Party Monitors and Election Integrity: Evidence from Argentina

• In Event: The Consequences of Electoral Laws and Administration

Abstract

While the secret ballot is supposed to ensure the integrity of the vote, in many developing countries, parties still spend substantial resources to mobilize voters to the polls and monitor the vote count. Does the presence of monitors make a difference in the election results? Are parties that lack monitors penalized? The 2023 presidential election in Argentina provides an ideal setting for addressing these questions. First, in Argentina, parties print their own ballots; thus, monitors can play a key role in ensuring enough ballots are available. Second, although the two major candidates were backed by large party organizations and thousands of experienced monitors, the eventual election winner lacked such support, diminishing his party’s capacity to oversee ballot counting at the grassroots level. Third, the election unfolded across three rounds (a mandatory primary, the general election, and the runoff), allowing us to track support for a similar set of candidates in the same polling station over time. For identification, we follow Casas et al. (2017) and exploit the fact that monitors are quasi-randomly assigned to polling stations within schools, allowing us to compare thousands of monitored and (un)monitored stations within the same school.

Authors

• Juan Pablo Micozzi, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico

• Eduardo Aleman, University of Houston

• Adrian Lucardi, ITAM