| | | Yes, that is the intuitive thought that the first digits will be evenly distributed, but it doesn't work out that way.
The law was, indeed, founded on observations. An astronomer, Newcomb, and a physicist, Benford, noticed that the first pages in their log books became dirty and tattered long before the rest of the book. Before calculators, log books were used to find the log of a number to transform, difficult, multiplication into simple addition. People had to look up what the log was by flipping through the book to find the log. The pages were sequential for the number being looked up. Say 100 pages starting with 1, 100 pages starting with 2 and so on. Since 30% of the numbers being looked up were in the first 100 pages, those got worn out first. In contrast the 9 digit section barely got worn at all.
The election forensic tool assumes that the fraudsters are aware of Benford's law and correctly divvy up the first digit. But, Benford's law also applies to the second digit. The fraud in Michigan and Wisconsin was so extreme there isn't any need to look at the second digit.
I anticipate there will be a clear hot spot map coming out of the 2020 results. The physical dumping of ballots will show up like a sore thumb. It will be obvious who cheated and where.
 |
|
