WSU statistician sues seeking Kansas voting machine paper tapes

Wow, that seems pretty absurd. 5 days and then sealed? Ridiculous.

What is the harm of releasing the paper records? Is there any reasonable argument for such strict measures?

"Clarkson said she filed a request for a recount after the 2014 election but was rebuffed by the Sedgwick County Election Office. Clarkson said she was told that only candidates could file for a recount of their own races."

It looks like she began trying to get the records during the time frame, but was shut out by local party officials. Big surprise. I'm from KC (Missouri, but we get local Kansas news as much as they get ours). This is pretty standard Kris Kobach shenanigans. On one hand he's removing tons of voters from the rolls to prevent "voter fraud" while simultaneously helping stonewall an audit of votes to detect election fraud.

What's interesting, is that Kobach seems to be trying to avoid having any possibility of fraud investigated on their end, but then they push through voter ID laws because of voter fraud.

Despite 2014 being very good for Republicans in general, the Kansas governor was unpopular. Approval ratings well below 50%. The Kansas Secretary of State reacted by making some very suspicious moves, including throwing a substantially larger-than-normal number of voters off the rolls. This is a situation where there was possible corruption and members of both parties should be concerned.

Any transparency and open records should be welcomed, no matter what the partisan leanings of the researcher requesting them.

I'm with you on the nationwide aspect- the apparent consistency of the pattern suggests something non-malicious to me. Coordinating a multi-state election fraud would be very hard and disastrous if found out. My SWAG at what might be happening- large precincts end up having long lines, dissuading marginal voters. As a result, dedicated voters, which according to my politics courses tend older and Republican, are disproportionately represented in the final tally.

From the article:

"The pattern could be voter fraud or a demographic trend that has not been picked up by extensive polling, she said."

So it seems like there are multiple possible explanations being investigated for the apparent discrepancy, and the data will be helpful in figuring out which explanation or mix of explanations is correct.

(though there is probably also some snark in that -- the current Kansas Secretary of State, a Republican, campaigned heavily on a platform of forcing voter ID and other requirements to combat alleged voter fraud, so painting him as being opposed to investigations when there's a discrepancy in favor of his party is a neat little jab)

I don't see anything that indicates she only thinks it's wrong when Republicans get the benefit. All I see is that it just so happens that the anomaly in question favors Republicans. Is there some similar effect that favors Democrats that's being ignored?