ELECTORALFRAUD: Causes, Types, and Consequences

Abstract

This article reviews research on electoral fraud-clandestine and illegal efforts to shape election results. Only a handful of works classify reports on electoral fraud to identify its nature, magnitude, and causes. This review therefore looks at the larger number of historical works (as well as some ethnographies and surveys) that discuss ballot rigging. Its conclusions are threefold. First, fraud takes on a panoply of forms; it ranges from procedural violations of electoral law (that may or may not intend to distort results) to the outright use of violence against voters. Second, even when ballot rigging is an integral part of electoral competition, it is infrequently decisive. Fraud, nevertheless, undermines political stability because, in close races, it can be crucial. Third, political competition shapes the rhythm and nature of electoral fraud. Efforts to steal elections increase with inequality, but competitiveness-which institutions help to shape-determines the ballot-rigging strategies parties adopt.

Measuring Polyarchy Across the Globe, 1900–2017

“…We therefore construct a BFA index for each of these components in turn, accompanied by measures of uncertainty. 12 The first, which Dahl (1998, p. 85) calls Bfree, fair, and frequent^elections, but which we designate BClean Elections Index^(v2xel_frefair), is designed to capture the level of integrity of elections (e.g., Schedler 2002;Lehoucq 2003;Birch 2011;Kelley 2013;van Ham and Lindberg 2016). Eight indicators constitute this index, measuring the (a) autonomy and (b) capacity of the election administration body (EMB) to conduct well-run elections; and for each election, the extent of (c) 10 The index does not take into account the extent to which non-elected Baccountability groups^(such as the military) may affect dismissal or can veto decisions.…”

Deterring or Displacing Electoral Irregularities? Spillover Effects of Observers in a Randomized Field Experiment in Ghana

“…For both historical and contemporary cases, the question of how informal practices of ballot stuffing, registration fraud, and other electoral malpractices are eliminated is now central to the study of democratization (Ziblatt 2006), which had earlier focused on changes to formal rules like the extension of the suffrage or the development of responsible and limited government. An emerging body of scholarship on democratization and new democracies argues that the extent of electoral fraud is affected by political competition (Lehoucq 2003;Simpser 2010), electoral rules (Birch 2007;Lehoucq and Molina 2002), socioeconomic inequality (Ziblatt 2009), the quality of the electoral management body that organizes and conducts the elections (Elklit 1999;Elklit and Reynolds 2002;Hartlyn, McCoy, and Mustillo 2008;Pastor 1999), and scrutiny by international election monitors (Hyde 2007;Kelley 2012).…”

“…Scholars generally rely upon assessments by election observers to measure electoral fraud for quantitative cross-national studies and use media reports and petitions filed by aggrieved parties for single-country studies (Lehoucq 2003). But these measures are generated by participants with different interests, expectations, and standards across elections (Kelley 2012), which raises concerns about consistency and bias.…”

Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities

“…Each unit represents a standardized experiment, where each citizen articulates his/her political preference through a ballot. Although elections are one of the central pillars of a fully functioning democratic process, relatively little is known about how election fraud impacts and corrupts the results of these standardized experiments (2,3).…”