Kansas statistician runs exit poll at Wichita voting station

WICHITA – A mathematician whose legal effort to audit voting machine results was rebuffed has surveyed primary voters outside a Wichita polling station to see if the official count falls within her survey’s calculated margin of error.

The Wichita Eagle reports that Wichita State University statistician Beth Clarkson set up the anonymous Citizens Exit Poll to validate the accuracy of voting machines used at a polling station in Tuesday’s primary elections.

Clarkson went to court to get access to the paper audit trails from voting machines in 2014 after she found what she called inexplicable discrepancies between results of large and small voting stations.

A district court ruled Clarkson couldn’t have access to those paper trails.

Clarkson then decided to create her own paper trail with an exit poll.

“It’s not really going to tell us anything about the election,” Clarkson said of the exit poll. “It’s going to tell us about the voting machines.”

Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman says she welcomed the exit poll.

This story was originally published August 3, 2016 at 1:43 PM with the headline "Kansas statistician runs exit poll at Wichita voting station."