A dual approach to proving electoral fraud using statistics and forensic evidence (Dvojnoe dokazatel'stvo falsifikazij na vyborah statistikoj i kriminalistikoj)

TL;DR

This paper combines statistical analysis and forensic evidence to detect and confirm electoral fraud, demonstrating the effectiveness of a dual approach in identifying manipulated ballots in municipal elections.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive method that integrates statistical signatures and forensic ballistics to reliably prove electoral fraud, highlighting the limitations of tamper seals.

Findings

Statistical irregularities aligned with forensic evidence in most polling stations.

Factory-made security bags with identical serial numbers indicate ballot tampering.

Tamper seals are unreliable indicators of election integrity.

Abstract

Electoral fraud often manifests itself as statistical anomalies in election results, yet its extent can rarely be reliably confirmed by other evidence. Here we report the complete results of municipal elections in the town of Vlasikha near Moscow, where we observe both statistical irregularities in the vote-counting transcripts and forensic evidence of tampering with ballots during their overnight storage. We evaluate two types of statistical signatures in the vote sequence that can prove batches of fraudulent ballots have been injected. We find that pairs of factory-made security bags with identical serial numbers are used in this fraud scheme. At 8 out of our 9 polling stations, the statistical and forensic evidence agrees (identifying 7 as fraudulent and 1 as honest), while at the remaining station the statistical evidence detects the fraud while the forensic one is insufficient. We also illustrate that the use of tamper-indicating seals at elections is inherently unreliable.