5 ms·

Not difficult at all. Just pick the approximate numbers you want and then introduce a random error of a few percent. (Normal, uniform, doesn't really matter). T

Not difficult at all. Just pick the approximate numbers you want and then introduce a random error of a few percent. (Normal, uniform, doesn't really matter). This is also not hard for statistics experts to detect, but it's much harder to prove (aka you've got plausible deniability). One wonders why they didn't even bother to do fraud slightly better.

stouset 2y ago
Unless done carefully this will almost certainly fail Benford’s Law. Manipulating statistics is harder than you think.
- dllthomas 2y ago
  It's my understanding that legitimate vote totals aren't likely to conform to Benford's law in the first place. Even if that's the case, though, there might very well be other applicable tests this would run afoul of.
  - stouset 2y ago
    I’m not a statistician so I may be confusing it with Zipf’s law. But IIRC tallies from individual precincts should roughly conform to Benford’s law.
    - dllthomas 2y ago
      I think the concern is that precinct size tends to cluster in ways that mean results can cluster in ways that - for a large portion of the data - does not span a full order of magnitude.
      - dllthomas 2y ago
        To elaborate, if we imagine a polity with precincts that turn out 10,000 people each election, with two major party candidates that each get between 20% and 80% of the vote, we'd see precisely 0% precincts with a leading digit of 1, much less the ~30% predicted by Benford's law. Of course that doesn't exactly describe any real polity, but it doesn't seem surprising that real elections would be enough like that to screw with the pattern.
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      Precints have roughly even populations and therefore typically don't conform to Benford's law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etx0k1nLn78&t=76s&pp=ygUQYmVuZm9yZCBsYXcgbWF0dA%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etx0k1nLn78&t=76s&pp=ygUQYmV...
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > Unless done carefully this will almost certainly fail Benford’s Law. IIRC Benford's law relies upon things that have power-law underpinnings, such as iterated growth% at different rates. In contrast, relative vote amounts at a given point in time don't have many ways to exhibit that, particularly when the total number of voters is fixed rather than having voters divide like bacteria during polling day. However it might work if you were checking the growth in total eligible voters in different locations over time. I like to imagine Benford's Law a bit like throwing randomly distributed darts through the air at a paper target, exept the target is graph paper with log-10 subdivisions. The "leading 1" zones are simply bigger targets. [0] [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logarithmic_scale.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logarithmic_scale.sv...
- immibis 2y ago
  The Biden election in 2020 also failed Benford's law - unless you're suggesting that one was fake, it seems that failing Benford's law is okay.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    There was a good paper in an American Statistical Association journal about this. https://chance.amstat.org/2022/04/benfords-law-votes/ https://chance.amstat.org/2022/04/benfords-law-votes/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09332480.2022.2066408 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09332480.2022.20...
  - stouset 2y ago
    Nobody is saying that failing a statistical test is by itself indicative of anything.
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      Statistically, yes they are. Immibis just did.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
refurb 2y ago
But votes aren’t tallied in one location, districts individually tally. So now you’ve got to force each of those districts to change the numbers.
lazide 2y ago
If they can get away with being balatant, that is even more of a show of power. Think of it this way - who has more power in a relationship? The one who is really good at cheating and hiding it? Or the the one who doesn’t even try to hide it, but suffers no consequences? Just look at how many comments are trying to figure out how the numbers could be legitimate, and how unlikely it is that Maduro is going to actually be removed from power.

stouset 2y ago

Unless done carefully this will almost certainly fail Benford’s Law. Manipulating statistics is harder than you think.

dllthomas 2y ago
It's my understanding that legitimate vote totals aren't likely to conform to Benford's law in the first place. Even if that's the case, though, there might very well be other applicable tests this would run afoul of.
- stouset 2y ago
  I’m not a statistician so I may be confusing it with Zipf’s law. But IIRC tallies from individual precincts should roughly conform to Benford’s law.
  - dllthomas 2y ago
    I think the concern is that precinct size tends to cluster in ways that mean results can cluster in ways that - for a large portion of the data - does not span a full order of magnitude.
    - dllthomas 2y ago
      To elaborate, if we imagine a polity with precincts that turn out 10,000 people each election, with two major party candidates that each get between 20% and 80% of the vote, we'd see precisely 0% precincts with a leading digit of 1, much less the ~30% predicted by Benford's law. Of course that doesn't exactly describe any real polity, but it doesn't seem surprising that real elections would be enough like that to screw with the pattern.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    Precints have roughly even populations and therefore typically don't conform to Benford's law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etx0k1nLn78&t=76s&pp=ygUQYmVuZm9yZCBsYXcgbWF0dA%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etx0k1nLn78&t=76s&pp=ygUQYmV...
Terr_ 2y ago
> Unless done carefully this will almost certainly fail Benford’s Law. IIRC Benford's law relies upon things that have power-law underpinnings, such as iterated growth% at different rates. In contrast, relative vote amounts at a given point in time don't have many ways to exhibit that, particularly when the total number of voters is fixed rather than having voters divide like bacteria during polling day. However it might work if you were checking the growth in total eligible voters in different locations over time. I like to imagine Benford's Law a bit like throwing randomly distributed darts through the air at a paper target, exept the target is graph paper with log-10 subdivisions. The "leading 1" zones are simply bigger targets. [0] [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logarithmic_scale.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logarithmic_scale.sv...
immibis 2y ago
The Biden election in 2020 also failed Benford's law - unless you're suggesting that one was fake, it seems that failing Benford's law is okay.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  There was a good paper in an American Statistical Association journal about this. https://chance.amstat.org/2022/04/benfords-law-votes/ https://chance.amstat.org/2022/04/benfords-law-votes/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09332480.2022.2066408 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09332480.2022.20...
- stouset 2y ago
  Nobody is saying that failing a statistical test is by itself indicative of anything.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    Statistically, yes they are. Immibis just did.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

refurb 2y ago

But votes aren’t tallied in one location, districts individually tally. So now you’ve got to force each of those districts to change the numbers.

lazide 2y ago

If they can get away with being balatant, that is even more of a show of power. Think of it this way - who has more power in a relationship? The one who is really good at cheating and hiding it? Or the the one who doesn’t even try to hide it, but suffers no consequences? Just look at how many comments are trying to figure out how the numbers could be legitimate, and how unlikely it is that Maduro is going to actually be removed from power.