Assessing Electoral Fraud in New Democracies: Refining the Vocabulary A 2012 study by Creative Associates comes somewhat closer to arriving at a precise definition, but requires further refining to ensure it is workable in practice. In their publication, Sarah Birch and Jeffrey Carlson use “malpractice” as the overarching category for electoral misconduct, defining it as follows: “electoral crimes and sub-standard practices that result in failures or refusals to act (i.e., inability or denial to provide necessary oversight); acts of deception (i.e., providing false or misleading information), acts of coercion (i.e., intimidating or forcing a voter or other electoral participant to behave in an involuntary manner), and/or acts of destruction (i.e., physical violence toward individuals or institutions).”11 Although this definition provides a comprehensive typology (including deception, coercion and omission), the use of the term “malpractice” as a catch-all obscures important differences in various types of electoral wrongdoing. Malpractice and fraud, as we will address in Section III below, are fundamentally distinct. Fraud is based on wrongful intent, whereas malpractice is a form of negligence.12 For example, Creative Associates’ definition, stated as “electoral crimes and sub-standard practices that result in failures or refusals to act,” should be segmented by intent and type of actor. If election administrators knowingly and intentionally remove or omit indelible ink from targeted precinct election material kits to allow multiple voting for one party or candidate, then they have likely committed fraud and should be prosecuted accordingly (intent is an operative dimension of fraud, as will be discussed in Section III below). If, however, poorly-trained polling station officials neglect to apply indelible ink to the fingers of voters, as per the requirements of the electoral process, and thereby unknowingly open the process to abuse, they may have only committed malpractice. In our view, this distinction is critical to any discussion of electoral wrongdoing because it allows election administrators and prosecutors to develop targeted deterrence and mitigation processes that enable them to more effectively combat electoral fraud. As evidenced by this discussion, imprecision is a major shortcoming of the inclusive approach to defining and understanding electoral fraud. Proposed definitions do not always account for the range of actors and how their roles and responsibilities in an electoral process might differ, and frequently include terms that are inappropriate (for example, using the word malpractice to refer to non-professional actors in an election, such as voters or candidates). Ignoring these issues could be perilous for election managers or technical assistance providers who are attempting to identify, prevent or mitigate problems in the electoral process. The Restrictive Approach The second category includes approaches that focus only or mostly on the letter of the law (i.e., fraud can be identified by whether it violates existing domestic legal provisions). This enables a contextspecific approach to combating various kinds of electoral wrongdoing, and it makes obvious sense for the election management body (EMB) to use a country’s domestic laws as benchmarks in its fraud or malpractice control activities. Some observers note, however, that a solely law-based approach leaves 11 Sarah Birch and Jeffrey Carlson (2012) “Electoral Malpractice Primer: Insights and Priorities,” Electoral Integrity Framework Project, Creative Associates International, Washington. D.C.: page 2. 12 As noted in Section III of this paper, in some cases, severe malpractice can rise to the level of fraud, regardless of intent. 5