Advocacy – Show Me The Votes

Exit Poll Results – Machine Vote Counts were Altered in S.E. Kansas

The Show Me The Votes Foundation sponsored five citizens’ exit polls in S.E. Kansas to assess the accuracy of machine vote counts. The results of these citizens exit polls provide tangible evidence of election fraud in the presidential race. I designed the exit polls explicitly so they would provide evidence of election fraud should any be present. The only better evidence would be an audit showing the discrepancies in the actual ballots. But audits of the voting machine results are not allowed in these Kansas counties.

Exit polls – taken as people are leaving the polling place – are extremely accurate at capturing the vote share of candidates. Staffed by volunteers from the polls open to their close, we achieved outstanding response rates. These are shown in the table below.

eta: after final counting, the SW Wichita votes for Trump changed from 609 to 611.

Polling Station and Exit Poll Results

A rule of thumb is that 2% or larger difference in vote share between the official results and the exit poll is evidence of election fraud worth investigating. We had such excellent response rates at some of our sites that differences significantly smaller than 2% are considered suspect in some races.

In addition, we can take into account the overall composition of differences between the official results and the exit poll statistics for each site. For example, at the Wellington polling site in Sumner County, all Republican candidates had lower vote share in the machine counts than in the exit polling results. This consistency is suspicious even though the differences may be small.

The exit poll results indicate that our machine generated counts are being manipulated. Polling sites in Sedgwick and Cowley counties were manipulated for the benefit of some candidates, most notably Trump at all four of those sites. Results in Sumner County appear to be manipulated to the detriment of Republican candidates – but not necessarily to the benefit of Democrat Candidates. Libertarians performed better in the machine counts for both the Senate and the 4^th District races than exit polls indicated for all five sites. These differences are not sizable enough to alter the outcome of most races, but they are consistent and larger than expected by chance alone. I’ll post more about those results as I do a more detailed analysis for each polling location.

Presidential Race Analysis:

Votes for Hillary Clinton were shifted to Donald Trump in four of the five polling locations we surveyed, Sumner being the exception. This chart shows approximately 2% to 3% of the machine votes were shifted from Clinton to Trump at those sites, adding 4% to 6% of the vote share to the difference between them to benefit Trump. The other candidates show only normal error rates.

Machine Votes and Exit Poll Vote Share Differences

Figure 1 – This graph shows the difference between the machine vote share and the exit poll vote share for each candidate at each site. Positive values show that the machine count benefited that candidate. Negative numbers indicate a loss compared with the Exit Poll results.

Sites in Sedgwick and Cowley Counties show a distinct bias with the machine counts siphoning votes from Clinton and benefiting Trump. Sumner County exit poll results for the Clinton and Trump were not statistically significantly different from the machine counts for Sumner County.

Since Trump won Kansas with 54% of the vote to Hillary’s 36%, even assuming this shift held across Kansas (it didn’t), it was well below Trump’s margin of victory, so this manipulation of votes did not alter the outcome. Still, it is disturbing evidence that the machine vote counts are being altered. In other states, which use similar equipment, manipulation at this level could have changed who won the Presidency.

Statistical Details

I computed the exact probability of each candidate getting the vote share they received in our exit poll given the official counts for that polling location. This was computed using the Hypergeometric probability distribution, which takes into account both the size of our exit poll sample and the number of people who cast votes at that polling location on Election Day.

This probability – or p-value – is the exact computation of the probability of getting our exit poll results assuming no election fraud occurred. The p-values for the different presidential candidates at each of the five exit poll sites are given in the table below.

P-values for Exit Poll results of Machine Votes in Presidential race

The p-value represents the level of concern about the official results given our exit poll results with 1.0 indicating everything’s normal, nothing of interest here and zero indicating Red Alert Danger Will Robinson! Danger! The computed p-values always fall somewhere in-between.

The probabilities for Johnson and Stein are all quite reasonable and raise no serious alarms regarding the accuracy of their vote counts. The probabilities for Clinton and Trump, on the other hand, are low enough to sound alarms for four of the five polling locations.

These exit poll results more than justify a call to audit the voting records and a profound skepticism in the results of machine counted votes.

The Cumulative Vote Share (CVS) Model is Validated as a Sign of Election Fraud

The math underlying this model dictates that this trend should level off horizontally, not start moving in the opposite direction. It means the trend is not random chance, but due to a specific cause correlated with precinct size. It is such unanticipated trends as revealed by this type of graph that motivated me to look more closely into our vote-counting process, eventually leading to conducting the exit polls in this past election.

This is CVS graph for Sedgwick County. It shows Trump getting an increase of ~2% of the total vote share and Clinton losing that same amount from their respective inflection points at around 93,000 cumulative votes. These exit poll results vindicate the use of the cumulative vote share model in assessing probability of election fraud.

Exit Polling Report

We ran a total of five exit polls Tuesday, three in Wichita. We were outside, so we were hoping for fair weather. Although the morning started out damp and dreary, it was nice most of the day, albeit a bit chilly after dark. Setting up to be operating at 6:00 and running until the close of polls made for an exhausting day although I managed a nap in the early afternoon. Everything went fairly smoothly at all locations. In SE Wichita, we gave away 10 dozen donuts before 9:00 am with candy after that to bribe voters to talk with us. I had to make a run for more candy at 4:00, but no major impediments or problems at the S.E. location.

The most interesting thing that happened was regarding a young black woman who had declined to participate in our exit poll. Later that evening, near to the polls closing, she was back. Apparently her mama had voted there early that day and filled out our survey. She had insisted her daughter return to do so. I was delighted! That young woman has a mama who cares about her and about making her voice heard by voting. I wanted to thank her and tell her she’s an awesome mom! But I was too busy handing out survey forms to other voters. We had excellent participation rates!

I took both Tuesday and Wednesday off work, and was able to spend all day counting ballots Wednesday. I’m also an experienced survey counter, so I managed to get the 925 surveys organized and counted by the end of the day.

My volunteers are working together to get the other sites counted, but they have other things to do too. Altogether, we have collected thousands of exit poll surveys. Counts are continuing even as I write this. That I want the surveys from each site to have two independent counts doesn’t make the task any easier.

I also need to verify the results we wrote down at the polling stations, but was informed today that they won’t be available until after the canvassing is complete, approximately a week to ten days from now. I’m glad I asked my site managers to get the totals that night from their polling stations. I can go ahead and work on my analysis, updating it with any corrections needed when the data is available. But I’ll hold off publishing the results until I can verify the numbers.

I will share some general stuff from my initial numbers for my site with the caveat that these results are considered preliminary until the data has been verified.

The scanned paper ballot official counts and our exit poll results are close, with nothing falling outside reasonable statistical bounds on any of the races.

The voting machine counts and our exit poll results are not as close, with a couple of results that bear looking into, but I had three results flagged earlier. One has already turned out to be a data input error on my part. (That’s why I want to verify the numbers before publishing).

I will present the exit poll provisional ballot results though. I’m reasonably confident there are no large errors in my counts and small changes won’t alter these results.

In general, people who had voted provisionally were more likely to have time to take our survey. We had 79 out of 92 provisional voters fill out our survey for a response rate of over 85%, nearly 20% higher than the 66% response rate of voters whose ballots were counted that day.

In our exit poll survey, I found that provisional voters were approximately 10% less likely to vote for republican candidates. I think it is reasonable to take this along with the additional data from the other exit poll locations, as a measure of the effectiveness of Kris Kobach’s efforts to disenfranchise non-republican voters. I have already contacted the league of women voters to see if this data will be of help with their lawsuit regarding his practices.

How to Run an Exit Poll Part 2

Here are more instructions with links to help people who want to run an exit poll. This is all pre-election day stuff to do but doesn’t include developing your sample survey form. I’m going to devote a separate post to that. I’ll link to it when it’s up. I’m also planning an excel template that people can download, input their exit poll results and official polling location results to get an output of the probability of the difference between the occurring by chance alone.

Training: I highly recommend running a short training session with your volunteers. I think 30 minutes is sufficient, an hour if it’s a large group. Go over the instructions, let them see the supplies (ballot box, survey forms, etc.), and have each participant go through some practice interactions with their fellow students. It also gives everyone a chance to get acquainted prior to election day.

Schedule: You’ll need to prepare a schedule in advance and co-ordinate with the volunteers to make sure they can and will be there for their appointed hours. Here is the example-volunteer-schedule I used in my August primary exit poll. Notice that some volunteers are tasked with bringing in fresh supplies. Everyone got a copy of this ahead of time, so they knew when they were working and with whom. Always have at least two volunteers manning the exit poll. This is a basic safety precaution. If one volunteer has a heart attack, the other will notice and call 911.

Tally Sheet: You need a form for volunteers to record the number of refusals. Here is what I used in my August primary exit poll. The time categories related to the hours different volunteers worked. I taped a copy of this to the table and had the volunteers record their refusals. Some volunteers kept separate tallies for themselves when it was busy and then later recorded them onto that page, which is also fine.

Supplies: You’ll need to arrange for all supplies to be on site, including refreshments. I had different volunteers bring refreshments through out the day. Suggested Supply List

Costs: While many of the supplies are things you may already own or can be borrowed at no cost, printing hundreds of survey copies to be filled out will cost money. I am estimating costs for the sites I am coordinating at $50 – $100 per site, including refreshments.

Another option is an electronic app. I’m not using it for my sites because the advantage of voter marked hand-counted paper surveys is the same as for paper ballots. On the other hand, I have donations sufficient to fund the needed supplies for exit polls I am coordinating, so my out-of-pocket costs are minimal. If costs are a constraint, this is an acceptable alternative for the 2016 election.

Permission Slip: It’s not strictly required, but in addition to notifying the appropriate person regarding setting up your exit poll at their location, having documentation of permission by that person isn’t a bad idea. I phoned and introduced myself, sent the person an email, and picked up the permission-slip in person weeks ahead of time. I kept it on site at the exit poll. No one confronted me about my right to be there, so it wasn’t needed. But if someone does, it’s nice to have it.

How to run an Election Exit Poll

I’m working to set up multiple exit polls here in Kansas in November. I thought that people in other areas might be interested in setting one up themselves. You need just one dedicated individual along with a few additional volunteers working a few hours apiece can pull this off. You may also need to expend from $50 to $150 on supplies like making copies of your surveys and refreshments to offer voters.

The dedicated individual is the exit poll site manager. The additional volunteers only need to spend a few hours on election day soliciting voters to complete surveys. Two people should be manning the exit poll booth at all times, just in case any emergency situations arise. This post outlines what an exit poll site manager needs to do to run a successful exit poll.

The approach I recommend is called cluster sampling. Each site provides an independent check on the accuracy of the official counts at that polling station. If we combine information from multiple sites, the data can provide excellent precision for determining whether the discrepancies found are reasonable and evenly distributed or if they show evidence of systemic bias, which would indicate problems with our votes having been counted accurately.

This approach means that you need to try to contact all voters at that location to request they complete an exit poll survey. The reason for this is that the purpose of this exit poll is to validate the official results at that location. It is not to make predictions prior to the close of polls. It is not to analyze for demographic information afterwards. It is to validate the official results. By concentrating our efforts at relatively few polling stations, we can attain a higher level of confidence that the results of our survey are representative of the polling location.

The first thing to ask is method they voted. In my location, there are three options – by machine, by a scanner paper ballot, or by provisional ballot. At the end of the day, I get the counts of votes cast for each candidate by machine and my scanned paper ballot. Provisional votes are not counted until a determination is made of whether that person was allowed to cast the ballot. The exit poll results for provisional ballots can be compared to the accepted ballots. If significant deviations occur, that is a measure of the impact of voter suppression attempts, such as voter ID laws.

Before finalizing your design of the exit poll survey, you will need to select a location. Contact your local elections office and get a list of all the polling locations. Let them know you are planning a citizens exit poll and ask if they have any regulations or laws that would affect that. In Sedgwick County, the only significant rule was that we could only approach people after they voted, not before. There is also a law regarding distance for any electioneering, but as long as we only approach exiting voters, this would not be a concern.

Site Manager Duties:

The site manager is the point person for everything to do with an exit poll at polling place. They will be there in the morning to set everything up and they will wait at the polling location to get the official results when the machines have finished printing out the records. They will not need to be there the entire day, but they do need to be available if any problems arise.

Prior to Election Day:

Select polling location: Site managers need to consider the polling places available near their home, perhaps even scout the locations to make a determination about which they would prefer to exit poll. You will need to contact the owner/manager of that location and inform them of what you will be doing. Find out if they have any concerns and address them or refer them back to me. Obtain written permission to be on their premises to conduct this survey when appropriate.
Finalize Survey: While there will be three races applicable to all of Sedgwick County, because site managers decide what locations they will monitor, they have the option to add additional questions specific to their polling place such as state legislators or judges.
Prepare Supplies: The site manager will decide on and arrange for all supplies to be there. Tables, Chairs, Refreshments, survey forms, ballot box, etc. Suggested Supply List
Schedule volunteers: We’ll need to meet together to accomplish this. I’ll keep a list of volunteers and we can discuss where volunteers are needed and when. I’m also going to see if I can get some student help for the times before and after school, which is often the busy times at polling locations as well.

Election Day – It’s a long day, but this could be split up between two people, say a morning manager and an evening manager.

Set up: The site manager arrives half an hour before the polling station opens. They set up the exit poll booth, making sure everything is ready for the first voter of the day.
Maintain: The site manager is the person on call for any issues that arise. But they should be close by, available to take care of whatever issue might arise. Run out of survey forms? The site manager will bring more. Volunteer calls in that they can’t make it after all? The site manager either fills in or finds someone there who can.
Close down: The site manager will be responsible for securing the completed survey forms and counting them. The site manager will ensure the booth area is cleaned up and all borrowed equipment is returned.
Official Results: The site manager will need to remain on the premises to collect the official results for that polling location. Meet with election officials for your location sometime in the morning, letting them know you will doing this. They should allow you to examine the results tape for yourself. However, if they object, you can ask them to fill out your survey form for the machine results and the scanned paper ballots results from the printouts. In addition, ask them to give you the total number of provisional ballots turned in for that location.

After Election Day:

Count your results
Publicly post both the official results and your exit poll results for your polling location or email me your results and I’ll post them on my site

Voting Equipment on the Agenda: The Sedgwick County Bid Board Meeting July 7, 2016

After hearing nothing from the elections office regarding the purchase of new voting equipment since their demonstration of the equipment in February, yesterday afternoon I got notice of a bid board meeting this morning at 10:00. As it happened, I was able to take time off work and attend.

The Voting System RFP (15-0078) was only agenda item. It was perfunctory except for my presence – I asked inappropriate questions. Despite my previous requests to the elections office, I was never notified of any of committee meetings when the responses to the RFP were evaluated. I did not know that they were recommending Election Systems & Software until I attended this meeting. There was a handout listing the various vendors and costs associated with them with and their indicated which they recommended.

One commissioner asked about why not “Everyone Counts, Inc.” which had a lower total cost indicated on the information hand-out they had provided. Tabitha answered saying that system did not meet their basic security requirements and was eliminated for that reason. Their final recommendation was based on an overall score, but neither the scoring criteria nor the relative scores of the competing company were included in the handout.

She was asked about the numbers on the handout, which were not self-explanatory with regard to the totals. Additional information on the number of machines to be purchased was needed to make sense of the totals. She mentioned that one reason they choice ES&S was they willing to buy back our current voting machines. Otherwise, the elections office would have to pay to have them removed because there are security concerns regarding their disposal.

I asked what the cost of using voter marked hand counted paper ballots would be. Ms. Lehman laughed at my question and said she had no idea, they had not bothered to even compute the cost for a comparison. [I had requested that she consider that option when I wrote her months ago offering my services and expertise for that committee.] She indicated that she did not consider hand counting acceptable due to how long it would take, saying that CA was still counting their primary from June 7th. [The Brexit vote was hand counted using voter marked paper ballots and results were available by the next morning.]

I then asked Ms. Lehman why I wasn’t informed of the committee meeting where the recommendations were decided. I was told that was an inappropriate place to ask such questions. I could ask next Wed. at County Commissioner meeting. Personally, I don’t think that would be an appropriate venue either and not the best use of whatever time I will be allowed. I’ll just conclude that she didn’t want me on her committee and was not required to allow the public to attend those meetings.

A commissioner then complimented her on the analysis and the combined expertise of people on committee. [There are no members of that committee listed as having expertise in Quality Assurance, one of my specialties.] The meeting was over at 10:15. The recommendation was accepted and it will be on the agenda for the next county commissioner meeting. I will be there. I’ve requested a copy of the scoring criteria and results. Hopefully, I will be able to ask better questions at the meeting next week.

I would encourage anyone in Wichita free next Wednesday to attend the meeting and let our county commissioners know how dissatisfied we are with our current equipment and how concerned we are about the security and reliability of the proposed new voting equipment.