Mark Weisbrot points me to this report trashing a recent OAS report on Haiti’s elections. Weisbrot writes:
The two simplest things that are wrong with the OAS analysis are: (1) By looking only at a sample of the tally sheets and not using any statistical test, they have no idea how many other tally sheets would also be thrown out by the same criteria that they used, and how that would change the result and (2) The missing/quarantined tally sheets are much greater in number than the ones that they threw out; our analysis indicates that if these votes had been counted, the result would go the other way.
I have not had a chance to take a look at this myself but I’m posting it here so that experts on election irregularities can see this and give their judgments.
P.S. Weisbrot updates:
We [Weisbrot et al.] published our actual paper on the OAS Mission’s Report today. The press release is here and gives a very good summary of the major problems with the OAS Mission report.
Our report is definitely having an impact — the OAS is starting to back off from its leaked report; Miami Herarld reports Secretary General Insulza saying that he “sought to downplay the impact of the OAS election report, which suggests that popular singer Michel ‘Sweet Micky’ Martelly replace government-backed candidate Jude Celestin in the runoff. The report, Insulza said, is based on ‘calculations’ and not results. ‘It’s not in our power to give results,’ he told The Miami Herald. ‘We are not publishing any kind of results.’ Preval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive have disputed the report, saying its conclusions were based on faulty methodology. Insulza, who defended the findings, said he was ‘in no position to change the report.'”
I [Weisbrot] would love to see any of the members of the “Expert Verification Mission” have to defend the leaked report publicly. When that happens, the whole thing will collapse.
Again: I’m just reporting. I have no idea what happened, myself, but it seems worth bringing to the attention of the statistical community.