The gears of justice grind ever so slowly, and I had lost track of Professor Clarkson’s lawsuit, so here’s an update. First, The Wichita Eagle notes she has lost her court fight (thanks to Richard Winger of Ballot Access News). Kris Kobach, Secretary of State for Kansas, where Clarkson resides and filed her lawsuit, has proposed a new law for auditing voting, as noted by The Wichita Eagle:
“As you know, there was an individual in Sedgwick County who wanted to do a private audit of ballots in Sedgwick County. Kansas law clearly prohibits that. Although I favor having audits of election equipment, I believe that the rule of law trumps any elected official’s preferences, so my answer had to be no,” Kobach said, noting that a judge had ruled against Clarkson’s earlier efforts to audit 2012 election results. “So the responsible thing to do, I believe, is to offer a bill to change the law and allow the audit.”
About 30 states audit election results in some form, Kobach said. His bill, which would take effect in 2017 if passed, would require counties to conduct public audits of election results between the election and the county canvass of 1 percent of the votes cast. If a discrepancy is found, the secretary of state would have the power to call for a more robust audit.
In response to the suggestion, state Representative Jarrod Ousley (D-District 24) reviewed the the audit process with Dr. Clarkson and then the bill proposed by Kobach, and came away with these thoughts, as reported by the Shawnee Mission Post:
With Dr. Clarkson’s help and legislative researchers and revisers, I began work on an Election Audit Act containing the critical safeguards recommended by Dr. Clarkson and other experts. This draft would become HB 2659, a four page bill I introduced in committee Vision 2020, after which it moved to the Elections Committee.
In October, KU hosted a symposium where Secretary of State Kris Kobach voiced his support for effective and robust auditing practices, and this session Secretary Kobach also introduced a one page bill expanding Kansas audits. However, his bill did not have the critical safeguards. The Secretary’s bill was placed on the Elections Committee agenda, and Dr. Clarkson prepared testimony in support of auditing requirements, stressing the need for the additional provisions. I had amendments drafted to expand the Secretary’s bill, and during the committee hearing, Secretary Kobach, Dr. Clarkson and I, as well as election officials from multiple counties (including Sedgwick, Johnson, and Wyandotte) all testified regarding the election audit process in Kansas.
Will they be effective? Hard to say, I do not get a sense of how the Kansas Legislature, a body with some serious state-wide problems, will react to such a bill, or whether Governor Brownback, who used to be considered a GOP visionary and is now never mentioned, would look on this favorably. The safeguards proposed by Dr. Clarkson seem reasonable, but I still prefer manual recounts, as they are harder to corrupt, if slower and less accurate.
Who.What.Why. profiles Dr. Clarkson here.
Then something happened in 2012 that shook her world. One day, Clarkson came across a statistics paper on the internet titled “Republican Primary Election 2012 Results: Amazing Statistical Anomalies.”
The authors of the paper found that in elections all over the country where electronic voting machines were used, a strange pattern kept appearing: the larger the number of registered voters in the voting precinct, the larger the Republican vote. Since precinct size should have no effect on the vote distribution, the authors concluded that the data “indicates overwhelming evidence of election manipulation.”
Clarkson said she was astonished. She proceeded to reproduce the results of the study — she called it essentially a peer-review — and began to seriously question the trustworthiness of our electoral system. …
Eventually, the attention drew the interest of an attorney, who offered his services to Clarkson pro bono. To help defray some of her legal expenses in preparation for her March trial date, she founded the Show Me The Votes Foundation and set up a gofundme site.
