Kansas Statistician Loses State Court Fight to Look at Vote-Counting Machine Innards

On February 18, a Kansas state court ruled that statistician Beth Clarkson can’t have access to the vote-counting machine tapes from the November 2014 election. See this story. The statistician, Beth Clarkson, has identified statistical anomalies in the precinct election returns which, she says, suggests that the vote-counting machines are not producing accurate results.


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Kansas Statistician Loses State Court Fight to Look at Vote-Counting Machine Innards — 6 Comments

  1. Beth Clarkson’s work is based on an erroneous supposition that she failed to check or attempt to verify.

    The precinct election returns in Sedgwick County are consistent with party registration. The higher the Republican registration share in a precinct, the higher the vote share for Republican candidates.

    Precincts that have higher Republican registration, have higher turnout. Registration and voting records are public. If Clarkson were so inclined to check, she could determine if this was because registered Republicans were more likely to vote.

    Clarkson ranks precincts by votes cast. Because more Republican precincts have a larger share of their registered voters actually vote, this causes more Republican precincts to be ranked higher, and thus contribute to the cumulative vote share, later rather than sooner.

    In Wichita (and Kansas), precincts with large concentrations of black voters, which vote strongly for Democratic candidates are not among the largest precincts.

    There are likely structural reasons for precinct sizes. An election precinct needs a polling place. Suburban areas were developed when there was almost universal automobile access. Schools and churches, which are typical polling places, can be further apart when everyone drives to them. Suburban precincts may end up being more populous. Inner city precincts may have been devised to be walked to. As an area depopulates, the election precincts might not be eliminated.

  2. In other words, rather than open up the machines and determine whether they’re actually counting votes correctly, let’s just trust Jimbo’s electoral suppositions and theories.

    So move along folks…nothing to see here.

    Jim Riley says so.

  3. Barry Scary,

    Kansas has partisan voter registration. Even someone of your limited mental capacity should not be surprised if Republicans voted for a Republican candidate, and Democrats for a Democratic candidate (or as was the case in Kansas, a non-Republican). The results correlate with registration.

  4. Then put me in an unsurprised state and open up the machines to audit. If all of your theories on why the votes tabulate as they do, they should only be vindicated by an audit.

    But that rubs against your fascist grain, doesn’t it? Put a light to the engine of democracy? Oh my fucking god, we can’t have that now, can we, Jimbo? Verify the means by which we’re counting votes? Why kind of a country would that make us?

    Why do you hate democracy?

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