Election UnHackathon Tech Support

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Data is rolling in from the November election, and we have offered to help candidates investigate any oddities. We have several requests coming in and could use data analysts, datavis, python or other coders (some folks are using PHP) to help quickly and carefully comb thru the election results in counties across the country.

Tech volunteers job will be to help examine evidence, which is mainly a comparison of registered voters who voted in the election against the results, at the precinct level. We will look for various types of anomalies, such as duplicate registrations or statistically unexpected ratios. In addition, we may have access to poll tape or ballot images, depending on the location. Most of the initial work is automating the data pipeline - pull, clean, store, analyze, visualize.

If we find something odd, we will let the campaigns know, and they will decide how to follow up with the information. One option for them is to walk individual precincts gathering affidavits from voters, to compare with the tabulated results. This has been done before successfully and we will be able to provide sample affidavits and other non-tech support as well.

Everything we do is evidence based. If we do not find any suspicious evidence, that will also be communicated to the campaigns. This is a non-partisan group with the goal of securing the election.

When you join, you will be given access to the discord, trello and github repo. It would be great if a few people can volunteer before Nov 4 to prepare ahead, as well.

(See details in our Candidate Caution document for documented vulnerabilities in election machines and the lack of reliable manual audits in some states https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mert8_W01_ya5XeOpAw-_EUqKkbzRL2jYwjeOyDnC48/edit)