International Foundation for Electoral Systems I. Introduction Electoral fraud has a well-documented history, dating back to the fledgling democracies of the 19th century and their predecessors. Among contemporary democracies – nascent and consolidated alike – fraud provides an unfortunate common ground that transcends culture, religion and geography. As a general area of academic research, the interested reader can find a robust collection of studies assessing or comparing individual cases of election fraud. However, as R. Michael Alvarez, Thad Hall and Susan Hyde observed in a 2008 volume entitled Election Fraud, “work to date includes little systematic research on how election fraud can be detected and deterred.”1 We believe that this is due, in part, to a lack of consensus over what is truly meant by the terms electoral fraud, malpractice and systemic manipulation.2 This paper seeks to provide clarity in the search for appropriate definitions that will be able to inform efforts to combat fraud and malpractice, as it is difficult, if not impossible, to fight a problem that is not well-articulated. Several definitions and terms have been proposed by scholars in recent years. They range from overly restrictive to nearly all-inclusive; our challenge is to alight on a point in between that is precise enough to be useful but not so narrow as to falsely delimit the scope of efforts to combat election-related crimes. And, more importantly, none of these attempts have yet to generate a definition of electoral fraud that is largely acceptable to the broader community. In this white paper, we will first conduct a brief review of the existing literature by segmenting the definitions offered into two broad categories. Category one encompasses inclusive definitions, which are broad-based and often reference democratic norms or international standards (i.e., it is fraud if it violates principles of free and fair elections and the rights of citizens to choose their representatives. Category two includes narrow conceptions that generally take a law-based approach to identifying fraud (i.e., it is fraud if it violates the domestic laws governing elections in a country). There are elements of both approaches that are useful in efforts to eradicate fraud. However, at the extremes, neither approach is a clear winner. Proponents of the broad approach to defining electoral fraud would note that inclusivity will ensure that as many fraud risks as possible are tackled, so as to safeguard the credibility of the electoral process. However, if every possible violation or irregularity is deemed fraud, election managers will find it difficult (if not impossible) to prioritize genuine risks to the electoral process. A very restrictive interpretation of the fraud problem, on the other hand, could result in election managers and other stakeholders overlooking serious threats to the legitimacy of an election until it is too late to salvage. 1 R. Michael Alvarez, Thad E. Hall, and Susan D. Hyde (2008) Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C.: page 3. 2 Systemic manipulation refers to the use of domestic legal provisions and/or electoral rules and procedures that run counter to widely accepted democratic principles and international standards, and that purposefully distort the will of voters. As this paper will focus on tools that practitioners can use to deter, detect and mitigate fraud and malpractice within the context of a specific election event, we are not going to discuss systemic manipulation in depth because the limited tools available to confront this type of wrongdoing are fairly well established. These tools include the use of regional courts (such as the European Court of Human Rights [ECtHR] or the Inter-American Court of Human Rights); application of pressures to reform via diplomatic missions; election observation and monitoring reports; and domestic pressure to reform legal and electoral frameworks. 2