Stuffing the Ballot Box: Heterogeneous Effects of Election Monitoring

Abstract

Do incumbents in non-democratic countries commit electoral fraud strategically or do they stuff the box whenever they see a chance? In this paper, I study the heterogeneous effects of election monitoring in order to examine whether certain characteristics of polling stations make them more susceptible to be used for fraud. In particular, I examine the effects of average income and distance on electoral fraud. To measure the amount of fraud that benefited the pro-Putin party, United Russia, I use the experimental data of random observer assignment during the Russian parliamentary elections in 2011 collected by Enikolopov et al. (2013). I supplement their data with a unique dataset of Moscow residents’ personal information to estimate the effect of average income and distance to center on electoral fraud. I find no difference between poorer and more affluent precincts, or between precincts that are closer and farther from the city center, with respect to the incumbent party vote share and turnout. However, I find that one of the opposition parties, Apple, lost as many as 30% of all votes cast for it, and that the amount of fraud was more significant in the center than in the outskirts.

Keywords: electoral fraud