Campaigners and Commentators and Computers Oh My

 This afternoon we have a widely reported government petition that has reached 3,250,000 (when I last looked) it's a petition that's probably clutching at straws when stacked against an official referendum, However it gives politicians an excuse if they want to take a different route and for that reason it's worth continuing with.

This petition was initially started by a member of the English Democrats at the point when the leave campaign appeared likely to lose to provide cover for a second referendum down the line. That it has come back to bite them in the arse must have gone down like a bucket of cold sick

However the "bright" lights of the leave campaign have all come out do denounce the poll with claims that it was Fraudulently created. The Sherlock Holmes  and Watson of this investigation appear to be  Louise Mensch and Andre Walker  Theres only one problem, neither of them appear to know what they are talking about

Firstly let me say there is some evidence of  some fraud in the non UK figures, the Vatican City total for one being many times the population of the city. Until the overall count hit 2 million there was very littls sign of bot activity, apart from the aforementioned Vatican City result. in fact the counts of the various nations seemed to closely mirror the numbers of the UK expat population in those countries, however since then there has been a rise in external votes to the UK and several small territories have drifted out of line, which is probably the result of 4chan script and bot attacks, but it's obvious and something the database people will sort out tomorrow morning when they get back from the weekend. Chopping fake results from a database is a relatively trivial exercise, but usually needs some hands on effort.

The UK Internal results however are a different matter entirely  from all signs visible from the publicly available data there is no evidence that there is fraud.  If we look at the figures on a constituency by constituency basis, the numbers of signatories in each constituency appears to be in proportion to the number of remain votes this makes a scripted attack very difficult.

If you're going to write an attack script and for it to work effectively you need to have it run invisibly, otherwise the database moderators will pick this up Firstly, those fakes you are making signing the petition need to blend in with the normal population. If you produce a purely random postcode, then you will end up with the Bot produced  signatures spread evenly across the constituencies, this will be instantly obvious, however this hasnt happened, the distribution appears the same as the referendum remain results

to get the data to appear as it has Those who signed up have to be from constituencies where people mostly voted against, now this is more difficult than it might first appear. The constituency record appears to be decided by the postcode that is entered on a UK entry, so a random bot would need to pick random UK postcodes distributed across constituencies in such a way that it produces an undetectable distribution the same as the remain vote discovered on Friday morning.

so this is quite a major piece of data analysis, then followed by some fairly complex coding fitting in with a bit of complex data translation between postcodes and constituencies. This isn't a small job to be done by a handful of bot writers in their bedrooms, and it's not just a case of plugging a minor detail into a per-prepared  hacking script

This is not the way that the 4Chan bots mentioned by Louise  and Andre work Their process is to produce an obviously flawed result so that it is instantly obvious that they have done it and so the Vatican City result might be the result of their fuckery, but the vast majority not. In fact if you look at the data, less than 4% of the signatures received are international so seem possible to be part of the Fraudulent group. Of those susceptible international locations, only about 12% of the 4% appear to possibly be fraudulent,and those seem so obvious as to be easily excluded on Monday morning when people get back into work after the weekend.

A second point that it is claimed led to fraud is that the internal counter for UK signatures appeared to freeze at a number just over 300,000 the only problem with this is that individual constituency counters then didn't stop. anyone with a shred of knowledge doesn't look at that and say Conspiracy!, they instead think broken code, or someone has forgotten to run the correct script to  update that counter. This fault has since been noticed and updated, but it doesn't stop this spurious figure being run about as "Evidence"

 Too many journalists and politicians seem to think their "I can write a webpage" translates into "I understand data handling, data security, database error checking and network security" when really they seem to lack basic understanding of the technicalities and are more Clouseau and Dreyfus rather than Holmes and Watson.

Update: the Faulty Vatican City data has been removed, the count for there is back down to 70. Well done parliaments data wranglers

Further on the Buses

Someone has pointed out to me that I managed to miss a receipt for a bus when looking through the electoral commissions site. Here it is

So we now have  a receipt for  the second midi coach featured in this photograph

However with the other receipts mentioned here we now have a grand total of nine coaches and two midi coaches,  so yet another that hasn't been painted

There have also been allegations that all the other parties were at it as well. It is something worth looking at.

Labour Party

Here are the leaders coach bills firstly this one  for  two buses

and here are the bills for the Buses incidentals, Inside here it details that the two Buses are the battle Bus and the Press bus in detailing the mileage, so both are properly part of the national campaign.

This appears to be  all of the Bus hire undertaken by the Labour party during the election, and both are properly part of national campaign spending 

Note that removing the coach wrapping is included in the incidental bill, but not the initial wrapping, it may well be reasonable that the cost of that is included in the near £40,000 amount for hiring each bus.  but it's a naggingly missing item.

Liberal Democrats

Here's the solitary  receipt for Bus hire from the Liberal Democrats once again a vehicle for the party leader, so rightly part of the national campaign.

here once again it's  £9'885 in total to Wrap the coach in LibDem decoration and colours

So  from looking at the expenses receipts Any claim that  all the other parties were at it too seem to be little more than dishonest deflection tactics from the Conservative party

Battlebus Constituencies part six

Previous parts one, Two, Three, Four and Five

Carrying on

Thornbury & Yate 

Here's the Lunch prepared for the Battlebus troops (photo taken by a Battlebus member)

Torbay 

Mentioned in the Mirrors investigation, Here's a tweet with a picture from there

Twickenham

Now this looks as if it could be a third small coach, judging from is shape compared to the two in the Northern photo of small coaches, I'm not certain, but it's a possibility.

Weaver Vale 

Mentioned in Mirror investigation here's a tweet with a picture

Wells

Here's a photo

Westmorland & Lonsdale

 A seat that they failed to take, reported Police Investigation. It is suggested that action is unlikely without a seat win, so this seems to be unlikely to cause problems.

Wolverhampton South West

Here's a tweet from the Campaign

And Finally

Yeovil

That's not to say there aren't more still to be found, Someone may come up with copes of the elusive Brecon & Radnor or Gower photographs with provable dates inside the short campaign period, They may not. There was a website, (Taken down since the election) that was asking for volunteers to go on these Battlebus trips. It had a map asking for volunteers for 117 constituencies on the final days GOTV effort. All of the constituencies mentioned above and earlier are on that map but over half show no signs of help by Bus. Looking at the list of Marginals preceding the election, there are a lot of close seats that you would think deserved help and yet there is no sign so far of a visit.

 So am I confident I have found every site visited? not even slightly. am I convinced I have found all the Buses? once again no If anyone has any suggestions or photos or remembers a bus full of activists arriving feel free to contact me so they can be checked and added.