Leader election is a fundamental problem in distributed systems and has a variety of applications in wireless networks, such as key distribution, routing coordination, and general control. The main statement of the leader election problem is to eventually elect a unique leader from a fixed set of nodes. As the wireless network is becoming more and more important in daily life, leader election algorithm plays a vital important role in wireless network, which makes the correctness and robustness of such algorithms become evermore important and challenging to establish. In this paper, firstly, we study an election algorithm LE for MANETs (Mobile Ad Hoc Network) designed by Vasudevan et al. Then we present a formal model for LE based on process algebra CSP (Communicating Sequential Process). Modeling algorithm like LE sometimes pose non-trivial challenges, time, geometry, communication delays and failures, mobility and bi-directionality can interact in unforeseen ways that are hard to model and analyze by automatic formal methods, but we will take on these challenges. On that basis, we use the model checker FDR (Failures Divergence Refinement) to automatically simulate the developed model and verify whether the model is consistent with the specification and exhibits relevant secure properties. Our results show the correctness and safety of LE in this respect.