Rumor, Reality, and Math Errors in Elections
Rumor vs. Reality vs. Math Errors
Everybody makes mistakes, but the audit report remains online without acknowledgement of the anomaly.
The federal and state governments have a process for promoting the accuracy of elections through "rumor vs. reality" web pages on government web sites, such as https://www.sos.nm.gov/voting-and-elections/voter-information-portal-nmvote-org/rumor-vs-reality/. Accurate elections are considered "reality" and challenges to accurate elections are "rumor."
The MIT Election Lab rates New Mexico as having the #1 election process https://elections.mit.edu/#/data/map?view=state-profile&state=NM&year=2022. Per social media post below, New Mexico is very proud of the endorsement from MIT.
We now explain how readers can decide for themselves whether the audit report -- and hence the New Mexico 2022 election -- should be trusted.
Most elementary school pupils learn that 2+2=4, but that 2+2=5 is a math error. What would you think if the federal and state governments designated 2+2=4 as "rumor" and 2+2=5 as "reality"? Furthermore, what if an esteemed technical university designated an election process "#1" even though it used arithmetic where 2+2=5? In this example, you would have to weigh your confidence in arithmetic against the authority of the government and a university.
This document explained the use of random audits in detecting tampering and let you see with your own eyes one precinct being selected 41 times. The previous page showed a chart with an irregular red line showing the distribution of dice rolls and a green curve with a big rectangular cutout showing purportedly random precinct selections.
You, the reader, can make your own decision. Do you believe the precinct selections shown by the green curve are random and that the New Mexico 2022 election audit proves that the 2022 election was accurate?
Updates
April 26, 2024: The report and spreadsheet led to a series of public records requests to the New Mexico Secretary of State's office for the actual spreadsheet. The requests did not yield the spreadsheet, but eventually resulted in an incompletely sorted array that exactly reproduced the anomaly when used as the input to the Excel MATCH function. The public records requests were supported by the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, which issued the press release SECRETARY OF STATE OFFICE RELEASES AUDIT. As of the time of this update (April 26, 2024, 7 AM), the New Mexico website has the original audit report online.
Exercise for the reader: I received one of the Excel spreadsheets mentioned above on April 17, 2024. The spreadsheet's properties appear below (with names redacted). Explain the sequence of events that led the spreadsheet's contents.
July 2, 2024 (10:33 AM): The New Mexico website has the original audit report online with no acknowledgement of an error.
August 11, 2024 (10:41 AM): The original audit report remains online with no acknowledgement of an error. However, the author is aware of ongoing discussions between some citizens and state officials, so stay tuned.
See the Summary of Recommendations.