Rumor, Reality, and Math Errors in Elections
Summary of Analysis
The chart below includes that data illustrated on the overview web page but expanded to all of Bernalillo County. The red dots show the Bernalillo County precincts selected by the raw dice rolls recorded in the audit report -- but after recreating the "software fixup" formula. The 157 precinct selections in Bernalillo County are sorted in the order of precincts in the government's precinct list. Each dot is to the right of the previous dot by an equal horizontal distance. The dots are vertically positioned by the line number in the county's precinct list.
The red dots form an upward-sloping line with irregularities due to the randomness of dice rolls. The vertical step from one precinct to the next should be between 4 and 5 precincts on average and reader should see this is about right. The largest vertical jump skips over about 20 precincts.
However, the green dots are the precinct selections from the audit report. The reader will see a rectangular cutout that jumps over the range 232 to 520 with no selections, an unaudited range of 288 precincts. A nefarious actor could know in advance that precincts in this range would never be selected for audit, allowing the actor to focus tampering on these precincts. This would defeat the value of the audit in assuring the accuracy of the election results.
The linked report provides details beyond the scope of this web page, such as:
Dice rolls were recorded in the audit report and appear random, with the non-randomness first appearing in the output of software that converts raw dice rolls into precincts.
The nature of the jump in the diagram is representative of a known class of software errors (an unsorted argument to the Excel MATCH function). This type of error can be caused by an accident, such as accidentally sorting an array by the wrong field.
Furthermore, this type of error has been studied enough (including in the linked spreadsheet) that this type of "accident" could be engineered by a nefarious actor to create a desired effect.
Learn about Rumor vs. Reality vs. Disinformation