The Forensics of Election Fraud

Mikhail Myagkov is a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and holds a PhD from the California Institute of Technology. A specialist in Russian politics, political methodology and laboratory experiments in political economy; published extensively in Post Soviet Affairs. Peter C. Ordeshook is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has published over 120 papers in professional journals, including the American Political Science Review, Post-Soviet Affairs, Constitutional Political Economy and Post-Soviet Geography and Economics. His authored and coauthored books include An Introduction to Positive Political Theory; Game Theory and Political Theory; The Balance of Power; Designing Federalism; A Political Theory Primer; Endogenous Time Preferences in Social Networks; and Lessons for Citizens of a New Democracy (in English, Italian and Ukrainian). Dmitry Shakin holds a PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University. He is a specialist in commutative algebra, financial econometrics and Russian politics.

“The Forensics of Election Fraud by Myagkov, Ordeshook and Shakin presents a novel, creative and powerful methodology to detect the possibility of vote fraud using aggregate precinct data from several elections. Their approach is to detect patterns that flag vote fraud. They do not use standard statistical methodology because it is not appropriate for their problem but instead their method presents evidence that may be due to fraud. I consider this book to be one of the best three book manuscripts in political methodology that I have ever read. I believe that it will be considered to be a masterpiece in the field.” -Melvin J. Hinich, University of Texas at Austin

• Introduction; 1. A forensics approach to detecting election fraud; 2. The fingerprints of fraud; 3. Russia; 4. Ukraine, 2004; 5. Ukraine, 2006, 2007; 6. The United States.