A popular claim comes from a consultant's report is that Antrim county, Michigan had a ballot "Error Rate" of 68.5%, but the FEC requirement is 0.0008% errors. The FEC number isn't actually from the FEC, but obviously 68.5% would be a ridiculous error rate, so what is going on?
In other words these are no ballot errors, they are just configuration errors.
The report comes from a dubious source:
The actual "forensics report" says:
[The eac link was broken, I fixed it, above.]
They don't list the actual errors or warnings, so one can only guess as to their actual severity.
Article: In his report, Ramsland claimed, “The allowable election error rate established by the Federal Election Commission guidelines is of 1 in 250,000 ballots (.0008%).” On the Antrim machines, he wrote, he “observed an error rate of 68.05%.”
The FEC regulates campaign finance, not voting equipment, and has no such guideline. The federal agency that does deal with voting equipment is the Election Assistance Commission. Antrim County’s Dominion tabulators are certified by the EAC. In Michigan, 65 out of the state’s 83 counties use voting systems manufactured by Dominion.
Moreover, the error rate identified by Ramsland is not a measure of ballot counting errors. Ramsland did not have access to the paper ballots as part of his investigation, according to Jake Rollow, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office. Ramsland acknowledged that he was not referring to ballot tabulation errors, even though the purported benchmark he compared it to is “1 in 250,000 ballots.”
Rather, Ramsland wrote, the error rate applies to the 15,676 “total lines or events” in Antrim’s tabulation logs. “Most of the errors were related to configuration errors that could result in overall tabulation error or adjudication,” he wrote, without giving more details or saying that they did result in such errors.
The EAC certification requirements that Antrim’s Dominion machines had to meet certain error thresholds for the computer code that runs the systems, but the tabulation logs track something else.
In other words these are no ballot errors, they are just configuration errors.
The report comes from a dubious source:
Article: The report is signed by cybersecurity analyst Russell James Ramsland Jr. of Allied Security Operations Group, a firm whose representatives have provided analyses and affidavits for lawsuits brought by Trump allies, falsely alleging voter fraud and election irregularities.
In one such analysis on voter turnout, Ramsland mistook voting jurisdictions in Minnesota for Michigan towns. In another, filed in support of a federal lawsuit in Michigan, he made inaccurate claims about voter turnout in various municipalities, misstating them as much as tenfold
The actual "forensics report" says:
Article: J. ERROR RATES
1. We reviewed the Tabulation logs in their entirety for 11/6/2020. The election logs for Antrim County consist of 15,676 total lines or events.
• Of the 15,676 there were a total of 10,667 critical errors/warnings or a 68.05% error rate.
• Most of the errors were related to configuration errors that could result in overall tabulation errors or adjudication. These 11/6/2020 tabulation totals were used as the official results.
...
According to the NCSL, Michigan requires testing by a federally accredited laboratory for voting systems. In section 4.1.1 of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) Accuracy Requirements a. All systems shall achieve a report total error rate of no more than one in 125,000. •
https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/eac_assets/1/28/VVSG.1.1.VOL.1.FINAL1.pdf
[The eac link was broken, I fixed it, above.]
They don't list the actual errors or warnings, so one can only guess as to their actual severity.