Vigilance of Saline County’s Electronic Voting System Urged

KSAL Staff - November 12, 2015 4:14 pm. From a Salina, Kansas radio station.

link:
http://www.ksal.com/vigilance-of-saline-countys-electronic-voting-system-urged/

from the article:
"Statistician Beth Clarkson has been in the news about her efforts to audit Sedgwick County voting machine tapes from the 2014 election. She presented a series of questionable statistical voting patterns linked with electronic voting machines at today’s K-State Salina Polytechnic’s Civic Luncheon.

Of concern, both Sedgwick County and Saline County use the same type of direct record electronic (DRE) voting machines that statisticians are finding problematic. They see a correlation between the kind of voting machine used and the percentage of Republicans in those precincts voting.

As a baseline, when paper ballots are counted, the percentage of both Republicans and Democrats who vote is the same, regardless of precinct size. In a graph, this appears as a flat horizontal line. With the Diebold and Sequoia brands of electronic voting systems used predominantly in Kansas, Clarkson sees:
• In very small precincts, which are often rural, a very high percentage of Republicans voting. (This is expected.)
• As precinct size increases, the percentage of Republicans voting decreases significantly for small (but not very small) precincts.
• Then, the trend shifts. In medium and large precincts, the percentage of Republicans who vote shows incremental increases with size and “never reaches a mean” (or comes to a flat line).
• Clarkson also included results for other brands of electronic voting machines that showed increases in the percentage of Democrats voting as precinct size increased. Any voting system that didn’t produce a straight line gives cause for auditing.

While New Mexico, New York and Wisconsin gain high markets for verifying their vote counts, Kansas—like most of the country—has an inadequate voting verification system. (New Mexico uses ballots that are scanned; after the election, these ballots are re-scanned to verify results.)"


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More at the link, including a quote from Clarkson that she feels, after reviewing data from the 2004 presidential race in Ohio, that John Kerry should have won the 2004 election.

link:
http://www.ksal.com/vigilance-of-saline-countys-electronic-voting-system-urged/