Participation in Fraudulent Elections

I analyze a costly voting model of elections in which the incumbent can stuff the ballot box to investigate how electoral fraud affects the decisions of voters to participate. I find that two stable equilibria may exist: an abstention equilibrium, where none of the voters vote and the incumbent always wins, and a more efficient coordination equilibrium, where a substantial share of a challenger’s supporters vote and the candidate preferred by the majority is likely to win. I further show that because the higher capability of the incumbent to stuff a ballot box discourages the participation of his own supporters and creates participation incentives for the challenger’s supporters, higher fraud does not always benefit the incumbent, even when costless. The model may help to explain two empirical observations related to fraudulent elections: a positive relationship between fraud and the margin of victory and a negative relationship between fraud and voter turnout. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015.I would like to thank Michael Alvarez, Levent Celik, Libor Dusek, Peter Katuscak, John Ledyard, Jan Zapal and two anonymous referees for valuable comments. This paper was developed with institutional support RVO 67985998 from the Czech Academy of Sciences. The author declares that he has no conflict of interest other than double affiliation with Ural Federal University (Yekaterinburg, Russia) and CERGE-EI (Prague, Czech Republic)

HandiVote: simple, anonymous, and auditable electronic voting

We suggest a set of procedures utilising a range of technologies by which a major democratic deficit of modern society can be addressed. The mechanism, whilst it makes limited use of cryptographic techniques in the background, is based around objects and procedures with which voters are currently familiar. We believe that this holds considerable potential for the extension of democratic participation and control

An analysis of Voter Fraud in The United States

As federal and state officials consider future reform efforts, as well as the merits of existing reforms, there is an acute need for better information and analysis about election and voter fraud issues. While the issue of fraud is raised continually in discussions of election reform, to date there have been few major studies of voter fraud in the United States. Too often in this area, hearsay and anecdotal information are put forth as fact in important public policy debates. Many key questions about fraud remain unanswered, including: How often does voter fraud occur? How serious a problem is fraud compared to other problems with the election process, such as those that occurred in Florida in the 2000 election or in Ohio in 2004? What kinds of voting methods are most vulnerable to corruption? What administrative, technological and legal steps can be taken to reduce the chances of voter fraud while also expanding opportunities to register and vote

The Politics of Voter Fraud

The purpose of this report is to disentangle the myth from the reality and to separate the politics of voter fraud from legitimate administrative concerns about the integrity of the electoral process. To make the argument, we present a usable definition of voter fraud, discuss the problem of evidence, and explain how and why the dynamics of electoral competition drive the use of baseless fraud claims in American politics. We present several contemporary examples to illustrate how poor election administration and voter mistakes are misleadingly labeled "fraud." Recent allegations against voter registration campaigns highlight the need for an analysis sensitive to the partisanship and race and class issues just beneath the surface of most voter fraud claims. The last section of the report makes policy recommendations for improving public understanding and removing the canard of voter fraud from the election reform debate. The appendix discusses what to look for in evaluating voter fraud allegations

Your Ballot's In the Mail: Vote By Mail and Absentee Voting

Convenience voting, defined as access to voting at a time and place of the voter's choosing, has grown exponentially in the United States within the last two decades. A majority of states now permit "no-fault" or "no excuse" absentee voting, early in person voting, and vote-by-mail (VBM). This report will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of convenience voting in the form of no excuse absentee voting, permanent no excuse absentee voting, and VBM, all of which use the United States Postal Service as a central component. It will also discuss the concerns of proponents and opponents of mail balloting. Finally, it will suggest methods intended to address concerns about mail-in balloting expressed by legislators, administrators, election advocates, and scholars. Early in person voting, which may or may not include use of the mails as a component, is beyond the scope of this report

Detecting and Correcting Election Fraud

I examine the provision of free and fair elections using a decision-theoretic model in which election observers provide a noisy information signal concerning fraud. Monitoring an election is not always worth the cost and so democracy is not always sustainable. A strong preference for fair elections can paradoxically make elections more difficult to monitor. Since fair elections are a public good, municipal election fraud result from Tiebout provision of this local public good. I offer several suggestions for organizations interested in facilitating the diffusion of democracy.Democracy; Election

Ensuring Integrity in Voter Registration Drives

In recent years, voter registration drives by third party organizations have been very successful at registering millions of new voters and broadening the electorate, especially among low income and minority people. Project Vote and its local partners alone registered 1.14 million voters in 2003-2004.While a democracy's health is dependent on participation by all its citizens, these successful voter registration efforts have prompted a backlash among those who are not interested in bringing more voters into the political process. This backlash has exploited a very small number of instances in which individuals filled out false applications to accuse voter registration organizations of perpetuating widespread "voter fraud" and to drive the enactment of new and unnecessarily strict laws regulating voter registration and voting itself. It is essential in this climate for community organizations and other "third party" voter registration and voter engagement organizations to run tightly managed voter registration drives. In order to keep the focus on bringing new voters into the political process, drives must emphasize quality control and maintain the integrity of the voter registration system. This policy brief lays out the key elements of achieving this goal

Electronic plebiscites

We suggest a technology and set of procedures by which a major democratic de?cit of modern society can be addressed. The mechanism, whilst it makes limited use of cryptographic techniques in the background, is based around objects and procedures with which voters are currently familiar. We believe that systems like this hold considerable potential for the extension of democratic participation and control

Restricting Voter Registration Drives

Community-based voter registration organizations -- whether they are partisan or non-partisan, secular or religious, paid or volunteer -- serve as critical intermediaries between states and citizens who are currently alienated from the political process. While there are other mechanisms for reaching the tens of millions of eligible Americans who are still not registered to vote -- including the National Voter Registration Act's "motor voter" and public assistance agency programs -- there is still no substitute for the simple, affirmative act of sending voter registration canvassers into America's neighborhoods to help community members complete voter regsitration applications.Such voter registration drives, of course, have long been a feature of American politics, and have helped countless Americans become registered voters. But the 2008 election cycle marked a recent high water mark, as a surge of interest in voting and an historically unprecedented presidential race saw many community-based drives achieving record numbers of applications. This tremendous success, however, elicited an organized backlash that came in two parts. The first part consisted of exaggerated or inaccurate allegations of voter registration fraud, many of which were uncritically reported by the media despite an astonishing absence of factual basis. The second, perhaps more damaging form of backlash came in the introduction of a series of state bills, many of which have passed into law, that were designed to significantly restrict voter registration drives in a number of states. These new laws are the focus of this report , which examines restrictions on voter registration drives, gives examples from several states, and concludes with some reasonable policy recommendations

Benford's Law and the Detection of Election Fraud

The proliferation of elections in even those states that are arguably anything but democratic has given rise to a focused interest on developing methods for detecting fraud in the official statistics of a state's election returns. Among these efforts are those that employ Benford's Law, with the most common application being an attempt to proclaim some election or another fraud free or replete with fraud. This essay, however, argues that, despite its apparent utility in looking at other phenomena, Benford's Law is problematical at best as a forensic tool when applied to elections. Looking at simulations designed to model both fair and fraudulent contests as well as data drawn from elections we know, on the basis of other investigations, were either permeated by fraud or unlikely to have experienced any measurable malfeasance, we find that conformity with and deviations from Benford's Law follow no pattern. It is not simply that the Law occasionally judges a fraudulent election fair or a fair election fraudulent. Its "success rate" either way is essentially equivalent to a toss of a coin, thereby rendering it problematical at best as a forensic tool and wholly misleading at worst