Washington State Recount, Part Deux

[J. J.]

No, it does not have to be rampant. If this was voter fraud, I would consider it rampant. By minor voter fraud I mean things like someone else filling out someone's absentee ballot. Normally this would not cause much concern, but in this election, it does matter.

Actually, one of the few state elections overturned by the Federal Courts was because of this.  It was a State Senate District here in Phila in the mid-1990's.  Perhaps Keystone or IrishDem remember it.

[J. J.]

Again Carl, if the ballots that are found in King County are not valid ballots, then what exactly do you they they are?  Do you think they are fraudelent votes, or do you just think that voters should just be out of luck if an election worker screws up and their votes aren't counted the first time?

They could be something like absentee ballots from people that showed up and voting at the polls or ballots invalid for some other reason.

[J. J.]

For those of you familiar with statistical mathematics, I have a question for you.

If you take the original total for all votes counted for Govenor in the state of Washington this year by county, and then take the square root of that number, which one county has already exceeded adding on more than the square root of initial votes?

Hint, its the one county which has not yet posted its recount total.

Is this a joke?
Why is the square root of the number of votes relevant?  Of course the answer is whatever county is largest, but it has nothing to do with anything.  You are assuming that large counties should find drastically fewer mistakes in proportion to their population, and I don't see why that would be true. 

I would suspect that Carl is looking for statistical anomolies.  While I don't think he'll find any, it would be interesting to check.

[J. J.]

I'm actually going have to see some evidence that those votes were invalid before I jump to the conclusion that there was any cheating.