Election forensics
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Election forensics are methods used to determine if election results are statistically normal or statistically abnormal, which can indicate electoral fraud. It uses statistical tools to determine if observed election results differ from normally occurring patterns. These tools can be relatively simple, such as looking at the frequency of integers and using 2nd Digit
Benford's law Benford's law, also known as the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation that in many real-life sets of numerical data, the leading digit is likely to be small.Arno Berger and Theodore ...
, or can be more complex and involve
machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...
techniques.


Method

Election forensics can use various approaches. Methods include : (i) Testing for correlation between vote share of a party and turnout (to detect ballot stuffing). (ii) Checking whether votes received for candidates, obey
Benford's law Benford's law, also known as the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation that in many real-life sets of numerical data, the leading digit is likely to be small.Arno Berger and Theodore ...
. (iii) Checking for disproportionate presence of 0s in precinct vote totals, or of rounded numbers in vote shares. (iv) Deviation from statistical laws observed in election data. (v) Using machine learning algorithms to detect anomalies.


Application

Between 1978 and 2004, a 2010 review concluded that 61% of elections examined from more than 170 countries showed some signs of election fraud, with major fraud in 27% of all examined elections. Since the early 2000s, election forensics has been used to examine the integrity of elections in various countries, including Afghanistan, Albania, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya, Libya, South Africa, Uganda, Venezuela and USA. Election forensics tools have been used to conclude, with high probability, that vote counts have been manipulated in official elections in Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, and USA.


Compared to other methods

Relative to other methods of monitoring election security, such as in-person monitoring of polling places and
parallel vote tabulation Quick count is a method for verification of election results by projecting them from a sample of the polling stations. The similar Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) is an election observation methodology that is typically based on a representative ra ...
, election forensics has advantages and disadvantages. Election forensics is considered advantageous in that data is objective, rather than subject to interpretation. It also allows votes from all contests and localities to be systematically analyzed, with statistical conclusions about the likelihood of fraud. Disadvantages of election forensics include its inability to actually detect fraud, just data anomalies that may or may not be indicative of such. Election forensics expert Walter Mebane has noted that various election forensics methods might actually flag non-fraudulent behaviour like
tactical voting Strategic voting, also called tactical voting, sophisticated voting or insincere voting, occurs in voting systems when a voter votes for another candidate or party than their ''sincere preference'' to prevent an undesirable outcome. For example, ...
as fraud. Further some experts believe that 2BL and other methods are useless for analyzing elections. This can be addressed by combining election forensics with in-person monitoring. Another disadvantage is its complexity, requiring advanced knowledge of statistics and significant computing power. Additionally, the best results require a high level of detail, ideally comprehensive data from the polling place regarding
voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This can be the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford Univ ...
, vote counts for all issues and candidates, and valid ballots. Broad, national-level summaries have limited utility.


References

{{Authority control Voting Elections Statistical analysis