Detecting Election Fraud
Thanks to my lovely spouse, I came across a series [http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/fraud06.pdf] of fascinating [http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/pm06.pdf] papers [http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/mw06.pdf] by Walter R. Mebane, Jr. [link to http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/ no longer works] a professor of Government at Cornell. These papers use statistics, specifically Benford’s Law, to detect election fraud. Now I know statisticians, and I am no statistician (and boy howdy is my higher level math rusty), but the papers were still relatively easy to read and follow. Dr Mebane’s most recent paper, Election Forensics: The Second-digit Benford’s Law Test and Recent American Presidential Elections [link to http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/fraud06.pdf no longer works], was written for the Election Fraud Conference [link to http://www.vote.caltech.edu/events/2006/FraudConf/research.htm no longer works], which was held last week out in Salt Lake City, Utah. I haven’t had a chance to read through any of the other papers yet, but I’m sure they are equally interesting.
A summary would be most excellent!