Hidden in plain sight? Irregularities on statutory forms and electoral fraud

Warner, Zach; Harris, J. Andrew; Brown, Michelle; Arnold, Christian

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102411

“…Challú, Seira and Simpser (2020) show how nonpartisan errors are made by poll workers with lower education and higher workload. The latter finding aligns with Warner et al (2021) who study irregularities on statutory forms from Kenya's 2013 presidential elections and conclude that they are generally benign errors. Finally, Hidalgo and Rizzo ( 2022) is another contemporaneous paper that studies poll workers in the Mexican context, where citizens are invited to participate as poll workers if their month of birth and the first letter of their surname is randomly selected.…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworksupporting

confidence: 79%

Getting a seat at the (electoral) table: Partisan poll workers and electoral bias

Carrizosa

¹

,

Duarte

²

2022

Preprint

0

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How do party representatives as poll workers at electoral tables (voting booths) affect elections? Paraguay’s system of counting votes is partisan and adversarial. Every booth has three poll workers which are, by law, party representatives. In theory, multiple parties count votes at each booth, ensuring the integrity of elections. In practice, there are stark inequalities in partisan poll worker representation during the 2018 Paraguayan elections we study. We exploit a natural experiment to show that partisan poll workers decrease an opposing party's vote share by up to 2 percentage points (pp) and increase theirs by up to 0.7 pp. We also demonstrate how incentives for electoral manipulation vary by electoral system. Partisan poll workers collude more often with rival party poll workers within proportional representation races, as distributing votes among themselves can help their parties earn more seats for their legislative candidates. Instead, single-winner plurality voting yields less collusion.

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“…Challú, Seira and Simpser (2020) show how nonpartisan errors are made by poll workers with lower education and higher workload. The latter finding aligns with Warner et al (2021) who study irregularities on statutory forms from Kenya's 2013 presidential elections and conclude that they are generally benign errors. Finally, Hidalgo and Rizzo ( 2022) is another contemporaneous paper that studies poll workers in the Mexican context, where citizens are invited to participate as poll workers if the first letter of their surname and their month of birth is randomly selected.…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworksupporting

confidence: 79%

Getting a seat at the (electoral) table: Partisan poll workers and electoral bias

Carrizosa

¹

,

Duarte

²

2022

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do party representatives as poll workers at electoral tables (voting booths) affect elections? Paraguay’s system of counting votes is partisan and adversarial. Every booth has three poll workers which are, by law, party representatives. In theory, multiple parties count votes at each booth, ensuring the integrity of elections. In practice, there are stark inequalities in partisan poll worker representation during the 2018 Paraguayan elections we study. We exploit a natural experiment to show that partisan poll workers decrease an opposing party's vote share by up to 2 percentage points (pp) and increase theirs by up to 0.7 pp. We also demonstrate how incentives for electoral manipulation vary by electoral system. Partisan poll workers collude more often with rival party poll workers within proportional representation races, as distributing votes among themselves can help their parties earn more seats for their legislative candidates. Instead, single-winner plurality voting yields less collusion.

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“…Bakri et al (2015) commented that even though police officers disapproved of abnormal behavior, studies have revealed the wrongdoing of government officials and the low opinion of the public regarding their integrity. Numerous studies of fraud in government agencies have been conducted; for example, in subsidy distribution (Wang et al, 2022), public elections (Warner et al, 2021), healthcare services (Koreff et al, 2021), and welfare program benefit distribution (Azevedo et al, 2021).…”

Section: Fraud In Public Sector Employeementioning

confidence: 99%

Profiling Fraudsters: Empirical Evidence from The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Website

Ali¹,

Majid²,

Basri³

et al. 2022

IJARBSS

0

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Cases of fraud involving public servants have become public attention since they are entrusted to serve the public and manage the public fund. Corruption incidence among public servants led to a trust deficit and tarnished the image of public sector agencies. Even though public sector agencies in Malaysia including the Malaysian Anti-corruption Commission (MACC) are transparent in disclosing details of offenders via their website to raise public awareness, cases involving fraud among public servants remained entrenched. At the national level, the National Anti-corruption Plan (NACP) 2019-2023 has been introduced in 2019 as part of the Malaysian government's effort to counter corruption since 63.3% of corruption complaints came from the public sector. In addition, Transparency International reported a Corruption Perception Index of 48 for Malaysia in 2021 and ranked 62 out of 180 countries. This indicates that the perceived level of corruption in Malaysia is still high with the government struggling to combat corruption within the public sector. In light of this predicament, this study compiles a profile of fraudsters among the public servants convicted under Malaysian law. This study adopted a qualitative stance using secondary data with a content analysis on real cases disclosed on the MACC website from the year 2019 to 2021. Findings revealed that most of the public servants' offenders are the enforcement officers with bribery cases involving as low as RM20. This study may act as an eye opener to the public on the amount and extend to the fraud committed by public sector employees. Apart from that, it may also assist authorities to plan strategies for mitigating the incidence of fraud among public servants.

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Hidden in plain sight? Irregularities on statutory forms and electoral fraud

Cited by 5 publications

References 56 publications

Getting a seat at the (electoral) table: Partisan poll workers and electoral bias

Getting a seat at the (electoral) table: Partisan poll workers and electoral bias

Getting a seat at the (electoral) table: Partisan poll workers and electoral bias

Profiling Fraudsters: Empirical Evidence from The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Website

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