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Government 413/613: Election Forensics

Spring 2006, Wednesday 2:30-4:25 (WE B02)

Walter R. Mebane, Jr.
217 White Hall
255-3868
wrm1@cornell.edu
office hours: Mon 3-5, Tue 4:30-5:30 or other times by appointment
Course web page: http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/gov613.html

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

  1. A Standards Model and Political History Overview (Feb 1)

  2. Overview--Technology (Feb 8)

  3. Florida 2000: Overdispersion and Outliers (Feb 15)

  4. Florida 2000: Overvotes (Feb 22)

  5. Some Fraud Allegations in 2004 (Mar 1)

  6. Fraud in Ohio? (Mar 8)

  7. Florida 2004 Voting Machines: County-level Tests (Mar 15)

  8. Florida 2004 Voting Machines: Machine-level Randomization Tests (Mar 29)

  9. Benford's Law Tests (Apr 5)

  10. Exit Polls, Monitors and Other Surveys (Apr 12)

  11. Research Presentations (Apr 19 [to be rescheduled])

  12. Research Presentations (Apr 26)

  13. Research Presentations (May 3)




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Walter Mebane 2006-01-31