[taxicab]

No. This baseless insistance that the most closely watched election in living history has had fraud at a scale never seen in the US that occurred in front of hundreds of bipartisan observers is literally a conspiracy theory.

All of the newly minted statistics experts on the internet wildly missaplying methods to support their foregone conclusions are exactly the same as Johny C. Theorist getting an internet education in materials science so that he can understand for himself that jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams. Trump's polling numbers also don't follow Benford's law in some cases. That's because there is no direct causation between legitimate elections and a Benford's law style distribution.

The fixation on wildly cherry picked data and missaplied statistics is the conspiracy theory. There are already court cases with the best experts in the land looking at the counts. Guess what? They are starting to be laughed out of court because they have no evidence to support their claims. It is either supremely arrogant or delusional to claim that you have found this thing that you spent five minutes learning about on the internet that proves magically that the Democrats stole the election while world renowned experts aren't able to prove it to a judge.

There is no liberal conspiracy to steal an election. Trump made the same claim in 2016. He made it during the Republican primaries about his opponents (that they cheated him). He said the system was rigged when he settled the fraud lawsuite for trump university. Hell... he even said he was being cheated when his tv show wasn't awarded an Emmy. This is just what he does and instead of spreading lies he needs to accept that he lost (probably... we'll see soon) and stop dividing the country.

[maxharris]

> That's because there is no direct causation between legitimate elections and a Benford's law style distribution.

This doesn't make any sense to me. Why do we see it in physical constants and so many other places, but not election results?

I did look through that paper by Deckert, Myagkov and Ordeshook from the Wikipedia citation, and I find it extremely difficult to follow. (A literature search reveals a number of other papers with varying conclusions.) I haven't done any stats since college, and that was over a decade ago, so I don't claim to be an expert. Still, if you actually understand something, you should be able to explain it from first principles!

I did some more digging, and I did find this very well-written piece on Benford’s law. It is something I can actually follow: https://towardsdatascience.com/benfords-law-a-simple-explana...

In general, I think it is best to avoid argument from intimidation. I also don't think that linking conspiracy theorizing with someone that just wants to understand something better is a kind thing to do.

[taxicab]

> I haven't done any stats since college, and that was over a decade ago, so I don't claim to be an expert.

That's the whole point. This isn't my field of expertise and it certainly isn't yours. No offense, but the 45 minutes you spent between my post and this one is not a "literature review." I am a professional scientist and for my most recent publication it took me three weeks to cover the literature on my one narrow finding. That was already after spending the last five years in a PhD becoming an expert in my field! The three weeks was spent deeply reading almost every significant paper on the topic I was publishing on. That is what literature review means and you don't really understand the nuances of applying Benford's law to election fraud by spending 45 minutes browsing wikipedia and skimming abstracts.

If the political science experts who have spent decades studying the facts surrounding Benford's law disagree that it is a reliable indicator of fraud then what are we doing running sketchy analyses and then making huge leaps to claim it as "mathematical proof that the democrats stole the election." And yes, that is a conspiracy theory with all of the hallmarks of one. It is to the point that state election officials are having to waste their time to go on television and debunk literal lies and disinformation that are being broadcast by certain political figures. Judges are already tossing Trump's lawsuits because even his lawyers have to tell the judges that they have no evidence of fraud. The continued assertion that Democrats are "stealing the election" is the conspiracy theory here and it is literally dangerous. A bomb threat was called into a Philadelphia counting center. Vote counters are being escorted to and from counting locations by the police for their protection from armed mobs that are aggregating in some areas. You'll have to excuse me if I'm already tired of seeing these baseless claims show up over and over again when not even Trump himself can pull out evidence to support them when it comes time to do so in court.

If you want to learn about Benford's law then good on you. I think that it is a really interesting topic and there is some good entertainment to be had in learning about it. However, it's delusional for people like the author of this article to spend an evening learning about it and then act like it is the magic bullet from the Kennedy assassination.

[aapl88888]

You're arguing with a side that is using statistical analysis to detect fraud. Meanwhile your arguments are:

- "fixation on wildly cherry picked data and missaplied (sic) statistics is the conspiracy theory"

- "There are already court cases with the best experts in the land looking at the counts"

- "They are starting to be laughed out of court because they have no evidence to support their claims"

I don't find your arguments compelling because you are arguing to authority. You also use a case that was dismissed that has nothing to do with Benford's Law. Please address specifically what data is being cherry picked and why Benford's Law shouldn't apply in this election.

[sergioro]

> occurred in front of hundreds of bipartisan observers

There is evidence that in PA and MI republicans were not allowed to observe the vote counting. Why are they not allowed to observe?

> There is no liberal conspiracy to steal an election. Trump made the same claim in 2016.

In WI, MI there hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots all arriving after election day. And they almost entirely for one candidate. I don't remind this happening in 2016, or never in US history.

[taxicab]

It certainly is a mystery why legally cast mail in votes (which are allowed to arrive after election day per state law in some jurisdictions) would sway to one party. It's almost like one candidate has been telling his supporters to, in no uncertain terms, not use mail in ballots.

Your other claim is literal misinformation.

Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican: "Observers from the Democratic Party and Republican Party, from the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign, have been in our counting area observing, right up against where the process is taking place, from the very beginning" (he said this in response to a similar lie by Ted Cruz)