Why We Don't Compare Voter Rolls to 3rd Party Data Brokers?
#1 Rule in Data Analysis: Garbage In. Garbage Out
Some Election Integrity groups chose to do name and address matching with various 3rd party data sources.
As a system builder with years of experience dealing with multiple state-run databases, I tried to explain to many of my colleagues the dangers of this approach.
First, and foremost you need very clean and standardized data to do accurate matching with any other source. Most state voter roll data is extremely dirty and when the officials are confronted with this, they just point to clerical issues.
We believe that a lot of the actual fraud is happening within these dirty records. However, if you try to show them any type of analysis, they will also question the validity of your sources and methods. Please watch this video summary below:
Second, not all the states give the critical pieces of information needed to correctly match data such as birth dates, full middle names, and suffixes like Jr or Sr.
I had to cringe when I listened to a Georgia patriot get taken apart and embarrassed in a group call when officials claimed that the person he was trying to confront them on was the Junior (for example John Smith, Jr.) instead of the Senior (John Smith) person with the same name.
Small detail, but the Officials love to hammer you on it. Many states do not publish full middle names and birthdates and some will only publish a birth year. Identities are hard to match and you will need extensive coding with fallbacks to accomplish this with high accuracy.
More Coding = More Time = More Costs.
Third, that 3rd party data typically needs to be purchased and updated periodically which again adds additional costs and labor.
Put all the above together, you create a lot of unnecessary gray areas that the officials can dismiss what you bring forward all for a higher price tag to build and maintain.
Our methodology STARTS WITH addresses because:
Addresses are all publically and easily checkable via the US Postal system. They will even return the correct, standard formatting along with information like if the address is a business and/or vacant.
Addresses are very understandable and approachable to most people. In some cases, you can just look at an address and see that is wrong. For example, a missing apartment number for an address at an apartment building. So the average person along with the official has no challenges verifying your findings.
You can both physically and digitally canvass an address to see if the home exists. Where it might be harder to reach anyone who lives inside and feels comfortable enough identifying themselves and their co-habitors. This makes the findings easier to vet. YOU MUST VET YOUR DATA BEFORE GIVING IT OFFICIALS.
It's hard for the officials to argue your checks with the US Post office because they send their mail with the same organization. When officials tell me they think the 911 system is more accurate, I just ask them if ambulances deliver the mail in their county.
Most REAL people tend to stay in their homes for 2-5 years. This helps you focus on the troubled records. In an ocean of registrants, this typically allows you to closely watch the 15-20% that are being added, changed, and moving around each month.
Because of the point above, we also can watch the monthly change analysis to watch for addresses breaking, and getting corrected which also helps spot identity theft situations like Red Belly Rd.
We found Undeliverable Mail, which includes registrants who were identified by the USPS NCOA to have moved out of state, was by far the largest single issue plaguing the rolls in Florida. In November 2022, this number was around 900K registrants. In under 3 years, we were able to reduce that number to under 400k.
Lastly, all the above work together seamlessly each month for an easy-to-run, low-maintenance system. We don't have to add and maintain 3rd party data which would accumulate server data and eat up time. So we can implement faster, for less money, because we bring better results per dollar invested.
If you are doing 3rd party checks without standardizing addresses, chances are you are missing a lot of matches. You may also be getting lots of false positives.
As they say in the data business. Garbage in. Garbage Out.
If you would like to know more about The People’s Audit Monthly Monitoring of Voter Rolls, please visit our website:
https://the-peoples-audit.org/checkmate/
We are completely grassroots-funded.
AND WE WANT TO KEEP IT THAT WAY, SO WE NEED YOUR HELP!
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