2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum (2004 PRR): A Statistical Analysis from the Point of View of Electronic Voting Data Transmissions

TL;DR

This study analyzes electronic voting data transmissions during the 2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum, revealing distinct transmission behaviors and their correlation with electoral variables, and comparing results across multiple elections.

Contribution

It introduces a statistical approach to classify voting machines by data transmission types and examines their impact on electoral variable distributions, highlighting non-random patterns.

Findings

Two types of wire telephony data transmission behaviors identified.

Distribution of NO votes per machine varies significantly across transmission types.

No significant difference found between 2004 PRR NO results and 2000 Chavez votes.

Abstract

Statistical comparisons of electoral variables are made between groups of electronic voting machines and voting centers classified by types of transmissions according to the volume of traffic in incoming and outgoing data of machines from and toward the National Electoral Council (CNE) totalizing servers. One unexpectedly finds two types of behavior in wire telephony data transmissions and only one type where cellular telephony is employed, contravening any reasonable electoral normative. Differentiation in data transmissions arise when comparing number of incoming and outgoing data bytes per machine against total number of votes per machine reported officially by the CNE. The respective distributions of electoral variables for each type of transmission show that the groups classified by it do not correspond to random sets of the electoral universe. In particular, the distributions for the NO percentage of votes per machine differ statistically across groups. The presidential elections of 1998, 2000 and the 2004 Presidential Recall Referendum (2004 PRR) are compared according to the type of transmissions in 2004 PRR. Statistically, the difference between the empirical distributions of the 2004 PRR NO results and the 2000 Chavez votes results by voting centers is not significant.