A Wichita State mathematician by the name of Beth Clarkson is asking for access to voting records in order to research anomalies noted in summary voting records in Kansas and across the nation. From The Wichita Eagle:
Beth Clarkson, chief statistician for the university’s National Institute for Aviation Research, filed the open records lawsuit in Sedgwick County District Court as part of her personal quest to find the answer to an unexplained pattern that transcends elections and states. The lawsuit was amended Wednesday to name Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Sedgwick County Elections Commissioner Tabitha Lehman.
Clarkson, a certified quality engineer with a Ph.D. in statistics, said she has analyzed election returns in Kansas and elsewhere over several elections that indicate “a statistically significant” pattern where the percentage of Republican votes increase the larger the size of the precinct.
While it is well-recognized that smaller, rural precincts tend to lean Republican, statisticians have been unable to explain the consistent pattern favoring Republicans that trends upward as the number of votes cast in a precinct or other voting unit goes up. In primaries, the favored candidate appears to always be the Republican establishment candidate, above a tea party challenger. And the upward trend for Republicans occurs once a voting unit reaches roughly 500 votes.
Her request to Kansas for access to the requisite information has been blocked by the Secretary of State, and she is suing for access.
This is very interesting – an attempt to quash the Tea Party faction? Even more interesting, given the puzzling ascendancy of Governor Walker in Wisconsin, is her final comment for the Eagle’s story:
Clarkson became more interested in the issue after reading a paper written by statisticians Francois Choquette and James Johnson in 2012 of the Republican primary results showing strong statistical evidence of election manipulation in Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky.
Clarkson said she couldn’t believe their findings, so she checked their math and found it was correct and checked their model selection and found it appropriate. Then she pulled additional data from other elections they hadn’t analyzed and found the same pattern.
Clarkson’s blog is here. Her most recent blog post (disregarding the post saying she has no progress yet on her lawsuit) discusses possible real voting fraud involving voting machines.
My statistical analysis shows patterns indicative of vote manipulation in machines. The manipulation is relatively small, compared with the inherent variability of election results, but it is consistent. These results form a pattern that goes across the nation and back a number of election cycles.
Which pushes me to recall the inappropriateness of using computers for voting, a position I’ve quietly held since they were first introduced. Here’s my points:
- People are corruptible, and when they are corrupted, it’s additive. You have to corrupt a lot of people to get a real effect in any but the smallest of elections.
- Computers are multiplicative. Unless you’re using a network of independent computers using varying styles of security and computation, the payback for a successful corruption – even if it’s harder than corrupting people – is so steep that it’s easily worth the extra effort. This is not about quantity of votes, but patterns of corruption. Humans are not that hard to catch, but computers … they require specialized mathematicians, a rare breed.
- Computer software is not open for public inspection. Proprietary! I cannot imagine how anyone lets them get away with that. This is PUBLIC business, not PRIVATE.
- Speed of counting is not important. The public may think it is – but it’s not.
- There are plenty of public spirited citizens to do that sort of work.
This may turn out to be quite entertaining.
