: The number of favorable outcomes is: 285 * 153 * 4368 * 330 * 5040 * 823543 = 2.51654 × 10^17 4) Therefore, the probability is: (2.51654 × 10^17) / (10^26) = 2.51654 × 10^-9 So, the probability is approximately 0.00000000251654 or about 1 in 397,371,070,190.
SaintSeiya 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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slantedview 2y ago
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- lolinder 2y ago
  The US can be trying to overthrow the government and said government can also be corrupt and undemocratic. The context doesn't take away from the fact that these numbers are impossible, and your comment doesn't offer any explanation for them.
- deleted 2y ago
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guywithahat 2y ago
This is why you don’t vote away your right to bear arms
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  True. But might not be a popular comment here. It seems many think you can carbon tax out of any problem. There is one logical resolution to where Venezuela finds themselves. No one really believes they’re going to pull out of this economic situation, nor now this political one.
  - meepmorp 2y ago
    > It seems many think you can carbon tax out of any problem. What relevance does this have to gun ownership?
- _joel 2y ago
  Yea, be awful if, say the US, was on the precipice of slipping into a dictaorship. Thank god they've got guns, that'll make everything better!
  - krapp 2y ago
    Yes, an armed society is a polite society, and no one is more polite than, say, American police or the ATF or FBI or IRS. If you see an American walk into a school or a hotel with a gun, you know everything is going to be A-OK.
  - guywithahat 2y ago
    Venezuela went from the richest country in South America to one where the average citizen lost 17lbs in a year. Once your economy looks like that, the slightest hint of armed unrest could collapse the government. The only reason Maduro stayed in power was because he could have the military shoot into unarmed crowds with no repercussions.
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  There were just as many, if not more, statistical anomalies in the US 2020 election, but all the guns stayed in their gun lockers then.
9cb14c1ec0 2y ago
I find it quite amusing to watch people declare the Venezuela election stolen by the very same metrics they loudly proclaimed meant absolutely nothing in the 2020 US elections. At this point, it's not a hard bet to think I'll have more mirth coming my way in November.
- suzzer99 2y ago
  There was a lot more light shone on the US elections. Over 60 cases were brought by Trump supporters, many before Republican judges, some of whome were even Trump appointees. All fraud cases were dismissed out of hand for lack of evidence. The only case not dismissed was about time allowed to vote. If something was there, it would have come out. You have to get into Alex Jones level of deep state conspiracy to think all those judges and election officials were in on it. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jan/08/joe-biden/joe-biden-right-more-60-trumps-election-lawsuits-l/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jan/08/joe-biden/...
deathanatos 2y ago
Reminds me of https://danluu.com/discontinuities/ https://danluu.com/discontinuities/
ksynwa 2y ago
Americans always seem more concerned about Venezuelan elections than Venezuelans are.
- alonsonic 2y ago
  Im venezuelan and can assure you there is not a single venezuelan not talking about this 24/7 right now. And yes the international atenttion helps. Democracies are fragile and you should be invested in keeping them alive even outside of the US.
  - ksynwa 2y ago
    [flagged]
sergiogjr 2y ago
It will be interesting to see if they release the tallies by region, on how those number will match with the overall result.
wodenokoto 2y ago
I’d like to see a pattern that is likely to put this in perspective. Rolling ten 1s in a row does look suspicious but it’s just as likely as rolling 4846211536
ricketyricky 2y ago
[flagged]
supergirl 2y ago
misleading article, pretending this is some kind of scientific evidence of fraud without mentioning other possible explanations. the most likely and obvious explanation is that there was a mistake in the final report not in the raw data. they just rounded the percentages first and gave them to someone who then made the report with the number of votes based on that. you can’t really distinguish a mistake from fraud in this case. and then they will fix the mistake and people will say “aha we caught them and now they try to hide it”
veltas 2y ago
Is it possible some idiot was given the percentages, the total votes, and then decided they could just estimate the breakdown from the percentages for the announcement? Assuming stupidity before malice.
liendolucas 2y ago
Yesterday there were news regarding 4 misterious flights from Cuba to Venezuela. Apparently a technical chinese team went there to rig the legitimate results, hence the delay to reveal them. Obviously unverifiable but I wouldn't be surprised to be true. Source: https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2024/07/31/grave-denuncia-de-francisco-santos-con-ayuda-china-empleados-del-cne-imprimen-actas-electorales-apocrifas/ https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2024/07/31/grave-denuncia-... As an argentinian and having lived the so called "K" period I can only say that we were extremely lucky not ending like Venezuela did (we are still facing a really hard time thanks to 20 years of robberies). For me, this period along with this so called "bolivarian revolution" (whatever that means) will forever be a reminder of how dangerous populism and empty political fanatisms can be. A model that can only spread poverty, corruption, and permanently fracture society just like in Argentina.
abdellah123 2y ago
[flagged]
account42 2y ago
> statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu > Verify you are human by completing the action below. No thanks and fuck you to you too.
tim333 2y ago
It's all nice looking for suspicious patterns but a bit pointless when the election is very obviously rigged (107% of votes counted etc) and Maduro is like I control the army what you going to do about it? The latter is a more interesting question. There must be some way to get vote rigging dictators out?
- SXX 2y ago
  > There must be some way to get vote rigging dictators out? If only other countries wasn't supplying dictator regimes with money, but it's very hard to do. Especially after EU gave enough money to another dictator to make him into much more dangerous warmonger. So now Venezuela isn't the worst dictatorship and it's will get more money from oil.
  - tim333 2y ago
    I don't know really but the US was able to go arrest Noriega without too much grief and Britain where I live used to take over loads of countries for it's empire before that became politically incorrect. Maybe we could have some modified version limited to support a countries peoples against illegitimate rulers on a kick them out, hold elections then leave basis? Maybe we could have something like a modified version of the US constitution like: We the People of the world, in Order to establish Justice... reserve the right to kick the bastards out and elect a new bunch, by force if necessary.
HPsquared 2y ago
It could be someone having the total and percentages, and "reconstructing" the individual vote counts. Or, that's what they would say anyway in response to this.
SXX 2y ago
BTW when actual raw electoral data is available it's possible to create infographics that far easier to read. Like there been Shpilkin graphs for every major Russia elections. When cental authorities trying to match specific number in percent of votes it's always obvious on scale. Like you basically can see "cells" on these graphs that appear because of falsefied results on particular voting stations: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/10/11/russian-elections-once-again-had-a-suspiciously-neat-result https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/10/11/russian-... https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/03/21/putin-2024 https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/03/21/putin-2024
Slava_Propanei 2y ago
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alejohausner 2y ago
Here are the true vote totals, as reported by witnesses at the polling booths: https://resultadosconvzla.com/ https://resultadosconvzla.com/ It was a landslide for the opposition candidate Gonzalez, 67% to Maduro’s 30%. Sadly, the mathematical analysis in the OP is no match for the power of state brutality. It’s fun to point out the cheating, but ultimately it reminds me of xkcd 538.
- advisedwang 2y ago
  How do the witnesses know how people voted? I can't find sources saying whether Venezuela has as secret ballot or not, but I assume so otherwise it would be all over the news
  - jose_zap 2y ago
    Witnesses representing political parties are entitled by law to a copy of the tally before the machine sends its results to a central server. Each copy must be signed by all witnesses and also contains a digitally-signed hash of the tally at the bottom of the receipt.
opablo 2y ago
comparating the venezuela data against other recent elections: https://x.com/opablo_gm/status/1819096457850335384 https://x.com/opablo_gm/status/1819096457850335384 and allowing the anomaly to surface
silexia 2y ago
We all mock these third rate dictatorship issues, but then in America we allow voting without ID or any sorts of protection at all... Basically asking people to commit fraud.
gonational 2y ago
I love trying to imagine what it's like being inside the mind of somebody who can entertain this kind of material (assumptions based on statistics, alone), while simultaneously believing that the 2020 US presidential election was sound and secure. I also love imagining what it must be like to read a comment like this and thinks it's political in nature. Those were simpler times...
- acureau 2y ago
  It's disingenuous to say discussion about election fraud isn't political in nature, what else could it be? I dismissed the 2020 US election fraud claims without looking into them, but I've seen it brought up a few times in this thread and people on HN usually hold reasonable views. After some research I've found nothing remotely convincing. Could you point me towards something like the data presented in this article? That's not to say that this is definitive evidence, but it's an order of magnitude more convincing than anything I've found about the 2020 US election.
  - gonational 2y ago
    It's not possible to point out the evidence any longer - those days are over. There was a public plan, by the government and the host of big tech companies that are in bed with that government (In-Q-Tel, for example, is not some big secret), to silence anyone discussing it. You wouldn't here much about this, because of this. Conspiracies happen, and the nature of those conspiracies is that they futher somebody's goals (Bush family, CIA, big corporations, who knows), and they're secret plans for a reason, because they run counter to the will of the general public, so knowing about them reduces the actors' chances of success. Large efforts are put into place to keep ordinary people from hearing or thinking about them, until they achieve their goals. High level government agents have testified in front of congress about such efforts, many times in the past. Rewind to 2003; the selfsame government was engaged in wide-spread lying to convince us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the media was fully complicit in supporting these lies. I lost my best friend, in that war, in 2006, because the big corporations, in concert with the government, convinced everyone to believe in nonsensical lies. That war would not have happened if somebody said "wait, they're lying, and here's the proof", and people would have heard about this (on the news), before the war was well underway.

903 points by kgwgk 2y ago

aa_is_op 2y ago

God, I love mathematicians!

acchow 2y ago
There’s also the really powerful Benford’s Law which has been admitted in criminal court cases!
- deleted 2y ago
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TechDebtDevin 2y ago
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throwaway59148 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago

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koube 2y ago

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but isn't every vote total extremely unlikely if you make it precise to the exact number of votes? Like the chances of getting n+1, n+2... votes is roughly the same probability. For example the probability of getting [1,2,3,4,5,6] as the winning numbers in the lottery is the same as any random set of numbers.

Waterluvian 2y ago
Yes. For one set. But if your next lottery is 4,5,6,7,8,9 and then 11,12,13,14,15,16 it becomes improbable. The issue here is that a bunch of the percentages imply super round numbers. The signal isn’t that there’s a round number. It’s that they’re all round numbers.
- neura 2y ago
  I've tried to explain this a couple of times, but I keep falling back on the calculations used to show the problem (that it's not the numbers themselves, but the pattern). This comment nailed it with simply "It's that they're all round numbers". I've always been terrible at rephrasing things to make stronger points in a more concise way. Thanks! :D
tumult 2y ago
That’s not what this article is about. Read the article.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  FWIW, statistics is hard. Having read the article, I came away with similar questions and I appreciate the sibling comments clarifying.
  - tumult 2y ago
    Fair enough. Sorry.
jvanderbot 2y ago
The question was "How likely is it that the votes worked out so well that they were basically even 1/10 percentages and not ugly numbers?" So for a given number of votes, which determines a split, how many times does the split come out so nice? Answer: Effectively none - there are always ugly numbers with lots of decimal places. Now that analysis comes after they conjecture that the percentages were fixed apriori. The first comment "That seems fishy" basically says this. "How can it be that we're so close to even 1/10 percentages. How can it be that we're exactly one vote off from nice 1/10 percentages"? Fishy indeed - must be rounding. And they tell you: it's very unlikely to be 1 vote off from nice 0.1% percentage splits.
- tumult 2y ago
  Another way of writing it out: How likely is it that you'd get these votes distributions 51.2000000% 44.2000000% 04.6000000% exactly? With all of those clean 0s? Very low. But it's also possible that there was sloppy reporting and the vote counts were re-processed at some point in the chain and rounded to one decimal place.
  - neura 2y ago
    It's more that if you start with those clean, single decimal percentages and a total number of votes, you'd end up with decimals for number of votes, which isn't possible. So if you then remove the decimal from the votes, you get slightly different percentage values when taken to 7 decimal places, but the original decimals would still be the same. The chances of those numbers occurring normally for all 3 vote counts together is just ridiculously tiny.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - achempion 2y ago
    The numbers are definitely sus, but what if they were 52.2543689% 44.2689426% 04.6345625% How likely is it that you'd get these votes distributions exactly with these exact tails? Compared to all other possibilities?
paxys 2y ago
The second half of the article answers this very question. Here's an example – if I generate 10 random numbers between 1 and 100, what is more likely: all ten are multiples of 10, or at least one is not a multiple of 10?
neura 2y ago
I think you are correct, but that's missing the point of the article's content. I'm just a programmer, not a math expert, but I believe these statements are accurate. 1. It's very easy to arrive at the provided values, if you make up some percentages that only go to a single decimal value (1/10th). Though doing so would result in vote counts that are decimal, as well. Then if you just remove the decimal from those values, the given percentages don't change enough to be incorrect, but even when taken to 7 decimal places, the new values are pretty clearly due to the rounding (44.2%: 44.1999989%, 4.6%: 4.6000039%). 2. While yes, the chance of these vote counts coming up in this kind of pattern is similar to the example you provided, even if you were using 0-9 for your example of 6 values, the total combinations is about an order of magnitude less than the total vote count provided here. 3. The finer point made is that there's a very small chance for one of the vote counts to show up as a number that so nicely fits the single decimal percentage, but in this case, all 3 vote counts fit this pattern. The calculations are shown for just 2 of the candidates (so not including the "other") resulting only a 1 in 100 million chance.
SoftTalker 2y ago
> For example the probability of getting [1,2,3,4,5,6] as the winning numbers in the lottery is the same as any random set of numbers. Yes, but the comparison is not to "any random set of numbers" it's "all other random sets of numbers" The candidate got 52.200000% of the vote instead of any other percentage, not another specific percentage.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  > The candidate got 52.200000% of the vote instead of any other percentage, not another specific percentage No, he got 51.1999971%. It’s right there in the second table of the article
  - ithkuil 2y ago
    Some other comment in this discussion claims that if you nudged the total count integer +-1 you'll never hit 52.20000000% exactly hinting at the possibility that they choose 52.2% exactly, then computed the total counts which would be a non-integer and then just rounded that. Once re-computing the percentage from that number you end up with the slightly less round-looking 51.1999971%.
enoch_r 2y ago
If the lottery administrator's daughter wins the lottery, he may say "no, no - don't you see, her probability of getting the winning numbers is exactly the same as anyone else's!" But in reality, we can say that: - her probability of winning in the world where her father is cheating is very high - her probability of winning in the world where her father isn't cheating is very low Together these two facts give us evidence about which world we're actually inhabiting - though of course we can never be completely certain! In the same way, yes, it's equally (im)probable that the winning percent will be 51.211643879% or 51.200000000%. But the latter is more likely to occur in a world where Maduro said "get me 51.2% of the votes" and someone just did that mechanically with a pocket calculator, which is good evidence about which world we live in.
ChadNauseam 2y ago
The other commenters point at the explanation but don't explain it rigorously IMO. Here's how I'd say it. 60% is a nice, round percentage. In an honest election, this is just as likely to be reported as any nearby percentage, like 59.7% or 60.3%. As you mention, any particular percentage is equally (and extremely) unlikely. SUppose this you estimate the chance of this occurring, given an honest election, is 1/1000. 60% however is a much more likely outcome if the election results were faked sloppily. A sloppy fake is reasonably likely to say "Well, why not just say we won 60%". Suppose you estimate the chance of this occurring, given a sloppily faked election, are 1/100. Bayes' theorem tells us that we can use this information to "update our beliefs" in favor of the election being faked sloppily and away from the election being honest. Say we previously (before seeing this evidence) thought the honest:faked odds were 5:1. That is, we felt it was 5 times more likely that it was honest than that it was sloppily faked. We can then multiply the "honest" by 1/1000 (chance of seeing this if it was honest), and the "faked" by 1/100 (chance of seeing this if it was faked), to get new odds of (5 * 1/1000):(1 * 1/100), which simplifies to 1:2. So in light of the new evidence, and assuming these numbers that I made up, it seems twice as likely that the election was faked. This exact analysis of course relies on numbers I made up, but the critical thing to see here is that as long as we're more likely to see this result given the election being faked than given it being honest, it is evidence of it being faked.
- a0123 2y ago
  Yeah, they just forgot to report 59.869280705993% instead of 60%. They would have got away with it too, if it weren't for those cunning statisticians. They just forgot to come up with a random, credible number. Happens to the best of us I guess. To think they could have got away with it if only they hadn't forgotten. That´s what you get when you defer the dirty work to interns on their first day, I guess. Which you always rely on to stay in power. Wouldn't want to rely on competent advisers who would have reminded you to come up with a non-round number with 8 or 9 decimals.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > They would have got away with it too Well, on this case they wouldn't. The smoking gun is their refusal to publish the counting totals, the round ratio is just some extra confirmation.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

casenmgreen 2y ago

If the post looks odd and makes no sense, it's because CF is blocking image loads. I think there are two screenshots which are missing in the initial text.

paxys 2y ago

[flagged]

energy123 2y ago
If it was just 2 candidates, it would be slightly more believable, a 1 in 10,000 chance instead of 1 in 100 million chance.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Well, that is Maduro, a 1 in 100 million leader. There are fewer than 28 million people in Venezuela so the rest of us better watch out!

glass1122 2y ago

[flagged]

acchow 2y ago
Which propaganda is being spread here?
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  Something something liberal western mathematics.
sanex 2y ago
It's even more surprising that you can't argue with chavistas since there aren't any.
- pydry 2y ago
  There are plenty in Venezuela, all speaking Spanish to each other. You would never ever run into one online on a predominantly English speaking website or in America/Europe in person, but you might encounter one of the upper classes. I used to work with one of them. She complained that Chavez stole her family's second home. I presumed her family, like America, also supported the attempted military coup shortly after he was elected in 2002.
  - sanex 2y ago
    I spent 5 weeks in Venezuela this year.
    - pydry 2y ago
      Good for you. I spent 4 weeks there too a few years ago.
      - sanex 2y ago

suzzer99 2y ago

More on this. The Carter Foundation, the only impartial observers who were in Venezuela for the election, and who previously defended Venezuela's election system following Chavez's 2004 win, has called on Maduro's government to release local vote tallies, which apparently it is never going to do: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/world/americas/venezuela-election-carter-center-democracy.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/world/americas/venezuela-...

deleted 2y ago
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culi 2y ago
[flagged]
- forgetfulness 2y ago
  Maduro is also saying that the mass protests he's facing are the product of Chilean-trained operatives acting against him, he says many things.
  - pydry 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      just because you are paranoid that everybody is out to get you doesn't mean that everybody doesn't have good reason and that you don't really deserve it
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - kergonath 2y ago
      > Gee I wonder why he might be paranoid about foreign operatives trying to violently oust him Because he’s an unpopular dictator who knows fairly well for having seen it in the recent past that you can go very quickly from getting 99% of the vote in an election to dead in a ditch? In his position you’re either paranoid or dead. This does not make him a better person.

golemiprague 2y ago

[dead]

dinobones 2y ago

Here's this re-explained with a simpler example. Imagine you have 1,000 votes. You want to show that your political party got 60% of the vote, so, you claim: My party: 600 votes Opposition: 300 votes Other: 100 votes Presto, we got a good breakdown. The people will buy it.... It makes sense that 600 is exactly 60% of 1,000, because this was an artificial example. But in the real world, we don't get 1,000 votes. We get 10,058,774 votes. What are the odds that the % of votes you get is a round number like 60%, or 51.2%? They're infinitesimally small. You're much more likely to get ugly numbers, like 59.941323854% of the vote, unless you choose some artificial percentage and work backward.

nikolay 2y ago
What's wrong with announcing results with rounded percentages?!
- kadoban 2y ago
  Nothing. The problem is when you obviously picked the rounded percentages that sounded good first and then calculated the number of votes from that.
  - nikolay 2y ago
    Not necessarily. If the person announcing was given the number of votes and rounded percentages, then this could explain it. For example, in my country, they always report only turnout as a percentage with a single decimal and the share of each candidate/party with up to 2 decimals, never the number of votes - who cares about the absolute numbers anyway?
    - lxgr 2y ago
      But they did report the absolute number of votes.
      - nikolay 2y ago

stapled_socks 2y ago

To play the devil's advocate: It's possible that the person making the announcement was only given the rounded percentages and the total number of votes, and then "created" the number of votes per candidate to fit to the format of the announcement. That would be sloppy, but not malicious.

solids 2y ago
[flagged]
- tomrod 2y ago
  [flagged]
nikolay 2y ago
I've never seen any preliminary results announcing numbers of votes - it's always rounded up percentages with 1 or 2 decimals.
- ptero 2y ago
  If the vote numbers were not provided, this would not have been an issue. But in this case they did announce the vote numbers.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  I'd say it's extremely common to announce numbers of votes both as they come in and when the final total is known. Here in the US major news networks (ABC, CNN, Fox, 270towin, and others) all have live maps that show the total number of votes + total percentages during the voting period. They usually also let you hover over the states/counties to see the percentages and votes for the particular area. E.g. here's the Fox map https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results and total votes comes first in the same font as percentages marked to the side. During the election these totals and percentages are live numbers. And in the US we're not even that interested in the popular vote since it's all about the electoral college which has historically not always aligned with the popular vote numbers anyways yet we still list the totals as they come in.

TechDebtDevin 2y ago

[flagged]

danihh 2y ago

Coming from a family that lived in soviet russia (and still partly is), this reminds me of Putin’s 85% approval rating. But if you ask anybody in private, nobody voted for him…

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

consumer451 2y ago

This is a bit of an aside, but as a geopolitical news junkie, what I keep searching on Google News is: Venezuela election Lula How his government reacts is going to be a major factor. Given Lula's past dedication to Chavezism, his post-election reaction has made me hopeful for change in Venezuela. What is directly related to TFA is that both the USA and Brazil want to see the voting data. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/biden-lula-discuss-venezuela-election-tuesday-sources-say-2024-07-30/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/biden-lula-discuss-ve...

alephnerd 2y ago
> Given Lula's past dedication to (sic) Chavezism Brazil has quasi-presidential system, but it's Chamber of Deputies has the actual power. In the 2000s, Lula's PT was the largest party (usually around 20-25% of the total seats) and could as such strongarm smaller leftist parties into a governing coalition with an absolute majority. Lula won the presidential election in 2022, but his party PT was the 3rd largest, and center-right parties have created a vote sharing agreement with his party. The anti-Bolsonaro center-right parties have 172 seats in the Chamber, Lula's governing coalition has 226. You need 257 to have a majority. This means Lula has to severely tone down his rhetoric otherwise a subset of the independent parties would defect to Bolsonaro's coalition. > but as a geopolitical news junkie As someone who worked in the space, stop. It's a waste of time as you're not in a position to make changes, nor are you reading primary or peer reviewed secondary sources. If you insist on continuing, use a mix of - Academic books (generally HUP, OUP, UCUP though the occasion PUP is alright) - White Papers from top tier think tanks (use the UPenn Rankings [0]) - Axios and Politico - their target readership is aimed directly at those working on the Hill or Hill adjacent Just sticking with these 3 types of resources should be enough. Also, IGNORE anything on Twitter, Reddit, or HN (ironic ik). The lesswrong/credibledefense/zeihan types are all idiots ime. Using an "objective" tone doesn't make rubbish "objective" [0] - https://www.bruegel.org/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2020-Global-Go-To-Think-Tank-Index-Report-Bruegel.pdf https://www.bruegel.org/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploa...
- shufflerofrocks 2y ago
  >Also, IGNORE anything on Twitter, Reddit, or HN (ironic ik). The lesswrong/credibledefense/zeihan types are all idiots ime. Using an "objective" tone doesn't make rubbish "objective" Not to mention these sites are FILLED to the brim with bots. Eg. In 2013, the most "reddit-addicted" area was Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, with largest amount of activity [0]. Eglin was one of the few places used in a study for testing social media manipulation by Pentagon [1] And not to mention the Russian/Chinese/Indian bots [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit... [1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644 http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644

ein0p 2y ago

[flagged]

user3939382 2y ago

[flagged]

digging 2y ago
Citation needed
- neura 2y ago
  I love that this comment came up directly after (at the time I'm writing this comment) "Math doesn't care about your feelings."
  - user3939382 2y ago
    That has nothing to do with my comment. There's a reasonable explanation for the anomaly and none of this has anything to do with my feelings.
- user3939382 2y ago
  Sure here you go https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2024/07/31/falsifying-vote-tallies-is-very-hard-heres-why/ https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2024/07/31/falsifying-vote... https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13801/ https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13801/ https://www.ndi.org/e-voting-guide/examples/e-voting-audits-venezuela https://www.ndi.org/e-voting-guide/examples/e-voting-audits-...
  - digging 2y ago
    I just read your first article and it's decent. As I expected, it makes no attempt to offer any evidence that the CNE has published reliable results, or that the math in TFA is faulty in any way. It simply talks about the difficulty of falsifying specific documents, and how that would make it difficult for a false report to continue when pressed (which is exactly what's happening - Maduro is pressed, and has no evidence to show). And it concludes with a pretty strong suggestion that the CNE's unverifiable tallies are, in fact, a lie. So, I appreciate the independent confirmation that Maduro's victory is a likely sham. It's also quite reassuring to note that producing actual fake ballots would, in fact, be extremely difficult - just as you claimed! That gives me hope that Maduro will fail to convince others of his victory, since it's probably a complete fabrication.

pydry 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
knowaveragejoe 2y ago
Ah, this is hardly the US government trying to stage their own coup. But it tracks with their history when they did try such things themselves.
- pydry 2y ago
  It was just planned in the US and executed with logistical support from the US with a green light given by Trump (who announced he had no "direct" role in the operation).
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    That’s crazy you were in the room for that decision. Can you tell us more?
    - pydry 2y ago
      ...you didnt read the article at all did you?

RND_RandoM 2y ago

Didn't they show the distribution of votes on the TV and the sum there was 106%?

victorbjorklund 2y ago
109%. Which of course isnt better.
feedforward 2y ago
That would make this whole article bogus. Actually it didn't add up to 106%, although the reality doesn't matter. That the mud the CIA, NED etc. throw on Venezuela is all that matters.
bjourne 2y ago
https://x.com/weegeedutchie/status/1817903230946337121 https://x.com/weegeedutchie/status/1817903230946337121 No one cared to listen to the Spanish-language broadcast where it is explained that the 4.6% is for the other candidates combined. The stats indeed sum up to 100%.

whalesalad 2y ago

Anyone else stuck in an endless "Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds." cloudflare captcha loop?

NJRBailey 2y ago
I get this due to a browser extension I have (in my case it is the extension FreeTree, but chances are you aren't using that). Maybe try disabling all extensions and try the captcha again?
shiroiushi 2y ago
Are you sure you're human?

farceSpherule 2y ago

[flagged]

jiveturkey 2y ago

> That seems fishy They didn't explain why and it wasn't obvious to me. I had to think embarrassingly long about it. It's because the tally by extended decimal shows that each of the 3 rows show that the tally was back-filled from a one-decimal-place desired result. With only 3 rows I'm not so sure how strongly this proves anything but it certainly is fishy. EDIT: oh wait they do explain it. But only after they stated the conclusion so matter-of-factly first. I'd stopped reading because right then and there I thought I missed some fact or point earlier, or that they otherwise were presenting it as obvious and why wasn't it obvious to me?

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Aren't percentages typically rounded? I don't see any US results where it's reported that X candidate got 51.31112341% of the vote even if that's correct. More likely they would announce 51.31% or maybe even just 51.3%. In fact, just looked up these results by CNN: https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president So Biden is reported as receiving 51.3% of the votes which is reported as exactly 81,284,666 votes. Though clearly if you sum all the votes and calculate Biden's share, you would not get exactly 51.3% but some other number, perhaps 51.31112341% (couldn't do the actual math as the page only reports Biden and Trump's votes but I believe there were other very small candidates who must have received some small number of votes). And if you took exactly 51.3% of all votes you would not get 81,284,666 but some other number close to that. So I don't follow what's suspicious here? (As to whether there was election fraud or not, that's a completely different question, not commenting on that here.) Update: Never mind the above, I had in my haste misread/misunderstood the point of the article :/ (see reply below)

PaulStatezny 2y ago
It seems you only skimmed the article. The concern is not rounded percentage points. The concern is that the total votes happen to be the closest integers possible to come up with exactly those single-decimal percentages. Indicating that the total votes were derived from the percentages, not from an actual tally of votes. It's HIGHLY improbable that out of 10,058,774 votes, the distribution between Maduro, Gonzalez, and "Other" would all yield percentages that are effectively 1-decimal percentages.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Ah, got it. I had indeed misread/misunderstood the article.
marinmania 2y ago
Venezuela released the vote totals https://www.albatcp.org/en/2024/07/29/cne-announced-nicolas-maduro-moros-victory-with-51-20/ https://www.albatcp.org/en/2024/07/29/cne-announced-nicolas-... Their vote totals happen to align (almost perfectly) with round percentages Fwiw most governments don't even report percentages. They just report totals and the percentages are added (by sites like CNN) for clarity https://results.elections.ny.gov/document/468?page=1 https://results.elections.ny.gov/document/468?page=1

notjoemama 2y ago

I recall having read about elections in Africa and the troubles they faced. I can't find it now, but there was one particular website offering a very detailed but rigorous approach to determining the legitimacy of elections. I'll offer this article from the BBC as a stand in for the criteria (from 2016): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190 Vote rigging: How to spot the tell-tale signs 1. Too many voters 2. A high turnout in specific areas 3. Large numbers of invalid votes 4. More votes than ballot papers issued 5. Results that don't match 6. Delay in announcing results I would encourage anyone from Venezuela to look into the history of elections in Africa. It is well documented and criteria well supported.

the_af 2y ago
> I would encourage anyone from Argentina Surely you meant Venezuela?
- notjoemama 2y ago
  Thank you! I had just been reading on another site about the US and it's "involvement" in a previous election in Argentina. Appreciate the correction. Oh my, I need to step away from the computer today. :/
sam36 2y ago
[flagged]
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  We're still clinging to this in 2024? Wow.
  - adamtaylor_13 2y ago
    Suppose there was legitimacy to this, which many believe, why wouldn’t we still talk about this in 2024? Are we not allowed to discuss history?

dadjoker 2y ago

[flagged]

bearve 2y ago

The error in this analysis occurs due to the use of an Excel or LibreOffice spreadsheet that when the cell size is reduced it rounds to 51.2% and when it is increased it gives 51.199997136828

energy123 2y ago
51.199997136828 is what you get when you do =ROUND(N_votes * 0.512)/N_votes. So it may as well be 51.2%.
phonon 2y ago
You need an integer number of votes, so you would expect it cannot be equal to an exact fraction. But being within a single vote bound is incredibly suspicious.

paganel 2y ago

[flagged]

GaggiX 2y ago
The US now controls mathematics, the CIA is so advanced that they are changing how mathematics works to accuse Maduro of fraud, brilliant.

ThinkBeat 2y ago

[flagged]

maduroahole 2y ago
[flagged]
colordrops 2y ago
Most people in the US aren't even aware of the constant State Department and CIA effort to overturn democracy in Venezuela so they can appoint a US corporation friendly leader. Columbia Uni is a hotbed for State Department types. This is clearly a concerted effort to create a narrative. The US doesn't even allow external election monitors for its own elections. At least Venezuela had some level of monitoring. The hypocrisy is abject.
culi 2y ago
To be fair, the opposition leader was basically handpicked and funded by the US
q1w2 2y ago
I'm not sure I understand your comment. Maduro/Chavez were Soviet/Russia backed, and have since not only wrecked the country, but have now seized permanent dictatorial power.

webscalist 2y ago

[flagged]

worstspotgain 2y ago

This should remind us that "One Person, One Vote" can all too easily slip into "One Person, One Vote, One Time." For Venezuela that one time was in ~1998.

oceanplexian 2y ago
I guess it might be quite ironic but if people want to vote in a dictatorship, don’t they have the right to under a true democracy?
- worstspotgain 2y ago
  No, that's a meta-democratic vote, not a democratic vote. Many constitutions disqualify insurgents and revolutionaries from running for office for this reason. At a minimum you'd have to follow the super-majority process for amending the constitution if there is one. In practice, it's no different from having a revolution. Might as well wear the shoe if it fits. Congrats to the generalissimo dictator!
  - oceanplexian 2y ago
    In this case the question would be, do citizens in a democracy have the right to dissolve their government peaceably, provided they meet whatever threshold is required in that system (Could be a super majority, for the sake of argument)? I’d argue it must be or it’s not really a democracy.
    - worstspotgain 2y ago
      They have the "right" to have a revolution too - many countries treasure the revolutions they had. They can amend the constitution and make another democracy. They can also amend the constitution and make a dictatorship. Or just have a dictatorship without bothering. Those do not need constitutions at all. To have a vote that turns a democracy into a non-democracy is a meta-democratic vote, not a democratic vote. Abusing a democratic system to surreptitiously make a non-democratic system is just a caveat that dictators find convenient to use.

johnklos 2y ago

[flagged]

zamadatix 2y ago
They're probably just happy to keep the site somewhat reachable during spikes like this without constantly babying it. I.e. I doubt they are interested in filtering itself as much as even less interested in alternatives.
- johnklos 2y ago
  There are so many abuse protection companies out there that don't stigmatize non-western Internet users. Also, do we really think that Columbia's IT people are that bad? I doubt a page like this would get a substantial DDoS. Making it inaccessible to half the world, particularly much of the country that the article is about, is conceding ahead of time to the people that might want to DDoS a page like this in the first place.
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    > There are so many abuse protection companies out there that don't stigmatize non-western Internet users. And there are also cases it's apparent and relevant to grandstand about, this is not one. The DDOS pages required me to go through hoops and try several devices even browsing from the US to this US site. Not typical, sure, but it is what makes the hyper charged complaints feel particularly off center. > Also, do we really think that Columbia's IT people are that bad? Nah, they are probably great. Likely very busy and wishing they had more staff/time like most "cost center" IT teams though. > I doubt a page like this would get a substantial DDoS. Any particular page is unlikely to get a DDoS but the site as a whole is likely to get them relatively frequently (disgruntled students and the like on top of the usual gamut) which is why the entire site is fronted by a CDN and given a single protection policy rather than setting everything up for each page posted. > Making it inaccessible to half the world, particularly much of the country that the article is about, is conceding ahead of time to the people that might want to DDoS a page like this in the first place. Again, these are probably good points on a general Cloudflare rant but posting them in this case actually makes the argument sound weaker since it's a presumed cause that doesn't seem to be the actual cause. In an ideal world where we had extra IT time and could solve every problem and were talking about generalities of providers like Cloudflare I'd 100% agree with you. Sometimes reality gets in the way and it's not the reason we want to get fired up about or the reason we want to get fired up about isn't as easy or important to solve as we'd like it to be in the particular case though. Alternatively, if the topic were about Cloudflare instead of this particular school hosting this particular article I'd still agree as well. In this case it's none of the above - and why I say it's about not needing to baby it instead of an alternative. Similar load based protections for this site would also have kicked in with any provider, regardless our thoughts on Cloudflare.

osigurdson 2y ago

I think we are going to have to give up anonymity in the name of democracy. Unless you can confirm that your vote has been correctly counted, how can you ever be certain what they have done with it?

ranon 2y ago
Isn't this exactly what freedomtool aims to solve? https://freedomtool.org/#/doc https://freedomtool.org/#/doc
mplewis 2y ago
Can you think of any problems that would arise from non-anonymous voting?
- osigurdson 2y ago
  Of course, there is the whole concept of forced votes, etc. But it seems unlikely that this could be simultaneously widespread and clandestine. Everything is a tradeoff.

feedforward 2y ago

[flagged]

sam36 2y ago
It's also funny to see the current president removed to "preserve democracy".
- dimpleddang 2y ago
  [flagged]
- hypeatei 2y ago
  Removed in what way? He dropped as a presidential candidate, not from the office itself.

jijji 2y ago

some reporting [0] is claiming the opposite: 2.75 million votes for Maduro and 6.27 million for his rival, Edmundo Gonzalez. [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/government-opposition-both-claim-venezuela-election-win-official-results-2024-07-29/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/government-opposition...

EGreg 2y ago

[flagged]

Waterluvian 2y ago

I used to think that there’s something terribly embarrassing about watching people like these lying in such a pathetically obvious way. Like catching my 5 year old in a lie. But I think I’m realizing that it simply doesn’t matter. They just need the “forged document” to hold up in their hands. Not to survive scrutiny.

mysore 2y ago

[flagged]

MontagFTB 2y ago

This reminds me of the story how the height of Mt. Everest was first measured at exactly 29,000 feet. The surveyor’s boss at the time added two feet thinking no one would trust such an exact number.

adin8mon 2y ago
I wonder why he added two feet instead of three, or some decimal.

culi 2y ago

No one has yet to post the actual official statement by the CNE. It doesn't seem too unlikely that they had a total vote count as well as the percentages for each candidate and released those. It feels like people are jumping to some major conclusions in this thread

eirikbakke 2y ago
Here is the CNE press conference where the numbers were announced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7g4y4M4s8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7g4y4M4s8
- culi 2y ago
  Wonderful, thanks! I really struggled to find this. Funnily enough they give different percentages. 51.1% to 44.2% round and round we go
  - tptacek 2y ago
    No. The percentages reported don't matter. These are the same absolute vote numbers; the percentage they work out to is what matters. This seems to be tripping a lot of people up.
    - culi 2y ago
      It certainly does! Watch the video. No total number is ever reported This means that "total votes" number was worked backwards by a third party. It's not even the CNE's fuckup
      - tptacek 2y ago
        No. Watch the video. After Gonzalez' result, he reads the results para otros candidatos†. It's the same as the number in this post. It literally doesn't matter what else happens after this; you can reconstruct the result, after less than 2 minutes of the video's runtime. It's cooked. † as you can see, i am not a fluent speaker of Spanish, and i managed to work it out :)

wesselbindt 2y ago

[flagged]

jml7c5 2y ago
>it seems like there's no evidence of the government posting these vote tallies They were released at a press conference. They read out both the numbers and the percentages. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7g4y4M4s8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7g4y4M4s8 It is still plausible that this is an Excel error, but it's certainly suspicious.
- quink 2y ago
  http://www.sunai.gob.ve/sunai-web/public/index.php/publicacion/venezuela-celebra-elecciones-presidenciales-con-participacion-historica-y-reeleccion-de-nicolas-maduro http://www.sunai.gob.ve/sunai-web/public/index.php/publicaci... according to the acronym that’s some superintendent related to internal audits, that seems pretty official. But still won’t stop the “the US manipulated the results crowd”, nothing will.

AI_beffr 2y ago

[flagged]

lazyeye 2y ago
Not sure if related but also a book on this as well:- https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Your-Vote-Inside-Election/dp/1510776699/ https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Your-Vote-Inside-Election/dp... Whether or not there was election fraud I don't know. All I know is I cannot trust anything the mainstream media has to say on the topic (or any other topic for that matter).
- cheema33 2y ago
  Instead of reading conspiratorial books from authors with a profit motive, ask a simple question. If there was election fraud, how come the conservative super majority in the supreme court is not all over it? Ask for evidence first, before putting your faith in conspiracy theories, from books or movies. If you believe in things without evidence, and then vote based on that, we're all screwed. This is the path to ideocracy.
  - lazyeye 2y ago
    I said I dont know if there was election fraud? I'm guessing there almost certainly was some level of election fraud, whether it was sufficient to sway the election I don't know. You seem to be arguing that if it appears in a book, then it's defacto a conspiracy theory driven by the profit motive. (The assumption being that everyone you disagree with is greedy and manipulative whilst your motives are pure of course). Books can outline evidence too? Maybe you should read the book first before jumping to uninformed conclusions yourself. And anyone with eyes and a brain can see the media lies constantly (by obsfucation, cherry-picking, deflection etc). So again, I don't know what the truth is but I certainly would never accept the media narrative on face value.
  - commandlinefan 2y ago
    For the same reason that I doubt anything will come of this in Venezuela either.

nbzso 2y ago

[flagged]

cokeandpepsi 2y ago

Hard to imagine a incumbant who destoryed the country while millions flee won the election, also hard to imagine he's going anywhere

atleastoptimal 2y ago

It's clear Maduro is running a near dictatorship and will do anything to keep power. The country is doing absolutely horribly, all due to mismanagement. Even with proof of fraud, he will pull whatever is needed to avoid stepping down at this point, as is the case with all autocrats.

prmoustache 2y ago
When a country start building statues in every major city of the current running government leader, you are already past _near dictatorship_. This is full cult of personality and dictatorship bullshit. EDIT: I saw images of venezuelans destroying statues all over the country but my partner who has been following better told me they were statues of Hugo Chavez, not Nicolás Maduro.

noobermin 2y ago

The point of the article which I missed: the issue here is that the vote totals are very close to their 0.1% place roundings after multiplying the total votes times the percentages, suggesting that the vote totals were simply faked by taking the total votes and multiplying them by percentages precise only to the 0.1% place. I had mistakenly thought the quoted twitter post found it weird that the vote totals had the same leading digits as the percentages, which absolutely makes sense when the total vote count is near a multiple of 100. For example >>> 0.5123 * 1_002_232 513443.45359999995 I had pulled an all-nighter (writing a grant proposal actually) and was steaming mad reading this and had to scroll a bit. May be a comment like this will help someone else out who might be confused.

energy123 2y ago
> the issue here is that the vote totals are very close to their 0.1% place roundings after multiplying the total votes times the percentages That's right, but the conclusion is a bit stronger than just "very close". There was no other integer that could have been closer, which is consistent with them rounding their fraudulent vote count up/down to the nearest integer.
- notfed 2y ago
  Yeah, "very close" is not the right wording: "EXACTLY" is.

bjourne 2y ago

The most important part of the article is buried in the PS:es: > Commenter Ryan points out that you could also explain this data pattern as a result of sloppy post-processing, if votes were counted correctly, then reported to the nearest percentage point, and then some intermediary mistakenly multiplied the (rounded) percentages by the total vote and reported that. I have no idea; you'd want to know where those particular numbers were coming from. Author has no idea about how the vote counting process works, yet he spreads FUD. There are many plausible reasons why the tallies are "suspiciously well-rounded". The result was announced when it, according to the Venezuelan electoral commission, was clear that Maduro had an insurmountable lead. The cutoff point may just have been 51.2% with less than X% of the votes remaining. We don't know how their statistical modelling works.

throwaway14356 2y ago

if only we had secure computing devices. Imagine a useful application of blockchain. A historic first :p

SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
In the US we have known-flawed closed-source machines where the company executives that make them also make clearly political statements that favor the side that used to be against those machines. I have zero confidence they’re going to leap frog the US in election security. Retro. Paper, no mail, vote one day on a holiday, count by that night, all manual all reviewed. This just is not somewhere we need a high tech solution.
- Axsuul 2y ago
  We do need a better solution because running elections is very expensive while voter participation is not great if you have to show up in person.
  - notfed 2y ago
    That expense is worth our democracy not getting hacked.
  - weberer 2y ago
    I disagree. I think the bar is low enough already. All you have to do is show up to the closest school. Its so easy that 10 year olds do it every day.
    - Axsuul 2y ago
      10 year olds don't have jobs and responsibilities.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
  >Paper, no mail, vote one day on a holiday, count by that night, all manual all reviewed. And voter ID required

debdut 2y ago

51.1999971, 41.1999989, 4.6000039, In this 3 numbers there are total 9+9+8=26 digits, if these 3 numbers are chosen randomly, what's the probability that there are 10 9's with 2 block of 4 consecutive 9's, 5 1's, 4 0's? Let's approach this step-by-step using combinatorics: 1) First, let's consider the total number of possible arrangements: We have 26 digits in total, and the order matters. So, the total number of arrangements is: 10^26 (as each position can be filled by any digit from 0 to 9) 2) Now, let's count the favorable arrangements: a) We need: - 10 nines (including two blocks of 4 consecutive nines) - 5 ones - 4 zeros - 7 other digits (26 - 10 - 5 - 4 = 7) b) Let's start by placing the two blocks of 4 consecutive nines: We have 19 positions to place the first block (26 - 4 - 3 = 19, as we need to leave room for the second block) Then we have 15 positions for the second block So, there are 19 * 15 = 285 ways to place these blocks c) We need to place 2 more nines: We have 18 positions left, so there are C(18,2) = 153 ways to do this d) Now, we need to place 5 ones in the remaining 16 positions: This can be done in C(16,5) = 4368 ways e) Next, place 4 zeros in the remaining 11 positions: This can be done in C(11,4) = 330 ways f) Finally, we need to fill the remaining 7 positions with the other digits: There are 7! = 5040 ways to arrange these g) For these last 7 digits, we can choose any digit except 0, 1, and 9: So we have 7^7 = 823543 possibilities for what these digits could be 3) Putting it all together: The number of favorable outcomes is: 285 * 153 * 4368 * 330 * 5040 * 823543 = 2.51654 × 10^17 4) Therefore, the probability is: (2.51654 × 10^17) / (10^26) = 2.51654 × 10^-9 So, the probability is approximately 0.00000000251654 or about 1 in 397,371,070,190.

SaintSeiya 2y ago

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deleted 2y ago
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slantedview 2y ago

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lolinder 2y ago
The US can be trying to overthrow the government and said government can also be corrupt and undemocratic. The context doesn't take away from the fact that these numbers are impossible, and your comment doesn't offer any explanation for them.
deleted 2y ago
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guywithahat 2y ago

This is why you don’t vote away your right to bear arms

SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
True. But might not be a popular comment here. It seems many think you can carbon tax out of any problem. There is one logical resolution to where Venezuela finds themselves. No one really believes they’re going to pull out of this economic situation, nor now this political one.
- meepmorp 2y ago
  > It seems many think you can carbon tax out of any problem. What relevance does this have to gun ownership?
_joel 2y ago
Yea, be awful if, say the US, was on the precipice of slipping into a dictaorship. Thank god they've got guns, that'll make everything better!
- krapp 2y ago
  Yes, an armed society is a polite society, and no one is more polite than, say, American police or the ATF or FBI or IRS. If you see an American walk into a school or a hotel with a gun, you know everything is going to be A-OK.
- guywithahat 2y ago
  Venezuela went from the richest country in South America to one where the average citizen lost 17lbs in a year. Once your economy looks like that, the slightest hint of armed unrest could collapse the government. The only reason Maduro stayed in power was because he could have the military shoot into unarmed crowds with no repercussions.
commandlinefan 2y ago
There were just as many, if not more, statistical anomalies in the US 2020 election, but all the guns stayed in their gun lockers then.

9cb14c1ec0 2y ago

I find it quite amusing to watch people declare the Venezuela election stolen by the very same metrics they loudly proclaimed meant absolutely nothing in the 2020 US elections. At this point, it's not a hard bet to think I'll have more mirth coming my way in November.

suzzer99 2y ago
There was a lot more light shone on the US elections. Over 60 cases were brought by Trump supporters, many before Republican judges, some of whome were even Trump appointees. All fraud cases were dismissed out of hand for lack of evidence. The only case not dismissed was about time allowed to vote. If something was there, it would have come out. You have to get into Alex Jones level of deep state conspiracy to think all those judges and election officials were in on it. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jan/08/joe-biden/joe-biden-right-more-60-trumps-election-lawsuits-l/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jan/08/joe-biden/...

deathanatos 2y ago

Reminds me of https://danluu.com/discontinuities/ https://danluu.com/discontinuities/

ksynwa 2y ago

Americans always seem more concerned about Venezuelan elections than Venezuelans are.

alonsonic 2y ago
Im venezuelan and can assure you there is not a single venezuelan not talking about this 24/7 right now. And yes the international atenttion helps. Democracies are fragile and you should be invested in keeping them alive even outside of the US.
- ksynwa 2y ago
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sergiogjr 2y ago

It will be interesting to see if they release the tallies by region, on how those number will match with the overall result.

wodenokoto 2y ago

I’d like to see a pattern that is likely to put this in perspective. Rolling ten 1s in a row does look suspicious but it’s just as likely as rolling 4846211536

ricketyricky 2y ago

[flagged]

supergirl 2y ago

misleading article, pretending this is some kind of scientific evidence of fraud without mentioning other possible explanations. the most likely and obvious explanation is that there was a mistake in the final report not in the raw data. they just rounded the percentages first and gave them to someone who then made the report with the number of votes based on that. you can’t really distinguish a mistake from fraud in this case. and then they will fix the mistake and people will say “aha we caught them and now they try to hide it”

veltas 2y ago

Is it possible some idiot was given the percentages, the total votes, and then decided they could just estimate the breakdown from the percentages for the announcement? Assuming stupidity before malice.

liendolucas 2y ago

Yesterday there were news regarding 4 misterious flights from Cuba to Venezuela. Apparently a technical chinese team went there to rig the legitimate results, hence the delay to reveal them. Obviously unverifiable but I wouldn't be surprised to be true. Source: https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2024/07/31/grave-denuncia-de-francisco-santos-con-ayuda-china-empleados-del-cne-imprimen-actas-electorales-apocrifas/ https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2024/07/31/grave-denuncia-... As an argentinian and having lived the so called "K" period I can only say that we were extremely lucky not ending like Venezuela did (we are still facing a really hard time thanks to 20 years of robberies). For me, this period along with this so called "bolivarian revolution" (whatever that means) will forever be a reminder of how dangerous populism and empty political fanatisms can be. A model that can only spread poverty, corruption, and permanently fracture society just like in Argentina.

abdellah123 2y ago

[flagged]

account42 2y ago

> statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu > Verify you are human by completing the action below. No thanks and fuck you to you too.

tim333 2y ago

It's all nice looking for suspicious patterns but a bit pointless when the election is very obviously rigged (107% of votes counted etc) and Maduro is like I control the army what you going to do about it? The latter is a more interesting question. There must be some way to get vote rigging dictators out?

SXX 2y ago
> There must be some way to get vote rigging dictators out? If only other countries wasn't supplying dictator regimes with money, but it's very hard to do. Especially after EU gave enough money to another dictator to make him into much more dangerous warmonger. So now Venezuela isn't the worst dictatorship and it's will get more money from oil.
- tim333 2y ago
  I don't know really but the US was able to go arrest Noriega without too much grief and Britain where I live used to take over loads of countries for it's empire before that became politically incorrect. Maybe we could have some modified version limited to support a countries peoples against illegitimate rulers on a kick them out, hold elections then leave basis? Maybe we could have something like a modified version of the US constitution like: We the People of the world, in Order to establish Justice... reserve the right to kick the bastards out and elect a new bunch, by force if necessary.

HPsquared 2y ago

It could be someone having the total and percentages, and "reconstructing" the individual vote counts. Or, that's what they would say anyway in response to this.

SXX 2y ago

BTW when actual raw electoral data is available it's possible to create infographics that far easier to read. Like there been Shpilkin graphs for every major Russia elections. When cental authorities trying to match specific number in percent of votes it's always obvious on scale. Like you basically can see "cells" on these graphs that appear because of falsefied results on particular voting stations: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/10/11/russian-elections-once-again-had-a-suspiciously-neat-result https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/10/11/russian-... https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/03/21/putin-2024 https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/03/21/putin-2024

Slava_Propanei 2y ago

[dead]

alejohausner 2y ago

Here are the true vote totals, as reported by witnesses at the polling booths: https://resultadosconvzla.com/ https://resultadosconvzla.com/ It was a landslide for the opposition candidate Gonzalez, 67% to Maduro’s 30%. Sadly, the mathematical analysis in the OP is no match for the power of state brutality. It’s fun to point out the cheating, but ultimately it reminds me of xkcd 538.

advisedwang 2y ago
How do the witnesses know how people voted? I can't find sources saying whether Venezuela has as secret ballot or not, but I assume so otherwise it would be all over the news
- jose_zap 2y ago
  Witnesses representing political parties are entitled by law to a copy of the tally before the machine sends its results to a central server. Each copy must be signed by all witnesses and also contains a digitally-signed hash of the tally at the bottom of the receipt.

opablo 2y ago

comparating the venezuela data against other recent elections: https://x.com/opablo_gm/status/1819096457850335384 https://x.com/opablo_gm/status/1819096457850335384 and allowing the anomaly to surface

silexia 2y ago

We all mock these third rate dictatorship issues, but then in America we allow voting without ID or any sorts of protection at all... Basically asking people to commit fraud.

gonational 2y ago

I love trying to imagine what it's like being inside the mind of somebody who can entertain this kind of material (assumptions based on statistics, alone), while simultaneously believing that the 2020 US presidential election was sound and secure. I also love imagining what it must be like to read a comment like this and thinks it's political in nature. Those were simpler times...

acureau 2y ago
It's disingenuous to say discussion about election fraud isn't political in nature, what else could it be? I dismissed the 2020 US election fraud claims without looking into them, but I've seen it brought up a few times in this thread and people on HN usually hold reasonable views. After some research I've found nothing remotely convincing. Could you point me towards something like the data presented in this article? That's not to say that this is definitive evidence, but it's an order of magnitude more convincing than anything I've found about the 2020 US election.
- gonational 2y ago
  It's not possible to point out the evidence any longer - those days are over. There was a public plan, by the government and the host of big tech companies that are in bed with that government (In-Q-Tel, for example, is not some big secret), to silence anyone discussing it. You wouldn't here much about this, because of this. Conspiracies happen, and the nature of those conspiracies is that they futher somebody's goals (Bush family, CIA, big corporations, who knows), and they're secret plans for a reason, because they run counter to the will of the general public, so knowing about them reduces the actors' chances of success. Large efforts are put into place to keep ordinary people from hearing or thinking about them, until they achieve their goals. High level government agents have testified in front of congress about such efforts, many times in the past. Rewind to 2003; the selfsame government was engaged in wide-spread lying to convince us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the media was fully complicit in supporting these lies. I lost my best friend, in that war, in 2006, because the big corporations, in concert with the government, convinced everyone to believe in nonsensical lies. That war would not have happened if somebody said "wait, they're lying, and here's the proof", and people would have heard about this (on the news), before the war was well underway.