Measuring Electoral Integrity around the World: A New Dataset

Abstract

Many contentious elections end in disputes about alleged fraud, irregularities, and malpractices. How do we know when these claims are valid and when they are false complaints from sore losers? This article describes a new dataset developed by the Electoral Integrity Project. Based on a survey of election experts, the research provides new evidence to compare how national contests around the world are meeting international standards of electoral integrity. The questionnaire includes 49 key indicators clustered into 11 stages of the electoral cycle, as well as generating an overall summary Perception of Electoral Integrity (PEI) 100-point index. The evidence displays high levels of external validity, internal validity, and legitimacy. The PEI datasets allow researchers to gauge the perceived quality of elections worldwide. This study summarizes the PEI’s research design, compares the quality of elections around the globe, and illustrates how electoral integrity is linked with both democracy and development

Governance and Electoral Integrity: Evidence from Subnational India

“…Incorporating the conceptual and methodological distinctions, a consensus has emerged over the international conventions and global norms that constitute the foundations of electoral integrity. Electoral integrity has been identified with ‘international conventions and global norms, applying universally to all countries worldwide throughout the electoral cycle, including during the pre-electoral period, the campaign, the polling period and in the aftermath of polling’ (Norris et al, 2014).…”

“…The PEI index developed by Norris et al (2014) builds on such an understanding of electoral integrity and provides a standard and uniform framework of evaluating the electoral process across the world. PEI is an expert survey on a range of issues across the spectrum of the electoral cycle to arrive at an evaluation about the quality of an election.…”

Resisting democracy assistance: Who seeks and receives technical election assistance?

“…These early decisions can restrict the playing field immensely and thus influence the outcome of the election long before the day of polling. Interview 10; Bhasin and Gandhi 2013;Norris 2014, 796. 59 Hyde 2011a radar.…”

Electoral integrity matters: how electoral process conditions the relationship between political losing and political trust

“…For example, authorities in the US are repeatedly confronted with complaints about voter suppression laws targeting minority voters (Hajnal et al 2017;Wang 2012), and German Bundestag elections display signs of irregularities in vote counting (Breunig and Goerres 2011). A recent series of books and other contributions has extensively discussed what causes such deficits (Birch 2007;Lehoucq 2003;Norris 2015), how to detect and measure them (Birch 2011;Bishop and Hoeffler 2016;Hyde and Marinov 2012;Kelley and Kolev 2010;Norris et al 2013Norris et al , 2014bvan Ham 2014), how to promote electoral integrity (Birch 2011;Kelley 2012;Norris 2017;Norris et al 2014a), and why electoral integrity matters (Norris 2014). With respect to the latter question, prior research has studied how violations of electoral integrity can deter voter turnout (Bratton 2008; Martínez i Coma and Trinh 2017; Simpser 2012), lead to post-election violence and even civil war (Norris 2014), and damage the legitimacy of political regimes (Fortin-Rittberger et al 2017;McAllister and White 2014;Norris 2014).…”