(My most sincere apologies to William Shakespeare!) Earlier today, I requested a copy of the Appendix mentioned in Paragraph 10 on pp. 6-7 of the Texas’s Attorney General’s “Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint.” (See screenshots below.) As soon as I obtain this Appendix, I will conduct my own analysis of the matter and report back soon!
Update #1 (12/8, 9:32PM): I was able to track down the Appendix–it is available here, see pp. 20-29. Due to other commitments, I hope to report back by the end of this week.
Update #2 (12/9, 8:53PM): My colleague David Post has written up a strongly-worded critique of the statistical analysis in the aforementioned Appendix. I agree with most of Professor Post’s critique but disagree with one part of his analysis regarding the distribution of voter preferences on mail-in ballots. Alas, because I am currently bogged down with grading and other time-sensitive commitments, I will discuss these issues in greater detail in the next day or two.
prior probability 
I look forward to your analysis.
Here ya go: https://priorprobability.com/2020/12/10/is-something-rotten-in-the-states-of-georgia-michigan-pennsylvania-and-wisconsin/
I am interested in your thoughts as well!
Sorry I did get the chance to read your blog post. Work was ridiculous. I will review tomorrow and share my thoughts
No prob! I’ve been there…
Reblogged this on prior probability and commented:
I have reviewed the Appendix in the court filings with SCOTUS (“Declaration of Charles J. Cicchetti, Ph.D.”) as well as David Post’s excellent critique of Dr Cicchetti’s statistical analysis. Below are my tentative thoughts on this matter. Also, for brevity I will limit my comments to Cicchetti’s analysis of the election results in Georgia.
In summary, Cicchetti makes two claims: one regarding the election results in Georgia overall (let’s call this “Claim A”); the other specifically about the mail-in ballots (“Claim B”). (Also, for the reasons I will give below, I agree with David Post’s critique of Claim A, but disagree with Post’s critique of Claim B.)
Let’s start with the weaker claim, Claim A.
Claim A is simply that, holding voter preferences constant, it is extremely unlikely that Joe Biden could have won the Georgia contest by honest means. Alas, this claim is total bullshit. Why? Because holding voter preferences constant makes absolutely no sense in the context of an election contest. The whole purpose of an election is to measure voter preferences, and voter preferences may change from one year to the next. That is the whole point of holding elections!
Let’s now turn to Claim B, which is the stronger of the two claims.
Claim B is that the mail-in ballots are suspect and probably rigged because the final results of the mail-in ballots diverge greatly from the final results of the early-voting ballots and the in-person ballots. Specifically, Cicchetti states in Paragraph 14 of his Declaration (emphasis added by me):
“At 3:10 AM EST on November 4 the Georgia reported tabulations were 51.09% for Trump and 48.91% for Biden (eliminating third-party candidates). On November 18 at 2 PM EST, the reported percentages were Trump 49.86% and Biden at 50.14%…. For this turnaround to occur, the subsequent “late” [main-in] ballots totaling 268,204 votes (5.4% of the votes reported on November 18) had to split 71.60% for Biden and 28.40 for Trump.”
Here, Post is wrong to dismiss the substance of this claim. Although Post is correct to conclude that we can’t hold constant voter preferences from one election to the next, we can certainly do so with randomly selected sub-samples of voters in the same election. The key question, then, is whether the population of voters who voted by mail is any relevant respect different than the population of all voters, or early voters, or in-person voters.
For my part (unlike Post), I remain agnostic on this question.
Argument A: I agree with both you and David post is utter nonsense.
Argument B: A little more difficult to substantiate. My prima facie assumption is that mail-in voters skew more heavily Democrat. Who has taken COVID-19 safety procedures more seriously, Trump or Biden supporters? With that said my superficial suspicion is that the mail-in ballots were primarily for Biden.
However, this inference isn’t based on any numbers. Therefore the veracity of this claim is somewhat flimsy. It is a highly speculative and qualitative assessment based on political affiliation and attitudes towards the pandemic.
Needless to say, I would be so bold to make an firm claims. While I may have some loose theories regarding mail-in voter demographics and the likelihood that it was rigged . Nothing more than pure conjecture. I would state that I am
also agnostic on this point as well.
Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts, and regarding the mail-in ballots, you might very well be correct, but if that is in fact the case (that most mail-in ballots were submitted by Democrats or left-leaning voters), why did Trump apparently hold his own with early voters? Also, either way, how could we “test” or try to prove this assertion? I wish the secretary of states of GA, PI, MI, and WI would tell us the number of “mail-in” ballots that were received and counted as well as as the number of “early ballots” and “in-person/election day” ballots.
There certainly is substance to that argument. Probably would indicate why I am not fully comfortable with advocating for the mail-in voter= Democratic voter hypothesis.
I would really like detailed study of the demographics of mail-in voters. It would settler some of these questions.
However, as you suggested, just reveal the damn numbers for GA, PA, MI, WI and the picture becomes much more clear. Some of the ambiguity will be lifted.
I am also unsure how we could go about testing the veracity of the claim that Trump’s early lead was thwarted by pernicious intentions.
Also, I am a little skeptical that Georgia flipped blue the more I think about it. Then again is this just another assumption on my end?