Fraud or Fairytales: Russia and Ukraine's Electoral Experience

Three experts on post-Soviet elections examine the "fingerprints of fraud" found in election returns aggregated up to the level of Russia's 2500+ and Ukraine's 225 rayons from the first round of Russia's 1996 presidential election through the third round of Ukraine's 2004 presidential contest. The objective is to develop means for detecting and measuring fraud that rely on official data rather than eyewitness accounts of irregularities. The secondary objective is to measure the extent of electoral fraud. On the basis of this novel methodology, estimates are offered of the extent of fraud in each of the Russian and Ukrainian elections studied.