Election Integrity

Given the critical importance of safeguarding the American electoral system, it is vital to evaluate the evidence offered for specific claims of fraud in the 2020 election. In this memo, we evaluate the methods used in Look Ahead America's April 19th, 2021 report, “The Georgia Report,” on illegal voting in Georgia in the 2020 election. 

In the wake of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists has advanced ever more expansive claims of vote manipulation, going so far as to allege that all American elections are subject to manipulation—even in largely Republican states. In the extreme, these conspiracy theorists argue that candidates in U.S. elections are selected rather than elected. We evaluate two recent sets of claims about vote manipulation that allege algorithms are used to shift votes towards preferred candidates. Even though these claims are distinct, they fail for similar reasons. For example, both sets of claims assert that “unnaturally” accurate predictions of election results are evidence of vote manipulation, an allegation that is a result of predicting a variable with itself. Furthermore, both claims make easily refuted errors in logic and data analysis and in addition misrepresent historical election patterns. While recent claims about vote manipulation are prima facie outlandish, their effects on policy and the public are real. Refuting false claims about vote manipulation is essential to ensuring the continued functioning of U.S. elections and American democracy more generally.

 Douglas Frank’s analysis of Placer County’s turnout data, and his analysis of U.S. elections more generally, is deeply flawed. Frank never demonstrates that his methodology is able to accurately identify systematic voter fraud. Rather, his conclusions are based on mere assertions about his personal view of “uncanny” or “unnatural” relationships. None of these speculations are based on any literature, analysis of historical elections, or mathematical derivations. I will show in this memo that the supposedly unnatural relationships he identifies are the result of profound and basic statistical errors. Frank claims that there is a single turnout rate for partisans across Placer County precincts, but he uses the wrong evidence to test this claim. The correct test shows that Frank’s claim is false, even when using Frank’s own faulty data. Overall, Douglas Frank’s analysis only shows the unsurprising fact that groups with more people tend to have more people turnout to vote. In other words, Frank’s unnatural correlations arise from correlating a variable with itself. Frank attempts to reply to this critique with a nonsensical “bathtub” analogy. This analogy fails to address any of the mathematical or statistical arguments I use to demonstrate that his methodology is flawed and assumes a conclusion he never demonstrates. Frank’s methodology continues to be useless for assessing voter fraud.

Author: Justin Grimmer

In a series of recent presentations, Douglas Frank claims to show that elections in Placer County, California are manipulated. In this brief memo I show that his analysis is flawed and therefore his conclusion is mistaken:there is no evidence that Placer County elections are stolen. Rather, Frank’s claims that Placer County precincts have identical turnout rates is simply false.Other claims about unusually strong relationships are merely the result of apoorly chosen statistical analysis that essentially correlates a variable with itself.As my research group has previously shown, this is a problem that plagues many of Douglas Frank’s analyses.

Author: Justin Grimmer

Refuting Claims that All US Elections are Manipulated

In the wake of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists has advanced ever more expansive claims of vote manipulation, going so far as to allege that all American elections are subject to manipulation in both states that often vote for Republicans and Democrats.

These claims make easily refuted errors in logic and data analysis and in addition misrepresent historical election patterns. The Democracy and Polarization Lab at Stanford University has created a website to examine these claims about voter fraud and demonstrate how the claims fail under basic logic, empirical analysis, and statistical scrutiny. Learn more and explore the website