The Forensics of Election Fraud

This volume offers a number of forensic indicators of election fraud applied to official election returns, and tests and illustrates their application in Russia and Ukraine. Included are the methodology’s econometric details and theoretical assumptions. The applications to Russia include the analysis of all federal elections between 1996 and 2007 and, for Ukraine, between 2004 and 2007. Generally, we find that fraud has metastasized within the Russian polity during Putin’s administration with upwards of 10 million or more suspect votes in both the 2004 and 2007 balloting, whereas in Ukraine, fraud has diminished considerably since the second round of its 2004 presidential election where between 1.5 to 3 million votes were falsified. The volume concludes with a consideration of data from the United States to illustrate the dangers of the application of our methods without due consideration of an election’s substantive context and the characteristics of the data at hand.

Mikhail Myagkov is a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and holds a PhD from the California Institute of Technology. A specialist in Russian politics, political methodology and laboratory experiments in political economy; published extensively in Post Soviet Affairs.

Peter C. Ordeshook is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has published over 120 papers in professional journals, including the American Political Science Review, Post-Soviet Affairs, Constitutional Political Economy and Post-Soviet Geography and Economics. His authored and coauthored books include An Introduction to Positive Political Theory; Game Theory and Political Theory; The Balance of Power; Designing Federalism; A Political Theory Primer; Endogenous Time Preferences in Social Networks; and Lessons for Citizens of a New Democracy (in English, Italian and Ukrainian).

Dmitry Shakin holds a PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University. He is a specialist in commutative algebra, financial econometrics and Russian politics.