To contact me, leave a message below. I’ll get right back to you.
26 thoughts on “Contact Me2”
Thank you for your suggestion. I think you’re right. I’ll see what I can come up with.
Hi Beth. I will be following your blog with interest in the voter data.
Thanks for doing this blog.
Tim.
Aloha, Beth,
I expect you will have continually to decide between competing hypothetical processes as generators of your raw voting data. Cheating or ___ ?
It may be easier just to catch people cheating. Someone recommended that governments use only electronic voting machines that generate a receipt with a random 10-digit (thereabouts) code and a record of how the voter voted. The Board of elections would then publish a precinct-by-precinct list of votes in numerical order and voters could compare their receipt to the listed individual vote. You’d still have the problem of phantom voters.
Anyway, good luck with this.
Thanks for checking out my blog and thanks for the good wishes. Yes, it’s only designed to catch a particular type of fraud-voting machine discrepancies. Even if there is a discrepancy (I’m hoping that there is not), it would require further work to establish whether it was part of the official code, which has been certified to work properly in previous tests, or whether they system had been hacked by an outsider. The paper receipt system you describe would be superior, but isn’t what we have. I’m lucky there are actually paper tapes to review for an audit. Some states don’t have that.
Hi Beth, I’ve really enjoyed your posts on the homeschooling discussion! If you use Facebook, I’d love to talk with you more – you can find me as Marlowe Filippov 🙂
Thanks. The feeling is mutual.
Beth, I saw your comment on Libby Anne’s blog and nearly cried. I am an ex-theist in Wichita and it’s been lonely. I would love to meet other atheist women.
Thank you for the suggestion. I’m considering one about vaccines more generally and the heuristics I ended up developing for myself. My concerns about rotoshield were more about the vaccine committee and general distrust of their recommendations.
Have you participated in the conversation?
Hi Beth. I am a newbie engineer working recently with aluminium alloys. And I would like to contact you to ask about the allowable values to use according the MIL-HDBK-5 or the MMPDS code (A/B Basis). I know that in other industries it is common to use a material safety factor of 1.2 if strength data are B-Basis, and they want to achieve the equivalent lower-tolerance limit as using A-Basis. I already contacted to a material distributor, asking him about the Material Procurement Specifications of the products they provide, and they just sent me a Certified Test Report, clarifying that “all materials they distribute are used by the Aerospace Industry and meets all technical and mechanical specifications required by the OEM.” I think there must be some statistical reason that justifies the use of a safety factor (and its value), for the use of B-Basis materials. I appreciate any help you could provide.
I’m sorry, but I’m not familiar with the safety factor of 1.2 for A-basis. In the reports I produce, I give A-Estimates which are estimates of A-basis values. These are computed using the appropriate distribution. My guess is that the 1.2 is an approximate value for the normal distribution and may be a reasonable estimate in the absence of other information.
Richard Charnin has done similar work, looking at election results in Wisconsin, and he has found the same results. You may be able to benefit by comparing notes with him. Here is a link to his blog entry about his model for the the Wisconsin recall election: https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/the-walker-recall-municipal-database-a-true-vote-model/
Most of what he does is above my head but it would probably be right up your alley.
Perhaps you are aware of his work but this issue is important. I hope this may be of help to you. We know what is going on, we just need to prove it.
Dale Franson
Dear Beth, all of us election integrity citizens are cheering you on. If you need any help at all, please feel free to contact me. The article I attached is just the tip of the iceberg of data we have collected in Wisconsin over the years. If it is in any way helpful to you please use it or let us know how we can help.
In 2011, I filed a complaint with the Department of Justice asking them to investigate racketeering in Wisconsin. I was at the 2011 Supreme Court recount and saw copious evidence of election fraud. Not just how they “counted” the ballots, but ballots bags that had been slit open and duck taped shut, sealed changed without official documentation, and much more. We were shocked when they declared Prosser, the Republican, the winner. It was I who found the touchscreen poll tape dated March 29 at 1 AM for an April 5th election.
Regardless, we are cheering you on here and will send our prayers for justice to be served. You are doing something invaluable and thank you from all of us.
Thank you for taking the time and energy to do the study re. voting machines. with the proliferation of these being used in elections one would think that such studies would be required to be conducted on specific software programs following each election.
I certainly hope you will pursue your research on voting anomalies.
I noticed there were some glitches reported in the voting machines, and then there was a surge in votes for Republican candidates. I reported it to the Atty. Gen. as a possible case of election fraud, but I am not sure they followed up on it.
I was pleased to see that Wichita Kansas Eagle paper published an article mentioning you, stating that you confirmed my findings in a 2012 paper.
WSU statistician sues seeking Kansas voting machine paper tapes
WSU statistician sues seeking Kansas voting machine pape…
Beth Clarkson has analyzed election returns showing an unexplained pattern where the percentage of Republican votes increases the larger the size of the precinct.
I’d like to chat with you some more as to what could be the actual cause of this discrepancy. I have MUCH more data available if you’re interested. Most counties were analyzed. The papers show only a subset of what we analyzed. The data is mostly for the 2008 2012 elections, but we went far back to see when the problem started occurring.
I am reasonably confident that the root cause is not with the DRE machines, and maybe not even with the central tabulators. I did find some very disturbing problems with the voter registration databases of several states and counties.
Due to a total lack of interest by the media and most statistician, I pretty my put the project aside, hoping that one day, someone like you would find these results — amazing.
I attach the two papers that I wrote also with Mr. James Johnson, a Russian financial analyst with excellent statistical and programming skills.
Please don’t hesitate to call or write me to discuss this further.
0:05many people who are denying problems they’re saying
0:08well these are just democrats soon all in all our
0:11I’m a Republican I’m a Republican I am
0:15I worked on giuliani’s campaign I worked on Bloomberg’s campaign
0:18I worked on John McCain’s campaign have been a lifelong member the party
0:22this is not a democrat republican issue this is not a partisan issue
0:27this is a democracy issue if you actually care about a constitutional
0:31democracy in which
0:32each person votes that vote is validated and
0:35the people who and up in office are reflected on the basis of the way people
0:40voted
0:40you care about this issue if you don’t want people to vote
0:44if you don’t want people’s vote to count and if you want to rule
0:48without owning it by a mandate then you are very supportive
0:54DeBolt while dell has promised
0:57in no fund-raising letter to deliver I’m gonna go I’m gonna go ahead and accept
1:01public an issue
1:02I mean who’s doing the votes it would you say is true who wants still the
1:06elections
1:07ice I certainly know that it all the statistical information
1:13it seems the every single buzz saw our circumstance
1:17where exit data polling data
1:21or informational data swings it is all been
1:24in favor of Republicans but not the sort to republicans who I wanna see an office
1:28at all these are people who lie and people who cheat
1:32that is not the conservative way
1:35conservatives conserve things we were are respectful
1:39and we are constitutionally based you know what the real problem is
1:43people do not want to believe that people wanna steal elections in this
1:48country
1:49I’ve done extensive work over the years you for voting monitoring overseas
1:54if we had a very nice the exit polling even
1:572 percent from what actually was tabulated which is exactly how the
2:02Orange Revolution came but ukraine
2:04we would be in there explain to people
2:07something is wrong we have had
2:11numerous selections in this country now in which
2:14where you use Diboll election system machines
2:18the what happens with the vote is one way of
2:22510 as much as 12 percent from the exit polling and the actual survey
2:27these statistical numbers are impossible
2:31and the problem is Americans do not want to believe that we have people stealing
2:37our elections
2:38and they must come to the realization their
2:41or people in this country want to steal elections and we must
2:44stop them
i need to discuss your suit to get the voting data. Google me and you’ll see I’m a real person. As I was working on my doctorate in Lawrence last year a friend asked me to run her campaign…Margie Wakefield. I thought it would be a great opportunity to take some of my new discoveries out for a spin in the real world.
I’ve been on a bit of a sabbatical in Mexico since the election. Mostly I was very upset with the results in the Gov race (Margie could not have won given the circumstances) and I needed time away to think and write.
I don’t have specific information for you beyond Douglas and Shawnee counties, but you should know that one of my goals in the campaign was to track our data. We did our own modeling. I suspect you know PJ (Paul Johnson) at KU. While he was not directly involved, we did consult with him often and I am confident our models were well founded. The greatest anomaly was our results in Shawnee County which will parallel your hypothesis of large precinct voting.
The more interesting piece might be the results in Douglas which I tracked far more fervently. Our margin was pretty consistent with our model, the advance ballot was twice what it was in ’10 and close to presidential level. On Election Day we tracked the highest performing Democratic precincts with lowest voting propensity. By 5:00 we had reached the ’10 vote in those precincts assuming a third of the vote still to come in. While Democratic performance increased by 22% the turnout was precisely the same as in ’10…very odd…too odd.
Bottom line is I think it would be worth having a call as I do think there were strange numbers that came out of last years election and I’d love to help you explore it. While I did collect a great deal of data I haven’t really looked at it since the election. It may now be time.
Most of the POLS faculty at KU will testify I’m not a crank and I was the Dole Fellow last Spring. If you’d like to talk please call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX.
Thanks for telling me your story. I’m not much of a phone person, so I won’t call. While I understand that you find your data suspicious, I’m afraid I’m not terribly interested in pursuing further statistical analysis on that point. Basically, there are a number of add statistical outcomes with election data, but statistical analysis cannot establish cause of the odd features. That’s why I sued to get access to the physical records and conduct a study of error rates for the machines. I think that is the next step.
Thank you very much for your correspondence. I’ll take a look at the papers. I am slightly disheartened to hear that you don’t think auditing the official results with the paper tapes will be useful. I understand that if a software fraud was taking place, it could alter what the machine writes down. An audit could not disprove that. However, in Sedgwick county, the paper tapes record every action, including any voter changes to selections and the voter has the ability to verify their selections. Theoretically – in practice, it’s not so easy but I have managed and I’ve not caught any errors nor have I personally known people who have experienced that type of problem. Currently, I have relatively high confidence in the paper trail as an accurate measure of the voters intentions.
I would like to hear more about your experiences in reviewing such tapes though. If I can secure permission, I’d like to incorporate any lessons learned you have to share about reconciling the paper tapes and official summaries.
Thanks for the encouragement. It means a lot to me.
Beth, I’m a documentary filmmaker and would appreciate the opportunity to explore the voting story. Contact me if you’re interested? Dave
A news item about your lawsuit over voting records was recently forwarded to me. Your working in a very interesting and important field (particularly given the state of politics in the US today). Obviously, it’s vitally necessary to have confidence in the voting system of any country that wants to be called a democracy and there are indications over the past 15 years that there are problems in our system in that regard. I would like to add my voice to those who support what you are doing.
I’m not a statistician, but as a scientist I recognize the importance of statistical analysis and apply routine statistical methods in my work (rudimentary compared to what you do I’m sure). I expect you’re very busy and only have limited time available, but i’d be very interested in learning more about research in this area if you could refer me to relevant papers. Thanks and good luck.
Kind regards,
Gil Zemansky
I sincerely hope that you are granted access to the paper tapes for the voting machines in Kansas that you are trying to get. I am very interested in seeing your results, once you have them!
I worked as an interpreter at my local polling place in Dallas, Texas. Dallas, in spite of gerrymandering, is a firmly blue county, yet it came in UNANIMOUS for the red candidate during the midterms.
There was an amazing blue turnout for this election. The blue candidate won on the paper ballots 2-1, yet, EVERY PRECINCT reported a comfortable victory for the other candidate. Something is wrong with this picture, and I can’t seem to get anyone to get excited about it. The red candidate is famously backed by Koch interests, and stands to be indicted for having stolen money from the cancer funds, along with our excellent (tongue in cheek) former governor.
I have spoken to a few people who said that after they voted, when they checked their vote, the machine had switched it to the red candidate. I did not check my vote.
I am not a statistician, but I have a nose. I’m usually right. When there is a far-out opinion, I’m usually in the statistical middle. When I’m not, there usually turns out to be a reason.
What would you suggest I do?
Thanks for your excellent work!
Susan Durham
Good luck with your lawsuit. I hope you are successful. Barbara
Thank you for your support and interest.
Could you tell my what type of voting machines were used in your precinct? If they have a paper log, I would suggest you request access to those paper tapes and try to do some sort of audit. Please let me know what you decide to do.
Thank you for your suggestion. I think you’re right. I’ll see what I can come up with.
Hi Beth. I will be following your blog with interest in the voter data.
Thanks for doing this blog.
Tim.
Aloha, Beth,
I expect you will have continually to decide between competing hypothetical processes as generators of your raw voting data. Cheating or ___ ?
It may be easier just to catch people cheating. Someone recommended that governments use only electronic voting machines that generate a receipt with a random 10-digit (thereabouts) code and a record of how the voter voted. The Board of elections would then publish a precinct-by-precinct list of votes in numerical order and voters could compare their receipt to the listed individual vote. You’d still have the problem of phantom voters.
Anyway, good luck with this.
Thanks for checking out my blog and thanks for the good wishes. Yes, it’s only designed to catch a particular type of fraud-voting machine discrepancies. Even if there is a discrepancy (I’m hoping that there is not), it would require further work to establish whether it was part of the official code, which has been certified to work properly in previous tests, or whether they system had been hacked by an outsider. The paper receipt system you describe would be superior, but isn’t what we have. I’m lucky there are actually paper tapes to review for an audit. Some states don’t have that.
Hi Beth, I’ve really enjoyed your posts on the homeschooling discussion! If you use Facebook, I’d love to talk with you more – you can find me as Marlowe Filippov 🙂
Thanks. The feeling is mutual.
Beth, I saw your comment on Libby Anne’s blog and nearly cried. I am an ex-theist in Wichita and it’s been lonely. I would love to meet other atheist women.
Thank you for the suggestion. I’m considering one about vaccines more generally and the heuristics I ended up developing for myself. My concerns about rotoshield were more about the vaccine committee and general distrust of their recommendations.
Have you participated in the conversation?
Hi Beth. I am a newbie engineer working recently with aluminium alloys. And I would like to contact you to ask about the allowable values to use according the MIL-HDBK-5 or the MMPDS code (A/B Basis). I know that in other industries it is common to use a material safety factor of 1.2 if strength data are B-Basis, and they want to achieve the equivalent lower-tolerance limit as using A-Basis. I already contacted to a material distributor, asking him about the Material Procurement Specifications of the products they provide, and they just sent me a Certified Test Report, clarifying that “all materials they distribute are used by the Aerospace Industry and meets all technical and mechanical specifications required by the OEM.” I think there must be some statistical reason that justifies the use of a safety factor (and its value), for the use of B-Basis materials. I appreciate any help you could provide.
I’m sorry, but I’m not familiar with the safety factor of 1.2 for A-basis. In the reports I produce, I give A-Estimates which are estimates of A-basis values. These are computed using the appropriate distribution. My guess is that the 1.2 is an approximate value for the normal distribution and may be a reasonable estimate in the absence of other information.
Richard Charnin has done similar work, looking at election results in Wisconsin, and he has found the same results. You may be able to benefit by comparing notes with him. Here is a link to his blog entry about his model for the the Wisconsin recall election:
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/the-walker-recall-municipal-database-a-true-vote-model/
Most of what he does is above my head but it would probably be right up your alley.
Perhaps you are aware of his work but this issue is important. I hope this may be of help to you. We know what is going on, we just need to prove it.
Dale Franson
Dear Beth, all of us election integrity citizens are cheering you on. If you need any help at all, please feel free to contact me. The article I attached is just the tip of the iceberg of data we have collected in Wisconsin over the years. If it is in any way helpful to you please use it or let us know how we can help.
In 2011, I filed a complaint with the Department of Justice asking them to investigate racketeering in Wisconsin. I was at the 2011 Supreme Court recount and saw copious evidence of election fraud. Not just how they “counted” the ballots, but ballots bags that had been slit open and duck taped shut, sealed changed without official documentation, and much more. We were shocked when they declared Prosser, the Republican, the winner. It was I who found the touchscreen poll tape dated March 29 at 1 AM for an April 5th election.
Regardless, we are cheering you on here and will send our prayers for justice to be served. You are doing something invaluable and thank you from all of us.
Thank you for taking the time and energy to do the study re. voting machines. with the proliferation of these being used in elections one would think that such studies would be required to be conducted on specific software programs following each election.
I certainly hope you will pursue your research on voting anomalies.
I noticed there were some glitches reported in the voting machines, and then there was a surge in votes for Republican candidates. I reported it to the Atty. Gen. as a possible case of election fraud, but I am not sure they followed up on it.
Message below duplicated from email sent to: bclarkson@niar.wichita.edu
Hello Ms. Clarkson,
I was pleased to see that Wichita Kansas Eagle paper published an article mentioning you, stating that you confirmed my findings in a 2012 paper.
WSU statistician sues seeking Kansas voting machine paper tapes
WSU statistician sues seeking Kansas voting machine pape…
Beth Clarkson has analyzed election returns showing an unexplained pattern where the percentage of Republican votes increases the larger the size of the precinct.
I’d like to chat with you some more as to what could be the actual cause of this discrepancy. I have MUCH more data available if you’re interested. Most counties were analyzed. The papers show only a subset of what we analyzed. The data is mostly for the 2008 2012 elections, but we went far back to see when the problem started occurring.
I am reasonably confident that the root cause is not with the DRE machines, and maybe not even with the central tabulators. I did find some very disturbing problems with the voter registration databases of several states and counties.
Due to a total lack of interest by the media and most statistician, I pretty my put the project aside, hoping that one day, someone like you would find these results — amazing.
I attach the two papers that I wrote also with Mr. James Johnson, a Russian financial analyst with excellent statistical and programming skills.
Please don’t hesitate to call or write me to discuss this further.
Kind regards,
Francois
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy1sz-xBxf8
0:05many people who are denying problems they’re saying
0:08well these are just democrats soon all in all our
0:11I’m a Republican I’m a Republican I am
0:15I worked on giuliani’s campaign I worked on Bloomberg’s campaign
0:18I worked on John McCain’s campaign have been a lifelong member the party
0:22this is not a democrat republican issue this is not a partisan issue
0:27this is a democracy issue if you actually care about a constitutional
0:31democracy in which
0:32each person votes that vote is validated and
0:35the people who and up in office are reflected on the basis of the way people
0:40voted
0:40you care about this issue if you don’t want people to vote
0:44if you don’t want people’s vote to count and if you want to rule
0:48without owning it by a mandate then you are very supportive
0:54DeBolt while dell has promised
0:57in no fund-raising letter to deliver I’m gonna go I’m gonna go ahead and accept
1:01public an issue
1:02I mean who’s doing the votes it would you say is true who wants still the
1:06elections
1:07ice I certainly know that it all the statistical information
1:13it seems the every single buzz saw our circumstance
1:17where exit data polling data
1:21or informational data swings it is all been
1:24in favor of Republicans but not the sort to republicans who I wanna see an office
1:28at all these are people who lie and people who cheat
1:32that is not the conservative way
1:35conservatives conserve things we were are respectful
1:39and we are constitutionally based you know what the real problem is
1:43people do not want to believe that people wanna steal elections in this
1:48country
1:49I’ve done extensive work over the years you for voting monitoring overseas
1:54if we had a very nice the exit polling even
1:572 percent from what actually was tabulated which is exactly how the
2:02Orange Revolution came but ukraine
2:04we would be in there explain to people
2:07something is wrong we have had
2:11numerous selections in this country now in which
2:14where you use Diboll election system machines
2:18the what happens with the vote is one way of
2:22510 as much as 12 percent from the exit polling and the actual survey
2:27these statistical numbers are impossible
2:31and the problem is Americans do not want to believe that we have people stealing
2:37our elections
2:38and they must come to the realization their
2:41or people in this country want to steal elections and we must
2:44stop them
i need to discuss your suit to get the voting data. Google me and you’ll see I’m a real person. As I was working on my doctorate in Lawrence last year a friend asked me to run her campaign…Margie Wakefield. I thought it would be a great opportunity to take some of my new discoveries out for a spin in the real world.
I’ve been on a bit of a sabbatical in Mexico since the election. Mostly I was very upset with the results in the Gov race (Margie could not have won given the circumstances) and I needed time away to think and write.
I don’t have specific information for you beyond Douglas and Shawnee counties, but you should know that one of my goals in the campaign was to track our data. We did our own modeling. I suspect you know PJ (Paul Johnson) at KU. While he was not directly involved, we did consult with him often and I am confident our models were well founded. The greatest anomaly was our results in Shawnee County which will parallel your hypothesis of large precinct voting.
The more interesting piece might be the results in Douglas which I tracked far more fervently. Our margin was pretty consistent with our model, the advance ballot was twice what it was in ’10 and close to presidential level. On Election Day we tracked the highest performing Democratic precincts with lowest voting propensity. By 5:00 we had reached the ’10 vote in those precincts assuming a third of the vote still to come in. While Democratic performance increased by 22% the turnout was precisely the same as in ’10…very odd…too odd.
Bottom line is I think it would be worth having a call as I do think there were strange numbers that came out of last years election and I’d love to help you explore it. While I did collect a great deal of data I haven’t really looked at it since the election. It may now be time.
Most of the POLS faculty at KU will testify I’m not a crank and I was the Dole Fellow last Spring. If you’d like to talk please call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX.
Thanks for telling me your story. I’m not much of a phone person, so I won’t call. While I understand that you find your data suspicious, I’m afraid I’m not terribly interested in pursuing further statistical analysis on that point. Basically, there are a number of add statistical outcomes with election data, but statistical analysis cannot establish cause of the odd features. That’s why I sued to get access to the physical records and conduct a study of error rates for the machines. I think that is the next step.
Thank you very much for your correspondence. I’ll take a look at the papers. I am slightly disheartened to hear that you don’t think auditing the official results with the paper tapes will be useful. I understand that if a software fraud was taking place, it could alter what the machine writes down. An audit could not disprove that. However, in Sedgwick county, the paper tapes record every action, including any voter changes to selections and the voter has the ability to verify their selections. Theoretically – in practice, it’s not so easy but I have managed and I’ve not caught any errors nor have I personally known people who have experienced that type of problem. Currently, I have relatively high confidence in the paper trail as an accurate measure of the voters intentions.
I would like to hear more about your experiences in reviewing such tapes though. If I can secure permission, I’d like to incorporate any lessons learned you have to share about reconciling the paper tapes and official summaries.
Thanks for the encouragement. It means a lot to me.
Beth, I’m a documentary filmmaker and would appreciate the opportunity to explore the voting story. Contact me if you’re interested? Dave
A news item about your lawsuit over voting records was recently forwarded to me. Your working in a very interesting and important field (particularly given the state of politics in the US today). Obviously, it’s vitally necessary to have confidence in the voting system of any country that wants to be called a democracy and there are indications over the past 15 years that there are problems in our system in that regard. I would like to add my voice to those who support what you are doing.
I’m not a statistician, but as a scientist I recognize the importance of statistical analysis and apply routine statistical methods in my work (rudimentary compared to what you do I’m sure). I expect you’re very busy and only have limited time available, but i’d be very interested in learning more about research in this area if you could refer me to relevant papers. Thanks and good luck.
Kind regards,
Gil Zemansky
I sincerely hope that you are granted access to the paper tapes for the voting machines in Kansas that you are trying to get. I am very interested in seeing your results, once you have them!
I worked as an interpreter at my local polling place in Dallas, Texas. Dallas, in spite of gerrymandering, is a firmly blue county, yet it came in UNANIMOUS for the red candidate during the midterms.
There was an amazing blue turnout for this election. The blue candidate won on the paper ballots 2-1, yet, EVERY PRECINCT reported a comfortable victory for the other candidate. Something is wrong with this picture, and I can’t seem to get anyone to get excited about it. The red candidate is famously backed by Koch interests, and stands to be indicted for having stolen money from the cancer funds, along with our excellent (tongue in cheek) former governor.
I have spoken to a few people who said that after they voted, when they checked their vote, the machine had switched it to the red candidate. I did not check my vote.
I am not a statistician, but I have a nose. I’m usually right. When there is a far-out opinion, I’m usually in the statistical middle. When I’m not, there usually turns out to be a reason.
What would you suggest I do?
Thanks for your excellent work!
Susan Durham
Good luck with your lawsuit. I hope you are successful. Barbara
Thank you for your support and interest.
Could you tell my what type of voting machines were used in your precinct? If they have a paper log, I would suggest you request access to those paper tapes and try to do some sort of audit. Please let me know what you decide to do.
Beth