ROUNDS 1 AND 2, 2004

Discussions of election irregularities along with the Copenhagen Document from Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe/Office for Democratic Institution and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) allow for two general categories of electoral malfeasance. In the first we find the outright stuffing of ballots and the falsification of official protocols wherein the numbers reported by election commissions and the like can have only a spurious relationship to ballots actually cast. The second includes the more amorphous influences of regional and local political elites that we label “administrative advantage” and can encompass decidedly undemocratic actions such as the physical intimidation of voters and biased media coverage, as well as more innocuous things such as administrative actions that make it easy for voters to support one candidate as opposed to another.