Topic: RPF members uncover possible evidence of election fraud in Romney's favor (Read 2659 times)

Some voter fraud stories:
http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_19098003
http://www.indystar.com/article/20120216/NEWS05/202160337/Indiana-Election-Commission-examine-Santorum-petition-signatures

http://www.wtoc.com/story/16571904/south-carolinas-attorney-general-detects-voter-fraud-for-primaries
http://www.examiner.com/conspiracy-in-denver/iowa-vote-fraud-official

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/witnesses-document-potential-vote-fraud.html

http://www.examiner.com/conspiracy-in-denver/nevada-vote-fraud-official

Plenty of proof of vote fraud occuring with or without the statistical analysis.
I'm sure Reddit will debunk the Higs-Boson too.

Here a comparison of various NH Primaries.
No "demographic factor" in previous years:

Oh yea, that Greenville "evidence" was dumb.

My point is that for this to be evidence of fraud, or result manipulation, one would have to accept that every single precinct will have exactly the same ratios of votes for the various candidates. If X got 13% in precinct #101 he also got exactly the same 13% in every other precinct in the country. In a smaller precinct, like our theoretical 277 vote precinct, two families coming out to vote for Candidate X will skew the numbers way beyond that norm.

The description of Greenville, SC is to identify that in that particular case the definition of "urban" is not an accurate reflection of the actual demographic because of a glitch in South Carolina annexation law. And looking at the demographics, there is a radical departure from the national averages in terms of racial make-up in the population. I am suggesting that you cannot make iron-clad rules, and allege improprieties because of those rules looking at an algorithmic set of rules. This is statistical analysis, and statistical realities apply, not simple mathematical constraints.

And if there was any cooking of the books, it was probably done by Democrats anyway, to try and get a perceptually wackier candidate than Romney for Emperor Barry the First to face in November. That way the toady media can have a field day tearing him apart and make their Anointed One President for another four years.

Not saying there is any fraud being detected here (and I am someone who thinks the fix has been in with regards to Romney), but the proportion of paul voters definitely looks like it is a function of precinct size. Also it is obvious that the distribution of votes is related to the reference of the voters in each precinct (as long as the count is clean)... Please explain.

Precinct size is not a correlation, its the basis of the sample size. The distribution of Paul votes is not related to precinct size, but the voting preference of the voters in each precinct.

Analysis after the last presidential election showed that John McCain would have been the clear winner, by a dramatic margin if the result was based on precincts or counties won. It wasn't, it was based on electoral votes won. A fact that liberal strategists have learned from, and their conservative brethren are woefully behind on. Playing the game for votes is a surefire way to lose, play it to win by the numbers, and you have a shot. The Republicans fail to grasp that and have historically shot themselves in the foot time and time again by having knife fights in the primaries, and forcing lots of energy to be spent in campaigning for irrelevant votes, like the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire and other insignificant states. It is all going to come down to buying enough votes in the swing states. And in that battle, regrettably, Paul has no shot.

It doesn't make sense that the only correlation for these "pockets of support" seems to be precinct size, and furthermore only to the benefit of Romney as precinct size increases. The missing "randomness" is one the problems.

For this to mean anything you would have to assume that all voters will behave statistically identically, regardless of precinct. Applying algorithmic logic to proclaim a fraud is using bad math to cook the books in your favor. A precinct has very little to validate it as a sociological analysis tool, other than the fact that it is a carefully constructed set of boundaries to favor one party over the other.

Let's look at Greenville, SC indeed. Your definition of urban/rural is skewed because of the influence of South Carolina law on annexing areas into urban units. What is being described as rural in this analysis is largely what most people would consider urban voters. The population is skewed dramatically towards a minority population, with almost 2.5X the percentage of African-Americans as the mean in the US, and a relatively economically disadvantaged community, with 16.1% of the population living below the poverty line.

That recipe will give you very squirelly numbers when you take a very small statistical sample, like 277 voters. They are probably not the majority party in the precinct, and in any primary, only the truly committed and faithful come out to vote- a strong Paul supporter will have an impact in a smaller precinct specifically because they stand out, and are going to certainly come out to vote. While the same number of Paul supporters in a larger precinct will be swallowed up the the volume of voters who feel compelled for other candidates. The volume of Paul supporters is not evenly distributed over every voting population.

So what they have uncovered is the reality of participatory statistics, and the facts of distributed populations. Fringe candidates will tend to have concentrated pockets of support, mainstream candidates will enjoy stronger support from the bulk of the voting population. Whatever pocket of support exists, the stronger their impact will be when the statistical sample gets smaller.

Because, clearly, the trend should hold in 100% of cases. This would be like me proving to these guys that there wasn't any fraud at all by providing a single precinct/city that doesn't appear to be manipulated according to their statistical methods. In both cases, the anecdote is just as valid. (as in, not at all)

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?363915-We-NEED-more-hands-on-deck.-Significant-evidence-of-Algorithmic-vote-flipping.&p=4233368&viewfull=1#post4233368

I wouldn't say it has been "debunked" yet. As mentioned in the reddit thread, we require historical controls and current demographic info to draw any conclusions. It is interesting that the proportion of Romney voters seems to rise as a function of precinct size and the opposite for Ron Paul. I would say that on the face of it demographic differences are a more plausible explanation than election fraud, but this should be pretty easy to investigate.

I only looked at the Anderson County, SC data (discussed in the PDF) for myself. But from this I do see that Gingrich and Santorum proportions are not a function of precinct size, while Romney and Paul are nearly exactly opposite. This phenomenon is really interesting. How would we explain this? Is there a subpopulation of voters that vote Paul (if rural) or Romney (if urban) but are totally uninterested in the other two candidates? It just seems strange to me since Romney and Paul are at opposite ends of the spectrum as far as I am concerned. For example, I think it would make much more sense to go from Paul -> Gingrich. That is just me though.

If anyone cares, here is the Anderson county data in scatter and line format. I think it is more intuitive to understand it this way rather than looking at cumulative votes. On the other hand, it is easier to detect the patterns if you transform the data to depict the fact that larger counties have more weight in affecting the final results (see final chart).

Source:
http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/Anderson/36835/66538/en/reports.html

Edit: I just realized forgot to keep the color code consistent... just check the legends for each.
Number of votes by precinct size:

Proportion of votes by precinct size:

Proportion of votes by cumulative total as if counted in order of smallest to largest precinct:

tinfoil hat activate!

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/qb9ea/reddit_can_you_debunk_this_some_people_with/

Turns out that it's demographics that would cause this, as expected.

Link?

whole thing got totally debunked on reddit...

Not all precincts count their votes by hand.
People have detected it.

Riddle me this: How could you do that without anyone detecting it? Remember, each precinct counted their votes by hand and reported them, meaning that each precinct has their own copy of the tally.

By manipulating the software that tabulates the votes.

Sorry, but the math is lying to you.

How's this for statistics? Out of all of these primaries, nobody has seen actual evidence of fraud. Moreover, Republicans are more likely to ensure that their vote was actually counted, so they'd pay attention to the counting and reporting. Knowing all this, what's the probability that all of this fraud is going on, yet nobody has any actual evidence? My guess: almost 0%. Hell, the general election would be easier to rig than the primary.

This is why people don't want to elect Ron Paul.

Is Ron Paul supposed to have helped?  I noticed some stats that in 20 debates, Ron Paul has not criticised Romney once while he has attached every other candidate that was the "not Romney" flavour of the month.