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Government 413/613: Election Forensics
Spring 2006, Wednesday 2:30-4:25 (WE B02)
Course Requirements
This is a research seminar. I expect you to participate actively in seminar
discussions. Each week (through April 12) you are expected to submit a short
paper that discusses research implications of the week's reading. Your paper
should provide the basis for comments you will make during the seminar
meeting. The short papers are due the day before class, meaning Tuesday at
4:30pm.
Your principal work for the seminar is to write a research paper on some topic
relevant to the themes, analytical tools and data considered in the course.
A proposal for the paper is due by March 29. The proposal should be in the
vicinity of 5-10 pages in length, state the question and hypotheses to be
addressed, describe the data and the analytical plan and connect the paper to
relevant literature. The paper is due in my office on May 15.
Assignment Due Dates |
due date |
description |
weekly |
short paper |
March 29 |
proposal |
May 15 |
research paper |
Reading Availability
I ordered the following books for the course at the campus store. Articles in
refereed journals are available either through J-Stor or online e-journals.
All URLs are live in the online version of this syllabus, linked to the course
webpage. This especially matters for the DU items.
- Gumbel, Andrew. 2005.
Steal This Vote.
Nation Books.
- Harris, Bev. 2005.
Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century.
Talion.
- Miller, Mark Crispin. 2005.
Fooled Again
Basic Books.
- Saltman, Roy
The History and Politics of Voting Technology.
Palgrave Macmillan.
Reading schedule
- A Standards Model and Political History Overview (Feb 1)
- American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. 2005.
AICPA Professional Standards, volume 1, ``AU Section 316:
Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit (Source: SAS No. 99).''
Pages 277--300-25.
[available in Reference at the Management Library (Sage Hall)]
- Gumbel. Steal This Vote
- How to Have Fun With Elections; A Primer for Screwing Democrats
http://www.democraticunderground.com thread 203x398460
- Overview--Technology (Feb 8)
- Florida 2000: Overdispersion and Outliers (Feb 15)
- Wand, Jonathan N., Kenneth W. Shotts, Jasjeet S. Sekhon, Walter R.
Mebane, Jr., Michael C. Herron, and Henry E. Brady. 2001. ``The Butterfly
Did It: The Aberrant Vote for Buchanan in Palm Beach County, Florida.''
American Political Science Review 95 (December): 793-810.
available at
http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/butterfly.pdf
- Florida 2000: Overvotes (Feb 22)
- Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2004.
``The Wrong Man is President: Overvotes in the 2000 Presidential Election in
Florida.''
Perspectives on Politics 2 (Sept.): 525-535.
MS available at
http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/mebane.pop2004.pdf
- Herron, Michael C., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon. 2003. ``Overvoting and
Representation: An Examination of Overvoted Presidential Ballots in Broward
and Miami-Dade Counties.'' Electoral Studies 22 (1):21-47.
http://elections.berkeley.edu/election2000/HerronSekhon.pdf
- Herron, Michael C., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon. Forthcoming 2004.
``Black Candidates and Black Voters: Assessing the Impact of Candidate
Race on Uncounted Vote Rates.''
Journal of Politics 66 (November).
MS available at
http://elections.berkeley.edu/election2000/HerronSekhon.candidates.pdf
- Tomz, Michael, and Robert P. Van Houweling. 2003.
``How Does Voting Equipment Affect the Racial Gap in Voided Ballots?''
American Journal of Political Science 47 (1): 46-60.
- Some Fraud Allegations in 2004 (Mar 1)
- Fraud in Ohio? (Mar 8)
- Democratic National Committee. 2005.
Democracy At Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio. Section VI.
http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/Ohio2004/OhioReportCover2Cover.pdf
- Tanner, John. 2005.
Letter to Nick A. Soulas, Jr., Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, Franklin
County, Ohio. June 29, 2005.
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/misc/franklin_oh.pdf
- Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2005.
``Voting Machine Allocation in Franklin County, Ohio, 2004: Response to
U.S. Department of Justice Letter of June 29, 2005.''
http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/franklin2.pdf
- How Can We Verify What Happened in Cleveland on Election Day 2004?
http://www.democraticunderground.com thread 132x2052179
- `Caterpillar Ballot' cost Kerry more than 1000 Cuyahoga votes
http://www.democraticunderground.com thread 172x5139
- Was Kerry Cheated out of Almost 100,000 Votes in Cleveland Alone?
http://www.democraticunderground.com thread 104x4998616
- Florida 2004 Voting Machines: County-level Tests (Mar 15)
- Florida 2004 Voting Machines: Machine-level Randomization Tests (Mar 29)
- Mebane, Walter R. Jr. 2006.
``A Randomization Test for Voting Machines in Polling Places.''
Source TBA.
- Benjamini, Yoav, and Yosef Hochberg. 1995.
``Controlling the False Discovery Rate: A Practical and Powerful Approach to
Multiple Testing.''
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 57 (1): 289-300.
- Benjamini, Yoav, and Wei Liu. n.d.
``A Distribution-free Multiple-test Procedure that Controls the False
Discovery Rate.''
http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~ ybenja/BL2.ps
- Benford's Law Tests (Apr 5)
- Mebane, Walter R. Jr. 2006.
``Testing Vote Count Digits.''
Source TBA.
- Cindy Durtschi, William Hillison and Carl Pacini. 2004.
``The Effective Use of Benford's Law to Assist in Detecting Fraud in
Accounting Data.''
Journal of Forensic Accounting 5:17-34.
- *Hill, Theodore P. 1995.
``A Statistical Derivation of the Significant-digit Law.''
Statistical Science 10 (4): 354-363.
- **Janvresse, Élise, and Thierry de la Rue. 2004.
``From Uniform Distributions to Benford's Law.''
Journal of Applied Probability 41: 1203-1210.
- Exit Polls, Monitors and Other Surveys (Apr 12)
- Research Presentations (Apr 19 [to be rescheduled])
- Research Presentations (Apr 26)
- Research Presentations (May 3)
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Walter Mebane
2006-01-31