Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation

by R. Michael Alvarez California Institute of Technology, Thad E. Hall, Susan D. Hyde

Overview

"Allegations of fraud have marred recent elections around the world, from Russia and Italy to Mexico and the United States. Such charges raise fundamental questions about the quality of democracy in each country. Yet election fraud and, more broadly, electoral manipulation remain remarkably understudied concepts. There is no consensus on what constitutes election fraud, let alone how to detect and deter it. E lection Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation brings together experts on election law, election administration, and U.S. and comparative politics to address these critical issues. The first part of the book, which opens with an essay by Craig Donsanto of the U.S. Department of Justice, examines the U.S. understanding of election fraud in comparative perspective. In the second part of the book, D. Roderick Kiewiet, Jonathan N. Katz, and other scholars of U.S. elections draw on a wide variety of sources, including survey data, incident reports, and state-collected fraud allegations, to measure the extent and nature of election fraud in the United States. Finally, the third part of the book analyzes techniques for detecting and potentially deterring fraud. These strategies include both statistical analysis, as Walter R. Mebane, Jr. and Peter Ordeshook explain, and the now widespread practice of election monitoring, which Alberto Simpser examines in an intriguing essay.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815701392
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	05/15/2008
Series:	Brookings Series on Election Administration and Reform
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	255
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

"R. Michael Alvarez is professor of political science at the California Institute of Technology and codirector of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project. His books include Hard Choices, Easy Answers: Values, Information, and American Public Opinion, written with John Brehm (Princeton, 2002). Thad E. Hall is assistant professor of political science and a research fellow in the Institute of Public and International Affairs at the University of Utah.Together with Alvarez, he wrote Poiint, Click, and Vote: The Future of Internet Voting (Brookings, 2004). Susan D. Hyde is assistant professor of political science at Yale University. She has served as an election observer with the Carter Center and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe."

Table of Contents

Foreword   Paul DeGregorio   Ray Martinez     ix
Acknowledgments     xiii
Introduction: Studying Election Fraud   R. Michael Alvarez   Thad E. Hall   Susan D. Hyde     1
Defining Election Fraud: The United States in Comparative Perspective
Corruption of the Election Process under U.S. Federal Law   Craig C. Donsanto     21
International Principles for Election Integrity   Thad E. Hall   Tova Andrea Wang     37
Beyond Election Fraud: Manipulation, Violence, and Foreign Power Intervention   Gamze Cavdar     50
Measuring Election Fraud: Learning from Observational Data
Measuring Perceptions of Election Threats: Survey Data from Voters and Elites   R. Michael Alvarez   Thad E. Hall     71
Caught in the Act: Recent Federal Election Fraud Cases   Delia Bailey     89
Correlates of Fraud: Studying State Election Fraud Allegations   R. Michael Alvarez   Frederick J. Boehmke     99
Fraud or Failure? What Incident Reports Reveal about Election Anomalies and Irregularities   D. Roderick Kiewiet   Thad E. Hall   R. Michael Alvarez   Jonathan N. Katz     112
Identifying and Preventing Signature Fraud on Ballot Measure Petitions   ToddDonovan   Daniel A. Smith     130
Detecting Election Fraud: Techniques and Consequences
The Case of the 2002 General Election   R. Michael Alvarez   Jonathan N. Katz     149
Election Forensics: The Second-Digit Benford's Law Test and Recent American Presidential Elections   Walter R. Mebane Jr.     162
On the Trail of Fraud: Estimating the Flow of Votes between Russia's Elections   Mikhail Myagkov   Peter C. Ordeshook   Dimitry Shaikin     182
How International Election Observers Detect and Deter Fraud   Susan D. Hyde     201
Unintended Consequences of Election Monitoring   Alberto Simpser     216
Conclusion: Understanding Election Fraud   R. Michael Alvarez   Thad E. Hall   Susan D. Hyde     235
Contributors     243
Index     245