In college (about 15 years ago) I worked for a professor who was compiling precint level results for old elections. My job was just to request the info and then do manual data entry. It was abysmally slow.
This application seems very good - but still a bit amazing that lawmakers haven't just required that all data be uploaded via csv! Even if every csv was slightly different format, it would be way easier for everyone (LLM or not).
simonw · 3h ago
This is such an excellent example of a responsible and thorough application of vision LLMs to a gnarly data entry problem.
polskibus · 2h ago
It’s also an excellent example on how lack of forced machine-readable format for gov publishing is a PITA.
Mtinie · 35m ago
If I was in power and wanted to continue said rule, I’d definitely discourage the adoption of any standardized formatting for election results.
Not, you know, for any nefarious purpose…but because what we’ve used forever was good enough for grandpappy, so it’s obviously good enough for us.
/cough
sitkack · 2h ago
json to qr code would be a good start. PRIOR ART inb4 a troll.
GardenLetter27 · 1h ago
Why is the original source data not available anywhere digitally?
Since it's printed it is clearly already in a database somewhere. Why can't that just be made public too.
Seems bizarre to OCR printed documents (although I am aware of many companies doing this to parse invoices, etc.)
simonw · 1h ago
Welcome to government data.
One key problem is that the US has tens of thousands of local governments, and each of them get to solve problems in their own way.
Digital literacy of the kind that understands why releasing a CSV file is more valuable than a PDF is rare enough that most of them won't have someone with that level of thinking in a decision making role.
nxrabl · 3h ago
Very interesting! Is this the state of the art for accurate OCR of tabular PDFs, or is there other work in the space to compare against?
SnooSux · 3h ago
There's lots of posts on HN for developments and companies doing OCR and Document Extraction. It's a classic CV problem but still has come a long way in the past couple years
dwillis · 1h ago
Yeah, this is a very well-traveled road, but LLMs have made some big improvements. If you asked me (the guy who wrote the original piece linked above) what I'd use if accuracy alone was the goal, probably would be AWS Textract. But accuracy and structure? Gemini.
benob · 2h ago
I wonder how difficult it would be to bias a model so that it subtly corrupts election results when performing OCR.
croemer · 1h ago
Surely not hard but why?
bilbo0s · 1h ago
Easier to steal elections?
Don't have to bother with gerrymandering, or slick legal ways to arrest people for voting with the wrong documents. Or just good old fashioned intimidation, like making the polling place the police station or the ICE detention facility.
It's just a lot smoother process when you can simply write some software to manipulate the count.
Who's gonna check?
(No, seriously, Who's gonna check? Because you also need to layoff everyone in that department once you're in power.)
simonw · 1h ago
Corrupted OCR won't help you steal elections. The result counting is a different process, with well designed checks and safeguards.
The problem is that once the counts are done and have been reported a lot of places then print those results out on paper and then scan those papers into a PDF for anyone who asks for a copy!
dwillis · 1h ago
Many jurisdictions do rate-limiting audits using the original ballots, so futzing with the results wouldn't necessarily make that easier. Also, cast vote records are public in many states - those are records of each ballot cast. So people can check.
This application seems very good - but still a bit amazing that lawmakers haven't just required that all data be uploaded via csv! Even if every csv was slightly different format, it would be way easier for everyone (LLM or not).
Not, you know, for any nefarious purpose…but because what we’ve used forever was good enough for grandpappy, so it’s obviously good enough for us.
/cough
Since it's printed it is clearly already in a database somewhere. Why can't that just be made public too.
Seems bizarre to OCR printed documents (although I am aware of many companies doing this to parse invoices, etc.)
One key problem is that the US has tens of thousands of local governments, and each of them get to solve problems in their own way.
Digital literacy of the kind that understands why releasing a CSV file is more valuable than a PDF is rare enough that most of them won't have someone with that level of thinking in a decision making role.
Don't have to bother with gerrymandering, or slick legal ways to arrest people for voting with the wrong documents. Or just good old fashioned intimidation, like making the polling place the police station or the ICE detention facility.
It's just a lot smoother process when you can simply write some software to manipulate the count.
Who's gonna check?
(No, seriously, Who's gonna check? Because you also need to layoff everyone in that department once you're in power.)
The problem is that once the counts are done and have been reported a lot of places then print those results out on paper and then scan those papers into a PDF for anyone who asks for a copy!