[quote=svelte] Because, you’d think that if they had fed fake ballots through the system, that would have conformed to Benford’s Law and ended up with a 1 in the first digit most of the time.
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No, that is not correct. When you feed a random number of fake ballots into the system, it makes it a system that does not conform to Benford’s Law.
Benford’s Law applies to numbers that are counted or accumulated.
The law works because as you count, when you get to a section of numbers beginning with “1” you need a 100% increase to move on to a set of numbers beginning with the number 2. But, when you get to a section of numbers beginning with “9” you only need an 11% increase.
Random numbers don’t have this problem. They can land anywhere. So, if a random number is introduced into the system, the numbers can fall anywhere. You end up with a mix of a Benford set of numbers and random numbers.
Benford’s Law isn’t really ever violated but if you are looking at a system you would expect to follow the law and it doesn’t, it means the system is not what you think it is.
