Gender, Political (In) Experience and Corruption

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(with Guillermo Diaz)

Neutral administrators of elections (i.e., the poll workers) have preferences over the outcomes and may bias them. But also, in their role of preventing electoral manipulation may be more or less equipped. We use a quasi-natural experiment to detect electoral corruption and which types of poll-workers, if any, prevent it. We exploit the 2011 elections in Argentina, where poll workers were randomly matched to voters and partisan observers, at the polling station level. The partisan observers' bias (they favor their own preferred party) is partly prevented by poll workers, on average. Two results are striking: (i) more experienced poll workers do a better job in counteracting the observers intended manipulation. The most experienced poll workers prevent half of the observers' corruption, but inexperienced ones do not prevent any of the observers' manipulation.  Also (ii) men and women are equally effective in preventing fraud. The most likely mechanism taking place is the manipulation of non-positive votes.