Do More Disaggregated Electoral Results Deter Aggregation Fraud?

The level of aggregation at which electoral results are published can impact election integrity. Publishing results at a more granular level – such as at the level of the polling station – enables civil society watchdogs to independently verify vote totals, helping to deter aggregation fraud. While this logic undergirds the recommendations of the international organizations monitoring elections to publish more granular electoral results, to date there have not been systematic assessments of how variation in aggregation is linked to electoral miscounting. We address this gap by assembling a novel dataset on the granularity of electoral results in 123 low- and middle-income countries since 2000. Our findings revealed a strong negative relationship between reporting granularity and indicators of vote count irregularities. Importantly, we found no evidence that greater transparency leads to substitution into other forms of electoral manipulation, such as violence or clientelism, as measured by expert-based indicators.