Election Integrity

Questions often arise after contested elections:  was the election conducted in a free and fair manner?  This was certainly the case in 2016, where many concerns were raised before, during, and after the presidential election --- in particular about the potential intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by foreign governments or their agents. 

In the 2024 U.S. election cycle, our project will help election officials in California and other states to build comprehensive quantitative election performance auditing applications. Our new 2024 research project is supported by a Major Research Grant to Caltech from the Haynes Foundation.

This research project is developing and implementing comprehensive ecological methodology to evaluate the conduct of state and federal elections in Southern California. Our first project was conducted in partnership with the Orange County Registrar of Voters.  This project developed a forensic analysis of the county’s voter registration database, statistical analyses of election data to detect potential problems or fraud, surveys of voters and poll workers to understand their experiences and evaluation of the election, and an independent audit of the audits that will be conducted by the Registrar’s office. We since then have worked with other state and local election officials to build additional election integrity tools and methodologies. We have published our work in various academic journals and written a book about our election monitoring project.