Capitol News

Dr. Michael Burry recently noted a data analyst’s allegations involving votes that may have been altered in Michigan via algorithm. 

Burry’s life as an investor during the 2008 housing crisis was recounted in the film and book "The Big Short." 

“What if #votingsoftware #algorithms used a #weightedrace feature to transfer votes from Trump to Biden as a linear function of % Republicans in a precinct? This is the allegation of Dr. Shiva Ayyadural,” Burry said on Twitter.   

A voting expert and software engineers have come up with an analysis suggesting anomalies in the Michigan elections, citing malfunctioning of computer algorithms in voting machines. 

Shiva Ayyadural, an inventor and software engineer, who lost his bid to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate, was one of the leaders of the group together with Bennie Smith, a Democratic Party elections official in Tennessee, and Phil Evans, a software engineer and entrepreneur.

The  bipartisan group analyzed poll tallies from Oakland, Macomb, Wayne and Kent counties in Michigan and their findings suggest vote weighting.

In Oakland, the group suggested, Trump lost around 20,000 votes to Biden. In Wayne and Kent 14,000 and 22,500 respectively, all taken through weighting. 

IIn particular, the group pointed to a feature on voting machines that allows for votes to be weighted. In other words, the vote loses its value as a single vote once entered into a voting machine. Weighted voting takes a person’s vote and allows it to have varying degrees of influence, such as allowing the voter to rank candidates. 

Smith said that although their research brought out some irregularities, it was difficult to establish whether there were ill intentions by those with access to the voting machines or not and there is no proper way to verify their analysis.

“The documented feature of a weighted election is such, such a bad idea,” Smith said. “The only thing that can verify to us in a black box is the input and if we don't know, we don't know. We can't know if a weighted election was conducted. It's a feature, it's not a bug. So the only way we could get back to that is for the citizens to be able to remove the computers from the situation.”  

Ayyadural also highlighted the complexity of determining the findings’ credibility.

“The reality is the United States voting systems, the inputs and outputs to our voting systems are unverifiable. That means the evidence is ambiguous,” Ayyadural said. 

The group suggested hand-marked paper ballots as a solution going forward. 

Currently, there are investigations in Wayne County following an allegation by Jessy Jacob, a Detroit employee who claims she saw other election employees influencing people to vote for Biden, furthermore, she alleged, she was instructed to pre-date absentee ballots.