The Devil's Excrement

Goebbels would have been proud of them: The Chavista Government would
make Goebbels proud. What they are arguing is that the counting of the
votes is what the law says is a public act. Thus, these guys argue, it
is the act of the machine printing the votes which is a public act.(I
guess it is the machine that does the couting) But the opening of the
ballot boxes aftewards is an “audit” not “counting” the votes and
therefore is not a public act. This convinces me that these guys are
ready to cheat again. Why the emphasis on this small detail? Why do
they want people out of the ballot box opening and counting? Why twist
the truth around like this? Why not count all of the votes like the
law says. Get ready my friends, this “escrutinio” is fixed once again.

Goebbels would have been proud of them: The Chavista Government would
make Goebbels proud. What they are arguing is that the counting of the
votes is what the law says is a public act. Thus, these guys argue, it
is the act of the machine printing the votes which is a public act.(I
guess it is the machine that does the couting) But the opening of the
ballot boxes aftewards is an “audit” not “counting” the votes and
therefore is not a public act. This convinces me that these guys are
ready to cheat again. Why the emphasis on this small detail? Why do
they want people out of the ballot box opening and counting? Why twist
the truth around like this? Why not count all of the votes like the
law says. Get ready my friends, this “escrutinio” is fixed once again.

You have been warned: The Minsiter of the Interior and Justice,
assumed the role of the Electoral Board and warned that only witnesses
will be able to participate in the counting of the ballots. Other will
have to leave the voting center or be removed by the military. In the
nice words of this thug: “Those that pretend to go beyond what the law
allows, we will impose of all the measures that will enforce the law
and will enforce it”. The Minsiter is issuing this threat “to avoid
being removed by the military”. Such nice thugs!

You have been warned: The Minsiter of the Interior and Justice,
assumed the role of the Electoral Board and warned that only witnesses
will be able to participate in the counting of the ballots. Other will
have to leave the voting center or be removed by the military. In the
nice words of this thug: “Those that pretend to go beyond what the law
allows, we will impose of all the measures that will enforce the law
and will enforce it”. The Minsiter is issuing this threat “to avoid
being removed by the military”. Such nice thugs!

You have been warned: The Minsiter of the Interior and Justice,
assumed the role of the Electoral Board and warned that only witnesses
will be able to participate in the counting of the ballots. Other will
have to leave the voting center or be removed by the military. In the
nice words of this thug: “Those that pretend to go beyond what the law
allows, we will impose of all the measures that will enforce the law
and will enforce it”. The Minsiter is issuing this threat “to avoid
being removed by the military”. Such nice thugs!

You have been warned: The Minsiter of the Interior and Justice,
assumed the role of the Electoral Board and warned that only witnesses
will be able to participate in the counting of the ballots. Other will
have to leave the voting center or be removed by the military. In the
nice words of this thug: “Those that pretend to go beyond what the law
allows, we will impose of all the measures that will enforce the law
and will enforce it”. The Minsiter is issuing this threat “to avoid
being removed by the military”. Such nice thugs!

This is a very personal note. I went to school both undergrad and graduate in the Boston area. Was a Red Sox fan since I was a little kid. Listened to games day in and day out for the last thirty yeas. Thanks to the Internet, I can now watch every night on MLB.TV the Red Sox games. I read the Boston Globe on the Internet everyday. I relly love “beisbol” the Venezuelan national pasttime. So you can imagine how happy I am today!!! The curse of the Bambino is over! Will it ever be as mch fun as this again? I just don’t know but as a baseball and Red Sox fan, this was as thrilling as can be! Sorry for the abuse, this is definitely a digression but I had to post it. Impossible to post anything else tonight!

Physicist Imre Mikoss presented his data on tests on the August 15^th. recall vote and comparison to Benford’s law two weeks ago at the third Simon Bolivar University seminar. His presentation is now online. While Pericchi and Torres have done similar tests, Mykoss does a couple of very interesting things which are worth posting for their implications.

–Results from the 2000 election: Mikoss has looked at the data from the 2000 Presidential vote. This is interesting because even though electoral results would seem like a natural set to test Benford’s law, nothing guarantees that it works in Venezuela or everywhere. Below is a graph the first digit in the number of votes obtained by Chavez’ challenger Francisco Arias Cardenas in the 2000 elections. :

Frequency of occurence of the first digit for the votes in favor of Arias Cardenas at each machine in the 2000 as a function of the digit.

The graph shows the frequency of occurrence expected from Benford (green bar) and the frequency seen in the election (red bar) in the vertical axis versus each of the digits in the horizontal axis. The graph not only looks like Benford’s law, but the author performed statistical tests and obtained in the case of the number of votes for Arias across the nation to have a parameter S (which I believe is chi^2, but the presentation does not define)=0.003. Chavez’ votes in the same election, as well as the difference between the two numbers at each machine were all found to follow Benford’s law with S<0.014. Thus, Venezuelan electoral results did follow well Benford’s law in 2000, which needed to be established and seems to be established by this comparison.

–Results from the recall vote: The same test on the results from the recall vote do not agree well with Benford’s law as sown below for the Si and the No frequencies. As in the case of Pericchi’s analysis for the second digit presented here earlier, Mykoss finds that the Si votes agrees better (S=0.33) than the No vote (S=0.97) as seen below:

Frequency of occurence of the first digit for the Si votes at each machine as a function of the digit.

Frequency of occurence of the first digit for the Np votes at each machine as a function of the digit.

-“Reverting the data”: Mikoss then studies rather than the Si or No numbers, the set of differences (No-Si) for each voting machine. This apparently has the advantage that it provides a more uniform set of numbers that is not as bound as the pure set in which machine size bounds numbers. In fact, this difference for the recall vote shows the best comparison to Benford’s law with S=0.1.

But there is an additional reason for doing this. If you want to “simulate” tampering with the data and you calculate (NO-Si) at each machine, then it is very easy to “transfer back” No votes to the Si votes and measure chi^2 as a function of this “reversion” of the votes. Mikoss tested this, “reverting” votes by equal percentages in all machines and obtains the following graph:

 Chi squared of the comparison between Benford’s law for the difference (No-Si) as a function of the percentage of No votes “reverted” to the Si

The suggestion is a) the fits is much better if you shift votes from No to Si, with a very well defined minimum in which chi^2 goes down sharply by two orders of magnitude, corresponding to about 18% of the votes being shifted from No to Si. b) The work of Mikoss shows that you can use such testing to test for this reversion. C) There are suggestions that this was done given that the work assumes all machines were altered, which would seem surprising.

For completeness, below are the results for the second digit of Arias and Chavez in 2000 as well as the Si and the No in the recall referendum, which have also been studied by Pericchi and posted here before:

           Frequency second digit Arias  2000                Second Digit Chavez 2000

               Second digit Si vote RR                                         Second digit No vote RR

Physicist Imre Mikoss presented his data on tests on the August 15^th. recall vote and comparison to Benford’s law two weeks ago at the third Simon Bolivar University seminar. His presentation is now online. While Pericchi and Torres have done similar tests, Mykoss does a couple of very interesting things which are worth posting for their implications.

–Results from the 2000 election: Mikoss has looked at the data from the 2000 Presidential vote. This is interesting because even though electoral results would seem like a natural set to test Benford’s law, nothing guarantees that it works in Venezuela or everywhere. Below is a graph the first digit in the number of votes obtained by Chavez’ challenger Francisco Arias Cardenas in the 2000 elections. :

Frequency of occurence of the first digit for the votes in favor of Arias Cardenas at each machine in the 2000 as a function of the digit.

The graph shows the frequency of occurrence expected from Benford (green bar) and the frequency seen in the election (red bar) in the vertical axis versus each of the digits in the horizontal axis. The graph not only looks like Benford’s law, but the author performed statistical tests and obtained in the case of the number of votes for Arias across the nation to have a parameter S (which I believe is chi^2, but the presentation does not define)=0.003. Chavez’ votes in the same election, as well as the difference between the two numbers at each machine were all found to follow Benford’s law with S<0.014. Thus, Venezuelan electoral results did follow well Benford’s law in 2000, which needed to be established and seems to be established by this comparison.

–Results from the recall vote: The same test on the results from the recall vote do not agree well with Benford’s law as sown below for the Si and the No frequencies. As in the case of Pericchi’s analysis for the second digit presented here earlier, Mykoss finds that the Si votes agrees better (S=0.33) than the No vote (S=0.97) as seen below:

Frequency of occurence of the first digit for the Si votes at each machine as a function of the digit.

Frequency of occurence of the first digit for the Np votes at each machine as a function of the digit.

-“Reverting the data”: Mikoss then studies rather than the Si or No numbers, the set of differences (No-Si) for each voting machine. This apparently has the advantage that it provides a more uniform set of numbers that is not as bound as the pure set in which machine size bounds numbers. In fact, this difference for the recall vote shows the best comparison to Benford’s law with S=0.1.

But there is an additional reason for doing this. If you want to “simulate” tampering with the data and you calculate (NO-Si) at each machine, then it is very easy to “transfer back” No votes to the Si votes and measure chi^2 as a function of this “reversion” of the votes. Mikoss tested this, “reverting” votes by equal percentages in all machines and obtains the following graph:

 Chi squared of the comparison between Benford’s law for the difference (No-Si) as a function of the percentage of No votes “reverted” to the Si

The suggestion is a) the fits is much better if you shift votes from No to Si, with a very well defined minimum in which chi^2 goes down sharply by two orders of magnitude, corresponding to about 18% of the votes being shifted from No to Si. b) The work of Mikoss shows that you can use such testing to test for this reversion. C) There are suggestions that this was done given that the work assumes all machines were altered, which would seem surprising.

For completeness, below are the results for the second digit of Arias and Chavez in 2000 as well as the Si and the No in the recall referendum, which have also been studied by Pericchi and posted here before:

           Frequency second digit Arias  2000                Second Digit Chavez 2000

               Second digit Si vote RR                                         Second digit No vote RR

Physicist Imre Mikoss presented his data on tests on the August 15^th. recall vote and comparison to Benford’s law two weeks ago at the third Simon Bolivar University seminar. His presentation is now online. While Pericchi and Torres have done similar tests, Mykoss does a couple of very interesting things which are worth posting for their implications.

–Results from the 2000 election: Mikoss has looked at the data from the 2000 Presidential vote. This is interesting because even though electoral results would seem like a natural set to test Benford’s law, nothing guarantees that it works in Venezuela or everywhere. Below is a graph the first digit in the number of votes obtained by Chavez’ challenger Francisco Arias Cardenas in the 2000 elections. :

Frequency of occurence of the first digit for the votes in favor of Arias Cardenas at each machine in the 2000 as a function of the digit.

The graph shows the frequency of occurrence expected from Benford (green bar) and the frequency seen in the election (red bar) in the vertical axis versus each of the digits in the horizontal axis. The graph not only looks like Benford’s law, but the author performed statistical tests and obtained in the case of the number of votes for Arias across the nation to have a parameter S (which I believe is chi^2, but the presentation does not define)=0.003. Chavez’ votes in the same election, as well as the difference between the two numbers at each machine were all found to follow Benford’s law with S<0.014. Thus, Venezuelan electoral results did follow well Benford’s law in 2000, which needed to be established and seems to be established by this comparison.

–Results from the recall vote: The same test on the results from the recall vote do not agree well with Benford’s law as sown below for the Si and the No frequencies. As in the case of Pericchi’s analysis for the second digit presented here earlier, Mykoss finds that the Si votes agrees better (S=0.33) than the No vote (S=0.97) as seen below:

Frequency of occurence of the first digit for the Si votes at each machine as a function of the digit.

Frequency of occurence of the first digit for the Np votes at each machine as a function of the digit.

-“Reverting the data”: Mikoss then studies rather than the Si or No numbers, the set of differences (No-Si) for each voting machine. This apparently has the advantage that it provides a more uniform set of numbers that is not as bound as the pure set in which machine size bounds numbers. In fact, this difference for the recall vote shows the best comparison to Benford’s law with S=0.1.

But there is an additional reason for doing this. If you want to “simulate” tampering with the data and you calculate (NO-Si) at each machine, then it is very easy to “transfer back” No votes to the Si votes and measure chi^2 as a function of this “reversion” of the votes. Mikoss tested this, “reverting” votes by equal percentages in all machines and obtains the following graph:

 Chi squared of the comparison between Benford’s law for the difference (No-Si) as a function of the percentage of No votes “reverted” to the Si

The suggestion is a) the fits is much better if you shift votes from No to Si, with a very well defined minimum in which chi^2 goes down sharply by two orders of magnitude, corresponding to about 18% of the votes being shifted from No to Si. b) The work of Mikoss shows that you can use such testing to test for this reversion. C) There are suggestions that this was done given that the work assumes all machines were altered, which would seem surprising.

For completeness, below are the results for the second digit of Arias and Chavez in 2000 as well as the Si and the No in the recall referendum, which have also been studied by Pericchi and posted here before:

           Frequency second digit Arias  2000                Second Digit Chavez 2000

               Second digit Si vote RR                                         Second digit No vote RR