Detecting Voter Fraud in an Electronic Voting Context: An Analysis of the Unlimited Reelection Vote in Venezuela
Working Paper No.: 83Date Published: 2009-08-10
Author(s):
Ines Levin, California Institute of Technology
Gabe Cohen, California Institute of Technology
Peter Ordeshook, California Institute of Technology
R. Michael Alvarez, California Institute of Technology
Abstract:
Between December 2007 and February 2009, Venezuelans
participated twice in constitutional referenda where
the elimination of presidential term limits was one of
the most salient proposals. Assuming voter preferences
did not change significantly during that period, the ‘repeated’
character of these elections provide us with an excellent
opportunity to apply forensic tools designed to detect
anomalies and outliers in election returns in elections
where electronic voting technologies were used. Similar
tools were first applied by Myagkov et al. ([20], [21],
[22], [23]) to the study of electoral fraud in Russia and
Ukraine, and were effective in the isolation of potential
cases of manipulation of electoral returns. The case of
Venezuela is different because there exists no widespread
agreement about the integrity or otherwise fraudulent nature
of national elections, and because it is a nation where
electronic voting technologies are used. Unless electoral
fraud takes place in exactly the same manner in each election,
an analysis of the ‘flow of votes’ between elections
can be used to detect suspicious patterns in electoral returns.
Although we do not find evidence of pervasive electoral
fraud compared, for instance, to the Russian case,
our analysis is useful to detect polling places or regions
deviating considerably from the more general pattern.