Why Bother with Elections? by Przeworski Adam;

Author:Przeworski, Adam;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2018-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

Because self-interested speech – speech that can be predicted from interests – is not credible, claims of fraud made by defeated opponents must be taken with a grain of salt. As a result, our attention is attracted only to flagrant instances. But there appear to be many. The subtitle of a history of fraud in the United States is “A Political Tradition.” In Costa Rica, parties used 47 different types of fraud, including the inappropriate exclusion of voters, the purchase of votes, changes in the location of polling places on election day, and alterations of ballots. In early twentieth-century France, voters were given half a banknote prior to election and the other half if the candidate won; in Chicago, they were given one shoe before and the second one after: the origins of the expression “when the other shoe drops.”

Fraud is not a phenomenon of the distant past. In Palermo, in the 1970s, Italian Christian Democrats distributed publicsector jobs along with free pasta and shoes in exchange for support. In 1993, in Taiwan, the Kuomintang bought 14,090 votes for 300 Taiwanese dollars each. In the Philippines, in 2001, 10.1 percent of voters reported having been offered gifts; in Argentina, in 2001, 12 percent were offered financial incentives; and in Mexico, in 2000, as many as 26.1 percent were. In 2004, in eastern Kentucky, a candidate for district judgeship was accused by prosecutors of giving $50 checks to voters. Still, fraud is rare in most countries, the United States included, and it is even less frequently decisive.

It does matter how elections are administered. Consider four common arrangements:

The executive administers elections and the legislature certifies the results.

The executive administers and a judicial organ, perhaps specialized, certifies.

An independent body administers and a judicial organ certifies.

An independent body administers and certifies.

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