Late-arriving votes and electoral fraud: A natural experiment and regression discontinuity evidence from Bolivia

39 Pages Posted: 12 Dec 2019 Last revised: 11 Oct 2023

See all articles by Diego Escobari

Diego Escobari

The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley; Texas A&M University - Department of Economics

Gary A. Hoover

University of Oklahoma

Date Written: August 17, 2023

Abstract

This paper uses a unique data set and a natural experiment to test if electoral fraud can exist in late-arriving votes. On the night of the 2019 Bolivian elections, the official vote counting system that was expected to publish the results real-time suddenly stopped. When it resumed, the results had flipped. We estimate several difference-in-differences specifications using a 2016 referendum and the votes of other political parties. We find that the extent of the fraud is 2.51% of the valid votes, sufficient to change the outcome of the election. Our results are robust to polling-station-level shocks common across 2019 and 2016, as well as 2019-specific shocks. This controls for geography, socioeconomic characteristics, unobserved voting preferences, and endogeneity in the arrival of the polling station results. We report evidence of fraud that occurred before the shutdown and document a statistically significant discontinuous jump in the votes during the shutdown. We provide insights on how to apply our different identification strategies to test for fraud in other elections.

Keywords: Electoral Fraud; Natural Experiment; Regression Discontinuity

JEL Classification: C21, D72, K42

Suggested Citation

Escobari, Diego and Hoover, Gary A., Late-arriving votes and electoral fraud: A natural experiment and regression discontinuity evidence from Bolivia (August 17, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3492928 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3492928

Diego Escobari (Contact Author)

The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley ( email )

1201 West University Dr.
Edinburg, TX 78539
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://faculty.utrgv.edu/diego.escobari/

Texas A&M University - Department of Economics ( email )

5201 University Blvd.
College Station, TX 77843-4228
United States

Gary A. Hoover

University of Oklahoma ( email )

308 Cate Center Drive
Room 170
Norman, OK 73072-2103
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/garyhoovereconomics/economics-622

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