Beth Clarkson is a Kansas mathematics professor who has been struggling for years to get the documents from various Kansas governments to test her theory that Kansas vote-counting machines yield faulty counts. See this story.
Beth Clarkson is a Kansas mathematics professor who has been struggling for years to get the documents from various Kansas governments to test her theory that Kansas vote-counting machines yield faulty counts. See this story.
The much simpler explanation is that, in Kansas, the largest precincts are more suburban, and more Republican.
If Beth Clarkson can not discern that, I wonder whether she is competent to audit the vote counting machines.
Plausible explanation Mr. Riley, so there shouldn’t be any problem testing it with an audit, should there?
Is Beth Clarkson competent to conduct such an audit?
You didn’t answer my question. Do you have objections to examining the software which is used to tabulate votes in electronic voting machines? Is the proprietary nature of that software more important than the people’s interest in seeing that their votes are tabulated accurately?
And by the way, I think you’re misstating Clarkson’s (and others’) skepticism. You assert that we should expect “larger” suburban Kansas precincts to lean more heavily Republican than others. That may be true. But that isn’t what Clarkson (and others around the country) mean by “larger” precincts. By “larger,” they mean they have suspicions of statistical anomalies in precincts where more than 500 votes are cast – whether urban, suburban or rural. Urban precincts with more than 500 voters might just as well be expected to trend more Democratic than Republican.
But back to the fundamental question – do you think the democratic process is served by trusting the manufacturers of voting machines and the software that runs them without independent (and competent) audits? Put another way – would you be willing to trust a group of three Democrats to count and report the total votes in your precinct without the presence of Republicans or some other validating presence?
(I presume you’re a Republican. I apologize if that presumption is wrong.)
I did not state that we should “expect” that larger suburban precincts to be more heavily Republican than smaller suburban precincts.
In Kansas, Clarkson demonstrated that on average, precincts with 500 votes cast were more Republican than precincts with 400 votes cast; and that precincts with 700 votes cast were more Republican than those with 500 votes cast, and precincts with 1000 votes cast were more Republican than those with 700, and so on.
Where she failed, was that she made an erroneous assumption that beyond a certain point, there is NO connection between demographics and precinct size.
I think we could agree that demographics explains how people vote. Can we not? If a precinct has a higher share of home owners, or married voters, or higher incomes, we would expect it to be more Republican. If a precinct has more renters, or single persons, or lower incomes we would expect it to be less Republican. Agreed?
Because of her erroneous assumption that there is no demographic connection between votes cast in a precinct, and demographics, then the only plausible explanation is that the results have been manipulated.
If precincts with around 700 voters, collectively cast 57% for the Republican candidate, and precincts with around 500 voters, collectively cast 55% for the Republican candidate, and one “knows” that there is no connection between precinct size and demographics, then one might jump to a conclusion that the results have been manipulated.
But in Kansas, larger precincts tend to be more suburban. And I don’t mean only suburban, but further away from the central city. The most populous county in Kansas is Johnson County, which is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri (KCM) and Kansas City, Kansas (KCK).
In the northeastern corner, closest to KCM and KCK, the Democrats are quite competitive. The resident streets conform to a regular grid (16 street or 8 streets per section), indicating settlement after WWII. As you go further south and west, the residential streets may have a bit of a wave to them, and perhaps a cul-de-sac or two.
As you continue to go further south and west, the residential streets no longer conform to the rectangular grid, and are designed to discourage people from driving through the neighborhood, forcing them to the section-line arterial. In places, even the arterial streets may not fully match section lines.
The houses are newer, larger, and more likely to harbor Republican voters.
But what also increases is the number of votes cast in the precincts. That is, the larger the precinct, the more suburban. The more suburban, the more Republican.
If one examines the data and recognizes that larger precincts tend to be more suburban, one is not surprised at all that they are more Republican.
Are you going to answer the question or not? Do you think we as a democratic people have a right to know that the means by which our votes are counted are accurate and reliable? Do you think we have a right to audit elections? Do we have a right to have the software that runs our electronic voting tabulation devices independently examined? Or is it our lot to just “trust” whomever writes the code?
If the audit is performed by someone who has demonstrated negligence and perhaps incompetence in her analysis of election results, how can we expect the audit to be accurate and reliable?
Mr. Riley – would you try answering a question with an answer instead of questions?
Do you think vote tabulation should be done by secret, proprietary software?
Yes or no?
rvvr –
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Jimbo to answer your question. He’s well established as a prevaricating, obfuscating, technicolor Republican tool. More than likely he owns Diebold stock, so this is an issue he’d just as soon have swept under the carpet.
“Nothing to see here folks, so just move along.”
Hey Jimbo – Ohio, 2004!