Study #2: Change in Benford; Elections

Study 002: Election Time Stamps of 10,000 sample points per pool compared
in sequence to election ballot votes for variance in Benford Curves.

In requesting the data, we quote the 2002 Voting Standards Manual the
following way:

I hereby request the time stamp logs of the machine In-Election Log Data:
the hour, minute and second of all the in election data from the 1st Ward
to the 50th Ward, the electronic ballot machines as well as the optical
ballot scanners on the official election results of the [Election Date
and Title] data which is required to be made available for public
inspection as specified in the 2002 Voting System Standards Vol 1 to be
maintained for the purpose of "verifying the correctness of reported
election results. [Sec: 2.2.5.1]" as we will be using a digital forensics
model to test admissibility of such methods to the in-election time stamp
data. Furthermore "The timing and sequence of audit record entries is as
important as the data contained in the record. All voting systems shall
meet the following requirements for the time, sequence and preservation
of the audit records...[Sec: 2.2.5.2.1 of Operational Requirements]"


In Study001 we sought to investigate whether there is more or irrelevant
emergence of the Benford curve in the time-stamps of the ballot scanner
and ballot machine logs of the 2019 Mayoral Election, comparing any
deviation from that curve by ward and precinct. With initial testing of
the 2018 "ballot stops" of the general election with the central
tabulator we did see a heavy inclination to the Benford distribution.
However since that data is sent in chunks from the ballot machines, we
would not expect to see a full Benford distribution. An even distribution
would suggest randomness.

The results of Study001 did demonstrate a Benford Curve in approximation,
more accurately from maintenance logs to actual central tabulator data.

Study002 intends to use the conclusion of Study001 that the Benford Curve
does emerge in Election Times Stamps to observe any deviation of the
Benford Curves in segments of 10,000 data points sequentially to the
sequential times of actual ballot casts, to ascertain if whether there 
is a prevalence of artificial ballot casts as the election day comes to
a close.

Study source, released through Dominion by Chicago Board of Elections
Commission in December of 2019:

> Source_CBEC_2016.zip

From that we extracted from the PDF and extraction done with the ~75mb
text data file containing all the machine logs of the 50 wards. We are
working on comparing the get the logs per ward as the data set provides
only the precincts:

> Extracted_CBEC_2016.zip



Preliminary Study Results:

Throughout the election day the distribution goes from Benford to Random
and back to Benford again. We need much larger data pool to confirm, for
example FOIA national level of all machine logs in the United States of
the 2016 Nov 8th Presidential Election, that fraud is indeed going on. At
least 10,000 data points per pool is needed to confirm Benford method.
Any distribution of significant digit that arrives near 10% is random
time-stamps and the digits of '1' arriving at 30% suggests authentic
time-stamps. Both charts of all machine log and successful ballot scan
correlate together by time-stamp.

Data extraction of Feb 26 2019 performed by Padriag O'hara.
Analysis and BenfordX performed by Jason Page

***
> We are following up on not receiving the Nov 8th 2016 Presidential
> Election machine log data. ***

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Document Created 11/21/2019, Updated 01/26/2020 @ 11:40 CST