Citizens Oversight Projects

08/24/2025

08/21/2025

09/06/2024

Letter submitted to Pres. Biden and AG Garland to stop the deletion of election data and improve voter privacy protections and availability of the anonymous election data.

05/23/2024

I will be making a presentation on "Daffodil" a 2-D dataframe package for Python at the San Diego Python Users Group meeting located at the Qualcomm building in Sorrento Mesa (San Diego).

Here is the repo on GitHub.

https://www.meetup.com/pythonsd/events/300056824/

(This meeting is in a large amphitheater and is not like the picture on the meetup site.)

I will be first on the docket but there is some house keeping to be done right after 7pm, so I may be up at around 7:20.

There is not a link to the livestream till it is live. Available at this location https://www.youtube.com//streams

This is the YouTube channel of the San Diego Python meetup.Our website: https://www.sandiegopython.orgFor upcoming events: https://www.meetup.com/pythonsd/

04/22/2024

New fake video of talking faces look absolutely real, it is scary! Hello misinformation! No wonder SAG-AFTRA was on strike.

Animate any photo with any audio in REALTIME! ://www.microsoft.com/en-us/...

04/18/2024

A very bad idea! Please don't be sucked into claims by nuke industry that renewables are not feasible and we have to have nuclear in trade for lower CO2, while there is really no evidence that we can deal with the waste for 250,000 years without producing CO2, which is their assumption.

Michigan and the federal government will spend billions to restart the Palisades nuclear reactor. They should invest in renewable energy instead.

01/01/2024

And finally, our favorite photo from 2023: It’s not common to see aurora this far south, and especially not overhead. But this spring, we had a few solar storms that lit up the sky over the entire park, including over Canary Spring in the Mammoth Hot Springs area.

07/03/2023

CHULA (AKA: Bull Head, Little Chief & Stamixo'tokan). He was the head chief of the Tsuu T'ina at the signing of Treaty 7 in 1877. Chief Bull Head was born in 1833 to a long lineage, and a fine tradition of Tsuu T'ina chiefs. The Tsuu T'ina were originally from a northern Deane tribe (Beaver people) who split hundreds of years ago. Oral tradition story tellers recall that after a disagreement between two of the chiefs brothers (possibly over the accidental death of a prized dog). An estimated two hundred members of the tribe led by one of the brothers moved into the territory of the Niitsitapi (Siksika/Blackfoot).
Here is the Tsuu T'ina's own creation story:
About 3,000 years ago when the Athabascan were one Nation (Tsuu T'ina means ‘a great number of people’), a great separation occurred in the north.
As the People were crossing a frozen lake in the deep cold winter, a small child noticed a horn sticking up from under the ice. He cried for the horn to play with, and to stop the child from crying, his grandmother took out her stone axe to try pry the horn free, thinking that someone ahead of them had dropped the horn.
What she did not realize was the horn was attached to the head of a monster sleeping under the ice. The grandmother unknowingly woke up the monster and it stood up, busting through the ice and separating the People.
Instead of re-grouping, the Athabascan branched out and settled to our present day locations.
This story of separation is similar in all Athabascan history. For example, The Dene say the horn was an Elk horn attached to a frozen carcass. Their story says that the weight of the carcass, combined with the grandmother chipping the ice and the weight of the People crossing, was the reason the ice broke through. The Navajo have the same story, except the horn was on a Buffalo carcass. The moral of the story is ‘ never spoil the children.
After the great separation, the Tsuu T ’ ina travelled south with a smaller population and came into Blackfoot territory. This area covered the North Saskatchewan river south to the Yellowstone river in Montana, and from the Rocky mountains east to the Cypress Hills and on into Manitoba.
Previous historical sources refer to the group as the Sarcee. "Sa arsi" is a Blackfoot word meaning "not good", often interpreted as "Stubborn", perhaps referring to the Tsuu T'ina's resolve not to be displaced despite raids and battles. Over time the Tsuu T'ina were adopted by the Blackfoot as part of their confederacy. During that time they lived in the area of Great Slave Lake and the edge of the Rocky Mountains. In 1865 Bull Heads older brother was killed by the Cree, by 1870 he had adopted his brothers name "Bull Head" and became chief. Described as a wiley warrior his war tally includes thirty battles, five enemy kills, three scalps, and numerous horses, and war trophies captured. As chief Bull Head promoted a nomadic and traditional lifestyle and is remembered for his abiding and steadfast dedication to his people.
By November 1880 Bull head and his people were starving, the buffalo were long gone, and his tribe aimlessly wandered the plains. Bull Head and his warriors approached Fort Calgary and told the four guards that if the tribe was not given food they would take over the Fort, Hudson Bay store and the I.G. Bakery. Thirty two soldiers responded from Fort Macleod to quell the unrest and find a resolution. As a result the Tsuu T'ina were allowed a winter camp at Fort Macleod, and in spring 1881 Bull Head and his followers moved to a temporary reserve S.W. of Fort Calgary.
When the government and Chief Crowfoot settled on a permanent reserve for the Blackfoot in southern Alberta the Tsuu T'ina initially went along and they shared a reserve near Gleichien, but there were problems. Bull Head, using his persuasive skills, lobbied the federal government for a reserve located next to Fish Creek, southwest of Calgary. He wrote a letter to Ottawa outlining the problems encountered at Blackfoot Crossing, and explained that since the Tsuu T'ina had a distinct language, culture and tradition they deserved to be treated as a sovereign nation with its own land.
On June 27, 1883 the Tsuu T'ina were given their own reserve near Elbow River and Fish Creek, the reserve was 108 square km. in the rolling foothills along the mountains. Although the land was difficult to cultivate, and the Tsuu T'ina initially did not take to farming Bull Head inspired willingness in his people to succeed. Being next to the town of Calgary brought drinking, prostitution, and grifters to influence the first nations people. Bull Head himself made the paper several times with alcohol getting the better of his considerable size and strength, although his warrior nature was generally unaffected. At the same time he also protected his people. Once when a wash basin was taken to be turned into a drum for a ceremony he confronted the arresting officers looking for the thief by telling them "(His people) need a drum more than the town folk need a wash basin" and that was the end of that.
By 1895 the Tsuu T'ina were devastated, indian agent Samual Bringham Lucas observed "Until recently they considered themselves doomed to extinction in the near future and did not appear to wish to exert themselves to avoid what they considered their inevitable fate." Although Bull Head was described by Superintendant McIllree as "...a very bad man who exhibits a most pernicious influence over people", it was that attitude which saved his tribe and his land. Despite the struggle and starvation the Tsuu T'ina never gave up, and continued to survive and adapt. They also resolved to never give up their land, and to this day a carin of stones on the reserve has grown over time added to by the tribal members in rememberance to always keep their bit of land. Bull Head always maintained his traditional religion and values. Bull Head is to be remembered as an outstanding leader and pivotal player in Tsuu T'ina culture and history. He succumbed to consumption in 1911 and his successor was Jim Big Plume.
❤️ Thank you for reading and liking the article. If you're Native American, this is the store for you (t-shirts, blankets, jewelry, tumbler,bags..).
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07/03/2023

Did you know?

10/05/2022

Independent Audit of 2020 Election in Fulton GA, Bartow GA, and Dane WI Supports Election Outcome but Finds Strange Quirks

All available ballot images were parsed and compared with the official report, auditing all contests

AuditEngine "Reads" verifiable text on Touch-Screen Ballots and confirms the QR/barcodes are not hacked

PRESS RELEASE & MEDIA ADVISORY -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VIRTUAL PRESS CONFERENCE AND AUDIT REPORT PRESENTATION

WHEN: OCT 12, 2022, 2pm ET, 11am PT

WHERE: ZOOM link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5747302646

Audit Reports of 2020 General Election:
Three Counties in GA and WI: https://copswiki.org/Common/M1986
Three FL Counties: https://auditengine.org/audit-results/case-study/

SAN DIEGO, CA (2022-10-04) -- Citizens' Oversight, an organization that performs independent audits of elections using the cloud-based auditing platform "AuditEngine" will conduct a virtual press conference on Wednesday Oct 12 at 2pm ET, 11am PT. (Please note the delay due to the weather event, we hope FL recovers soon!)

Three new audit reports of Bartow County GA, Fulton County GA, and Dane County WI are now available. These are audits of the 2020 General Election and they are combined with three earlier audits of Volusia County FL, Collier County FL, and Port St. Lucie
County FL, which also confirmed consistency of the results.

The AuditEngine service provides a forensic "Ballot Image Audit" where all ballot images produced by the voting system are independently processed to interpret the votes, and then compared ballot-by-ballot and contest-by-contest with the official result.

Ray Lutz, Executive Director of Citizens Oversight and the technical lead on the project explained. "We started this project in 2019 after seeing no good way to audit elections other than self-run audits by the election officials themselves. Ballot Images are the first set of data from the election and if analyzed, can detect almost all opportunistic hacks.

Many voters still have a hard time accepting the results of the prior election. By looking at every ballot and comparing one-by-one with the official results, we can turn the black box into a transparent box, potentially find hacks and mistakes, and contribute to voter confidence in the results."

AuditEngine processed all 50,678 ballots cast in Bartow County GA, 148,318 ballot images out of 528,777 ballots cast in Fulton County GA (that's 28% of the ballots cast as the others were inadvertently deleted before AuditEngine received them), and 344,347 ballot images in Dane County WI. AuditEngine independently evaluated the vote on all ballots, and "read" the human-readable, verifiable text summary on every touch-screen generated ballot, and then compared these with the official results.

AuditEngine found no evidence that the election outcome was incorrect, but it did find a few quirks in how the election departments process the ballots, and obviously it would be nice to have the other 380,458 original ballot images in Fulton County GA that were deleted.

A few of the findings by AuditEngine and the auditing team were generally consistent across the counties audited:

- About 99.95% of all votes had no disagreements between the official election machines and AuditEngine. The other 0.05% in Bartow and Fulton counties were found by staff in normal processing, were adjudicated, and were virtually all correct in the final official results.

- About 1% of all votes were variants: write-ins, overvotes, disagreements, or AuditEngine found ambiguous marks. Write-ins and overvotes can be misinterpreted by machines, so in a close contest these are all worth examining. In every contest, these accounted for less than 8% of the margin of victory of that contest in that county.

- About 75% or more of the disagreements were correctly evaluated by AuditEngine while these were initially incorrectly evaluated by the official election machines. However, in Bartow and Fulton Counties, these were largely adjudicated correctly by the election staff.

- When the contests were individually reviewed, the maximum disagreements amount to typically less than 1% of the margin of victory, while all variants, including all write-ins, overvotes, and gray-flags (ambiguous marks), account for less than 8% of the margin of victory.

The Presidential Contest was scrutinized with additional care and compared with the narrow statewide margin in both WI and GA:

County statewide margin variants disagreements
--------------------| -------------------| ----------- | --------------
Dane County WI 20,682 (0.63%) 1,394 30
Fulton County GA 11,779 (0.23%) 927 82
Bartow County GA 11,779 (0.23%) 160 10

It is important to note that the variants are all agreed between the voting system and AuditEngine except for the disagreements. The disagreements, when resolved, could benefit the reported winner or loser. In Fulton and Bartow County, the disagreements were all resolved through adjudication in this contest.

If all 159 counties in GA had 74 uncorrected errors by the official election machines in this contest, and if they all benefited the reported loser when resolved, then the outcome could be cast into doubt. In our review the disagreements usually were beneficial to the reported winner, or would not change the margin (disagreements about write-ins, for example).

Both Bartow and Fulton County adjudicated most or all of the ballots in this category. If other counties did so too, there are too few disagreements left to affect the outcome. The missing 72% of ballots in Fulton County are unknown. To be fair, however, all ballots were hand counted, and that count should have detected errors if present.

This audit shows that the outcome is consistent with the ballot image data.

Quirks: There were also a few quirks specific to each county

- Fulton County had 5 ballots from the adjacent DeKalb county and 5 ballots from the primary election earlier in the year. The primary ballots were imaged even though those ballots were a different length physically.

- Bartow County GA was the cleanest of the three, with all ballot images available and only very few issues of note.

- Dane County had a number of ballots images withheld or repeated and CVR records withheld or repeated, making the set of records a challenge to understand. We hope that in the future these differences can be avoided or minimized.

Lutz said, "Our goal is to audit all elections, all districts, all contests, and all ballots with 0% sampling risk. AuditEngine reviews every contest on every ballot, 100% of ballots, rather than a tiny fraction of ballots reviewed in statistical audits. Thus the risk due to sampling, which is commonly set to 5% or 10% in Risk-limiting audits, is 0% in these audits, if we are able to include all the ballot images in our review."

QR/barcode Ballots were Checked with Zero Discrepancies

AuditEngine also processed the barcode ballots created on Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) by reading the voter-verifiable text rather than the barcodes, and confirmed that there were zero discrepancies between the data produced by the text (among the ballot images available) and the official result, with almost all ballots processed automatically. In these contests, AuditEngine provides assurance that the official result is the same as the voter’s intent.

Recently, J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan produced a "secret report" where he identified issues with Dominion equipment including a long-recognized vulnerability where the QR code may have one vote while the verifiable text may say something else.
see --(https://georgiarecorder.com/.../elections-chief-calls.../

"Elections chief calls for release of report that claims Georgia voting system vulnerable" Georgia Recorder, Stanley Dunlap, Jan 27, 2022)
We agree that this is a real vulnerability, and are happy to report that AuditEngine is guaranteed to detect such a hack, as long as the voter-verifiable text reflects the vote cast by the voter.

Thus, districts using BMD machines should educate voters to check that the votes listed on the ballot summary sheet matches their intent before they cast the ballot.

AuditEngine can detect any variation or programming mistakes in the QR Codes even better than any sampling audit, such as a "risk limiting audit" (RLA) which may miss those altered ballots.
Recently, the May 24, 2022 election in DeKalb County GA had "computer programming error" which was caught only by a disgruntled candidate.
https://www.nytimes.com/.../michelle-long-spears-georgia...
"A candidate in Georgia who appeared to get few Election Day votes was actually in first place."

Case study This case study shows the performance of AuditEngine peforming ballot image audits when applied to three counties in Florida for the 2020 November Election, Collier County, Volusia County, and St. Lucie County. We show that the accuracy of AuditEngine is greater than 99.99% and when it di...