Vote buying allegations in Argentina

There was an article in this morning’s New York Times on allegations of vote buying in Argentina. The story recounted a number of stories of possible vote buying schemes, in particular in Tucuman.

This brought to mind the fact that social scientists (including my colleague Julia Pomares who is quoted in the NY Times story, who I have written a number of papers with regarding election integrity and the use of voting technologies to increase voter confidence) have written extensively in recent years on the topic of election fraud, in particular focusing on the development of tool that can be used to detect potential fraud in elections data.

Much of the earlier work on election forensics is presented in the book that I edited with Thad Hall and Susan Hyde, “Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation.” More recently, Ines Levin and I co-edited a Political Analysis virtual issue that summarized a number of papers that have been published in that journal about this topic, “Election Fraud and Electoral Integrity.” The current issue of Political Analysis has two new papers in it on election forensics, by Montgomery, Olivella, Potter and Crisp, and another by Medzihorsky.

A number of colleagues who follow Argentine elections, and those who study election fraud and integrity, will be following the current elections closely. There’s no doubt that the tools and techniques that social scientists have developed in recent years will be applied to the current elections in Argentina, and elections throughout the world in coming years, to help improve our understanding of elections and their integrity.