[Voterescue] 1-20-08 Holt's emergency bill to assure secure elections is a FRAUD.

[Jerry Lobdill]

Holt's emergency bill,

H.R.5036

Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008 (Introduced in 
House) is totally inadequate to assure the integrity of an election. 
This bill is WORTHLESS. Here is the relevant language in the bill:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:1:./temp/~c1103UiRUC:e2303:
(c) Number of Ballots Counted Under Audit-

(1) IN GENERAL- The hand counts of the paper ballots administered by 
the Election Auditor of a State, county, or equivalent location under 
this section with respect to an election shall occur in at least 3 
percent of all precincts or equivalent locations (or alternative 
audit units used in accordance with the method provided for under 
paragraph (2)) in which ballots were cast in the election.

(2) USE OF ALTERNATIVE SAMPLING MECHANISM- Notwithstanding paragraph 
(1) (and subject to the completeness requirement set forth in 
subsection (b)(2)), a State, county, or equivalent location may adopt 
and apply an alternative sampling mechanism to determine the number 
of paper ballots which will be subject to hand counts in accordance 
with this section with respect to an election, so long as the 
alternative sampling mechanism uses the paper ballots verified by 
voters or paper ballot printouts verifiable by voters at the time the 
vote is cast to conduct the audit and the Director of the National 
Institute of Standards and Technology or a panel of 3 independent 
statisticians appointed by the Election Auditor of the State, county, 
or equivalent jurisdiction determines that the alternative sampling 
mechanism will be at least as statistically effective in ensuring the 
accuracy of the election results as the sample size specified under 
paragraph (1).

Dr. Holt, a physicist, knows precisely what the flaw in this language 
is. The question is, Why is he introducing a bill that he knows will 
not provide a definite and controllable probability of detection of 
vote fraud? The following does not even consider the damning facts 
that Holt's rescue bill permits the use of cash register thermal 
print "paper trail" records that do not bear any resemblance to the 
display screens a voter sees, and electronic ballot scanner/counters, 
which have demonstrated to be as vulnerable to fraud as the paperless 
voting machines.

Here's an example of what will occur under the provisions of this bill.

Suppose there are 1000 audit units (precincts, election districts, 
whatever). If you choose 3% of these (30) at random for a full hand 
recount, what does that buy you in terms of probability of choosing 
at least one corrupted audit unit?  The answer is, "It depends on the 
announced winning margin of votes, the distribution of audit unit 
size, how many units were actually corrupted in producing a 
fraudulent win, and the sizes of the units selected at random for audit."

Just for example, suppose the precincts are all the same size, so 
that completely random selection is a proper strategy for audit. 
Suppose the margin of the winner is stated to be 5% and the 
corruption is evenly spread through 15 of the largest audit units 
(easily done by reference to county election records).

What is the probability that your audit will find one of the 
corrupted precincts?  Why, it's about 0.37!

What if the corruption is spread through 25 of the audit units? Then 
the probability of finding one corrupt unit in the audit is 0.66.

So you see, the language of Holt's emergency bill is flawed and, 
considering his background and the work that was done on his previous 
bills before the politicos took over and emasculated them, you'd be a 
fool to think he is unaware of this flaw. Therefore, he is a 
fraudster with very high probability.

You can read more about the details of why this is fraud in the 
following papers (which were available to Dr. Holt in 2006).

Considering Vote Count Distribution in Designing Election Audits Rev.
2, 11-26-06 , by Jerry Lobdill:

http://vote.nist.gov/Considering-Vote-Count-Distribution-in-Designing-Election-Audits-Rev-2-11-26-06.pdf 


Election Audit Sampling Design It's Not Just About Sampling Without 
Replacement 10-09-06, by Jerry Lobdill`:

http://vote.nist.gov/Election-Audit-Sampling-Plan-Design-Its-Not-Just-About-Sampling-Without-Replacement-10-09-06.pdf

Jerry Lobdill

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