[Voterescue] BBV: Tech 'Election Storm Spotters' needed - NEW TOOLS for Election Protection
Black Box Voting
blackboxvoting at worldnet.att.net
Wed Jun 4 10:24:34 CDT 2008
Distribute: Three fledgling new tools are available for election protection:
Direct link to this story, discussion area, post findings here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/74942.html
If you are technically inclined -- that is, you like to work with numbers or computers -- we think you'll find these new Election Protection tools to be very interesting.These are practice tools. Play with them now, and with small elections during the summer, to get ready for the main event.
If you are not technically inclined and you know someone who is, pass this along to them. And if "none of the above" applies, take a look at the five different skill areas we'll be focusing on with Tool Kit 2008. You'll match one of them for sure!
SUMMARY (Details follow, scroll down)
1) Results watchers: See below for instructions on AUTOMATIC UPDATING techniques, called "Web site mirroring" or "offline browsing" -- Will automatically capture every change on Web sites you want to monitor. How-to tips from extraordinary volunteer John Howard, see below.
2) Tech Patriots: See below for program code files for a WEB SNAPSHOT tool - Tool to automatically capture and extract incoming results data from CNN and government results sites. If you have been tracking results, you may have noticed that clicking county by county for updates is inefficient -- the "Web Snapshot" tool developed by Donovan Levinson is designed to automate data collection and speed analysis. The (hit or miss) county precinct data can provide live-time detail data. Program code, see below.
3) Stats people: See below for County by county spreadsheets identifying voting systems, voter registration numbers, past voting histories, and more. Drawn from Secretary of State Websites and Election Assistance Commission data tables.
BACKGROUND, WHY THESE TOOLS ARE IMPORTANT:
On June 3, South Dakota and Montana had presidential primaries. Many more states had primary elections for local, state, and federal office. Nowhere near enough citizens with analytical skills are monitoring June 3, and November will have over 5,000 jurisdictions rolling in at once -- these tools will allow the few citizens who are already doing this to get more done, and will show many new techies what to do.
If you are tech-savvy, please try out the tools, volunteer a bit of your time, and if you can improve on the tools or invent additional ones, have at it.
ELECTION STORM SPOTTERS -- BEAT THE CLOCK
Anomaly-spotting SPEED is a huge part of the election protection challenge. Wrong results only have to make it through Election Night, post-election activities, and certification of election and then it's all over. Use the June 3 election, including the updates that will roll in during the next 10 days, and follow each new election -- regardless of what state it's in -- to practice and refine your ability to spot problems quickly.
You can post what you find in real time at Black Box Voting so other citizens can get to work on other aspects, like communicating to the press, to candidates, requesting public records, or legal actions.
When votes are counted in secret on computers that government insiders control, citizens can't know whether results are legitimate, but we CAN identify results that are illegitimate! So let's get busy on that.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR:
- Impossible times and dates
- Impossible numbers
- Results that go down midstream
- Two plus two equals five
- Results come in too early, before polls close
- Results start and then stop, with a trend reversal after the lag
- Delayed results
- More votes than voters
- Late precincts that produce a trend change
- Omitted information
- Obstruction of information
- Insufficient randomness (example, same number of votes for several candidates)
- Zero votes when there should be some
- Some votes where there should be zero
OVERVIEW OF TOOL KIT 2008:
In the new Black Box Voting 2008 Tool Kit, we will ask you to match your skill sets to one or more of five categories to help protect Election 2008. Are you a ...
1. Networker (connect with people, organize, gather citizens to action)
2. Empowerer (provide financial support, donate laptops, video cameras, travel miles)
3. Hunter-Gatherer (collect assigned, strategic information using the Internet and public records)
4. Analyzer (Crunch numbers, harvest election-related data, create tools to improve efficiency)
5. Communicator (connect important information with blogs, mainstream media, public officials, and enforcement authorities)
ANALYZERS, THIS ONE'S FOR YOU
Now is the time to start flagging anomalies so that citizens who are Communicators can practice getting the word out. New results will be rolling in all week. Play with the tools (which are in early stages of development), post your findings, and if you feel inspired, invent new tools for the next round.
ANOMALY EXAMPLES:
"Up until just before 5 pm our time [Pacific] Jefferson County [KY] was at 89% reporting and Barack had 113,000+ votes. At 5:03 our time or 8:03 KY time the number of precincts reporting dropped to 86% and Barack's number of votes dropped to 64,489 - his % of votes is approximately the same."
"It only took until the 5th ward in Allegheny County [PA] to find a false result. Two reform ballots were cast when only one reform voter is registered. This mystery reformer ballot cast happens with a fair amount of regularity." "A better question is why there were any at all, since this is a closed primary."
Barnstead, New Hampshire, January presidential primary: Registered Democratic voters plus same-day Dem registrations plus unaffiliated voters requesting Democratic ballot: 674. Number of Democratic ballots cast: 917.
Allentown 1st Ward 1st District [PA] which is duplicated (odd) however truly unusual is the reporting time of 10:03 AM. Isn't 10:03AM a bit early for reporting results?
Vigo County [IN], 2008 primary, results were up on CNN nearly one-half hour before the polls closed.
(NON-TECHIES: EXIT HERE)
Entering technical zone...Here are details and links for the Tools:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote:
>From John Howard:
WEB SITE MIRRORING (also called offline browsing) -- There are numerous products out there. One is called HTtrack and, with Windows, you use the windows version called WinHTTrack. It's a free open-source product and can be found at http://www.httrack.com/page/2/en/index.html
It can be configured to copy an entire web-site (definitely NOT a good idea), it can also be configured to copy a set of specific links contained in an HTML file, which is why I create the state by state "Compendium" link pages in advance - that way I can get the results pages from multiple jurisdictions, without having to spend a lot of time entering and re-entering the links I want captured. (my fall-2006 file captured just over 1200 selected precincts and counties in 11 states plus a couple of news sites, in each of about 20 readings throughout the evening)
Pre-requisites for gathering election night results:
- A reliable fast internet connection (NOT dial up)
- LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of disk space
- Someone to babysit the process and start it every so often. (I like starting every 15 minutes)
There are options - I exclude any graphics, limit the capture to 5 simultaneous connections, do not cache the files, and set a maximum external link depth of 1. This prevents the program from finding additional links and trying to copy them too.
Usually a couple of dry runs are needed to make sure that you're getting the files you want without too much extra 'stuff'. During a night of result gathering, I also update my source file with new links as they become available. If available, using a second computer to gather and update your source file is worthwhile.
Do a bit of experimenting with the program first to familiarize yourself with it.
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Here are some of the "Compendium" link files created by John Howard for the 2008 primaries:
Indiana: http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/IndianaCountiesV4.htm
Oregon: http://www.bbvdocs.org/OR/state/Oregon-74022.htm
South Dakota: http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/SouthDakotaCounties.html
2) WEB SNAPSHOT
A tool prepared by extraordinary citizen Donovan Levinson. In the course of just a few days, Levinson developed four versions, each with additional features. Interwoven into the developing versions are tips and instructions, so I'm going to provide versions 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2, and 2.2.1 in order with instructions and tips that came with each.
Here they are, in order, with notes as posted at the time:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote:
1.0: first release of the WebSnapshot tool. Version 1.0: http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-1.0.jar
(18 KB)
2.0: Added CNN support http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-2.0.jar
(27 KB)
2.1: Added CNN exit poll support http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-2.1.zip
(49 KB)
2.2: Added data collection for South Dakota counties http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-2.2.zip
(52 KB)
2.2.1: Add a time out when downloading URLs
since the CERS URLs sometimes hang
http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-2.2.1.zip(53 KB)
VERSION 1.0 NOTES, GENERAL USE
http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-1.0.jar
Usage: java -jar WebSnapshot.jar <urls> [<refresh> <count>]
Where <urls> is the path to a file containing URLs, one on each line. The <refresh> and <count> arguments are optional. The <count> is the number of snapshots to create, and the <refresh> is the number of seconds to wait between each snapshot. Here's an example URLs file:
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
MV "BARACK OBAMA" "HILLARY CLINTON" http://www.lakecountyin.org/cms-host/voters/microvote/2008PrimaryElectionResults /LakePrecSumm561.htm
The last line in the file is a special notation for downloading all the precinct summaries for an entire county. The notation for this is:
MV "CANDIDATE 1" "CANDIDATE 2" "..." <url>
Where <url> is the path to the last precinct in the county. The example above downloads all 561 precinct summaries and produces a csv file with results per precinct.
Example usage:
java -jar WebSnapshot.jar urls.txt 60 5
This would create a snapshot folder based on current date/time and then capture each of the URLs contained in urls.txt. It would then wait for 60 seconds and repeat the process, taking a total of 5 snapshots.
You will need Java 5.0+ installed. You need to run the tool from the command line (Start -> Run... "cmd" on Windows XP). Next I plan to add support for generating spreadsheets (with results per county) from CNN pages.
WEB SNAPSHOT 2.0 w/ CNN support
http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-2.0.jar
Here is the updated WebSnapshot.jar and an example input file, adds a special notation for capturing CNN results per county in a csv file. Take a look at the example input file to see how this is done.
Installation instructions
---------------------------------------
1) Create a Directory C:\WebSnapshot
2) Download WebSnapshot.jar and urls.txt to this directory
http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/urls-74129.txt
3) Open up a command prompt (Start -> Run... 'cmd')
4) Switch to directory (cd C:\WebSnapshot)
5) Run the java application from the command line (java -jar WebSnapshot.jar urls.txt)
Capture periodic snapshots by using the optional command line arguments (read the first post).
Press Ctrl+C to terminate the application early.
Java is completely free. Here is the instructions for downloading and installing Java 5.0.
1) http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp
2) Select Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 Update 15
3) Choose your platform (e.g. Windows)
4) Download the Windows Offline Installation
5) Run the Installer (jre-1_5_0_15-windows-i586-p.exe)
Here's a guide to download and rename in Internet Explorer. This expands Step 2 in the installation instructions
a) Right click on WebSnapshot.jar link and select 'Save Target As...'
b) Select 'All Files' under Save as type
c) Enter 'WebSnapshot.jar' under File name.
d) Select the dropdown 'Save in' and choose 'Local Disk'
e) Double-click the WebSnapshot folder and click 'Save'
WEB SNAPSHOT 2.1: Added support for CNN exit polls. Extract the attached zip file to your C:\WebSnapshot directory.
http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-2.1.zip
See the included urls.txt input file for an example. Next, I plan to add a snapshot summary feature to create spreadsheets of vote counts by snapshot time. This will help create graphs of the incoming voting data, and allow for a visual inspection of the results.
MERGE JOHN HOWARD'S SOUTH DAKOTA COMPENDIUM:
http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/SouthDakotaCounties.html
(From John Howard): Here is the South Dakota Compendium of results sites. Basically there is only one - the SoS, with the exception of Pennington County which is also included here. I've included the addresses of the counties that have web sites, although they are not clickable links. Having visited each one today, I doubt that we'll see results posted on any of them. Please note that these are all results by Precinct for each county, with one file each for Dem and one for Rep voters. The SoS web site is SLOW to produce these results so I wouldn't advise running too many concurrent connections. Since all the SoS results will be of a consistent format, perhaps this can feed into Donovan Levinson's SNAPSHOT tool.
SOUTH DAKOTA UPDATE: WebSnapshot 2.2 including South Dakota http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-2.2.zip
Finished adding support for South Dakota precinct results URLs (CERS). Also included is snapshot history report generation. These files end in "-history.csv" and contain all the vote counts by snapshot time. There is an issue where sometimes more than 256 columns are generated (#columns = #precincts * #choices + 1). Excel will only display the first 256 columns. I will add a workaround for this by saving across multiple files in a future release.
Extract the attached zip to your C:\WebSnapshot directory. See included urls.txt input file for an example.
2.2.1: Optimized to deal with URL hangs
http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/WebSnapshot-2.2.1.zip
(Donovan): I hope to get some useful feedback from users during this last day of primaries. I have made one minor change, and that is to add a time out when downloading URLs, since the CERS URLs sometimes hang for a very long time. The timeout is set to 5 minutes. I will expose this variable and others in a properties file soon.
Also, I have attached two South Dakota input files for tracking the election results:
http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/sd-dem.txt
http://www.bbvforums.org/docs/tools/sd-rep.txt
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3) STATS SPREADSHEET TOOLS
NOTE THAT THE VOTER REG SPREADSHEETS ACTUALLY CONTAIN 2 SHEETS: VOTER REG and VOTER TURNOUT, PROVISIONALS, ABSENTEE
Montana voting systems:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/MT/state/2008-jun-MT-votingsystems.xls
Montana registered voters 2004-2006:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/MT/state/2004-2006-MT-regvoters.xls
South Dakota registered voters 2004-2006:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/SD/state/2004-2006-SD-regvoters.xls
South Dakota voting systems:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/SD/state/2008-jun-SD-votingsystems.xls
Additional spreadsheet tools will be added here throughout the day today, including updated voter reg figures, turnout figures for 2004-2006, mail-in and provisional stats from 2006, and additional states (California, New Jersey, New Mexico, more)
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Black Box Voting is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit elections watchdog group working to improve public controls in our elections. More: http://www.BlackBoxVoting.org
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