guys!

Benford's law!

my old mentor, an econometricist from Tabriz (prerevolution) talked about how benford's law showed mad spoopy rigging in Iranian election outcomes at local level when Ahmadinejad was going for 2nd term. (as I understand, it didn't take a statistician for the people over there to know the game was rigged.)

Benfords law is a statistical principle that says when dealing with sequential counts, x… xx …xxx….xxxx etc… if its truly an unknowable in advance outcome, the likelihood of each digit being a low number are significantly greater than being a higher number (third digit to left more likely 3>4>5>6… so on). meaning just eyeballing turnout numbers, you should be able to detect spoopyness worthy of further diggin.

for instance if youve got 1 election investigator and there are 4 localities holding election each with total population in the order of single thousands x,xxx

A reports 1,295

B reports 2816

C reports 6987

D reports 9104

then investigator should proceed in this order looking for fuckery (from most likely fucked to least likely): C then B then A then D.

eyeball election turnouts ! Benford's Law