@unpublished{JablonskiMalawiElection,
  title={How do we know if an election is stolen? Identifying human error and fraud in the 2019 Malawian election},
  author={Jablonski, Ryan and Ahlback, Johan},
year={2023},
abstract={Voters and politicians often struggle to distinguish between fraudulent and non-fraudulent elections. This confusion undermines the credibility of elections and governance. We introduce several techniques to assess the causes of tallying error. Using these methods we revisit the case of the Malawian 2019 election, which was famously cancelled by the High Court due to widespread irregularities and accusations of fraud. We show --- contrary to the dominant consensus --- that the majority of these irregularities were plausibly due to human error rather than fraud. We show that patterns of irregularities are not consistent with common strategies of fraud, and that irregularities failed to significantly benefit incumbents. Further, using quasi-random variation in the administration of polling stations and allocation of ballots, we show that irregularities increased in proportion to the complexity of filling in result-sheets, suggesting a dominant role for human error. In addition to re-interpreting a historically important election, we provide generally useful methods for assessing the causes of errors in election tallying. We also make a case that policy efforts to improve electoral credibility could productively be reallocated towards electoral administration rather than anti-fraud measures.},
}

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