This is an update on an ongoing dialog between New Mexico elections officials, a coalition of citizens, and a political party leader. The author suggests the issue is whether New Mexico’s elections are “honest” or “appear honest.”
The New Mexico Secretary of State (SOS) made a statement about the 2022 federal election’s audit during the initial, public, meeting of the subsequent 2024 federal election’s audit:
One last thing: If you watched in 2022, you may have seen something unusual, multiple selections of certain precincts. If a precinct was selected once or twice, that was expected due to random dice, but if more times, that was unusual. This was fixed by picking the multiply selected precincts again, so it should not be a concern (reconstructed from notes; see full article).
If a secretary of state believes a fact is of no concern, why would she interrupt a public meeting to describe a fact of no concern?
The secretary of state was talking about dice rolls, so usual multiple selections mean the dice were not obeying the principles of mathematics. This and subsequent documents describe how “picking again” changes probabilities, creates a security hole, and makes the audit non-compliant with the law. On the other hand, perhaps the secretary of state was referring to a different type of problem. Let us examine this issue.
The diagram below plots the selected precincts in the audit report (green) and as reconstructed based on the unprocessed dice values also recorded in the audit report (red). The vertical jumps in the green curve represent ranges of precincts not selected by the random process in 2022. Subsequent analysis of the software showed that none of the 10 million dice combinations would select these precincts, making them “immune from audit.” A nefarious actor could compromise voting machines in such a range without fear that the dice would select a compromised voting machine for a hand recount.
While a story about the 2022 election may come out eventually, the author suspects the issue relates to New Mexico’s #1 national rating by the MIT Election Lab. These ratings are based on the election process, but do not check to see that the process is carried out correctly (i.e. appearance vs. reality). In this case, New Mexico had already received its #1 rating, in part because it conducted a post-election audit. If it became widely known that audit was mathematically flawed, the election lab might reconsider New Mexico’s rating.
The SOS’s statement is just latest installment in an ongoing dialog with the SOS’s office. Neonormal suggests the dialog continue, ultimately answering whether New Mexico needs elections to “be honest” or “appear honest.”
See the full article for details.