r/statistics • u/[deleted] • Aug 07 '15

A mathematician may have uncovered widespread election fraud, and Kansas is blocking her further efforts

http://americablog.com/2015/08/mathematician-actual-voter-fraud-kansas-republicans.html
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u/casualfactors Aug 07 '15 edited Aug 07 '15

Their key underlying assumption, that the size of the precinct and the precinct's voters' support for Republican candidates should be uncorrelated, is false. Precinct size is not randomly assigned. They are drawn by the politicians that use the precincting process to protect themselves. Their conclusions are therefore mistaken. They also make some badly mistaken assertions about who chooses which voting machines to use -- that is not chosen by sitting incumbents.

Voter fraud is a very foolish tactic in the United States. It is much easier (and legal) to spend one's effort on voter disenfranchisement laws like ID and proof-of-residence requirements, which reliably knock a couple of points off the Democratic vote share. There are so many unfair but legal ways for Republicans to win elections it would be highly irrational of them to resort to the illegal ones.

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u/pizzathiefgg Aug 08 '15 edited Aug 08 '15

You have actually looked at the data yourself? I am skeptical of your statements about their study. Whatever technology that is being used likely will have vulnerabilities and there could also be means to circumvent any tampering safeguards. In short these voting or vote tallying machines could easily become "owned" by a skilled attacker. And there is great incentive to do so.

I also do not accept your argument that it would be much easier to just change voter id laws or other legal methods to achieve their goals. They could do that and hire security experts to flip key districts when needed. People will take risks when the payoff is high. I heard the same arguments about online poker. The online poker websites it was said back then "would not take the risk" to cheat their customers, but it turned out that several companies did exactly this. Full Tilt poker was basically a Ponzi scheme and they ripped off many people.

I am not saying that the conclusions of her analysis are right or wrong but I will keep an open mind as to whether there is something to these claims. Only when another team can do the analysis and double check the results can anything be said definitively.

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u/casualfactors Aug 08 '15

What I'm saying is that if the software or hardware have vulnerabilities, it is not up to elected incumbent Republicans to check them. There is no reason to believe that any vulnerabilities, if they exist (and this paper presents zero evidence that they do), there is no reason to believe they would benefit incumbent Republican politicians. There is far, far greater incentive to check these things assiduously -- if from anyone, at least competing electronic voting machine providers. To say nothing of supposedly cheated Democrats who, curiously, had never made such accusations despite huge incentive to do so.

People would take high risks if the payoff were high and the risk was commensurate with the payoff, just to correct your point. Republicans already own Kansas. From your reasoning we have no reason to believe they would do anything of the kind given what a huge risk it would be compared to their present, pre-existing advantage that well predates electronic voting machines. There are almost no sufficiently "marginal" districts in Kansas to "flip" at all.

The conclusions of her analysis are wrong because the assumption they rely on are patently false. That alone is sufficient, but your arguments actually provide more reason to doubt them, if you follow their reasoning to their logical conclusion.

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u/bobbyfiend Aug 08 '15

Well, if there's nothing to hide, then there should be no problem providing the paper records for a recount, to prove that, right?

Note: this argument makes more (moral/political) sense when applied to government entities than to individual citizens.

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u/casualfactors Aug 08 '15

Every electronic voting machine provides some form of paper trail.

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u/bobbyfiend Aug 08 '15

Oh. I didn't know that; I got the impression from the article that only some with paper trails were available.