Election Fraud Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation

by Alvarez, R. Michael; Hall, Thad E.; Hyde, Susan D.

• ISBN13: 9780815701385
• ISBN10: 0815701381
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-05-15
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Studying Election Fraud	p. 1
Defining Election Fraud: The United States in Comparative Perspective
Corruption of the Election Process under U.S. Federal Law	p. 21
International Principles for Election Integrity	p. 37
Beyond Election Fraud: Manipulation, Violence, and Foreign Power Intervention	p. 50
Measuring Election Fraud: Learning from Observational Data
Measuring Perceptions of Election Threats: Survey Data from Voters and Elites	p. 71
Caught in the Act: Recent Federal Election Fraud Cases	p. 89
Correlates of Fraud: Studying State Election Fraud Allegations	p. 99
Fraud or Failure? What Incident Reports Reveal about Election Anomalies and Irregularities	p. 112
Identifying and Preventing Signature Fraud on Ballot Measure Petitions	p. 130
Detecting Election Fraud: Techniques and Consequences
The Case of the 2002 General Election	p. 149
Election Forensics: The Second-Digit Benford's Law Test and Recent American Presidential Elections	p. 162
On the Trail of Fraud: Estimating the Flow of Votes between Russia's Elections	p. 182
How International Election Observers Detect and Deter Fraud	p. 201
Unintended Consequences of Election Monitoring	p. 216
Conclusion: Understanding Election Fraud	p. 235
Contributors	p. 243
Index	p. 24
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