David Lillis: Holding Free and Fair Elections

A colleague of mine, Professor Zlatko Kovačić, has published a book on election forensics, or work that contributes to holding free and fair national elections. Currently, his book is generating great interest in his home country of Serbia, and he has been interviewed online about this book.

You can download the book here:

https://bit.ly/election-forensics

All nations deserve elections that are conducted with integrity, and election forensics include statistical methods that identify whether or not election results reflect actual voting behaviour. Often, such methods are centred at the level of individual polling stations, ballot boxes and voting machines.

Professor Kovačić’s book begins from the premise that election forensics comprises more than a set of methods for detecting unusual patterns in election data, but form part of a broader democratic infrastructure. If forensic analysis is to be useful, much more than statistical tests and graphs are necessary. We need open election data, machine-readable formats for files that hold relevant information, reliable polling-station protocols, a clear chain of custody for election materials, post-election audits, rules on evidence, courts that understand statistical findings, independent electoral institutions, protected observers, free media and a political environment in which an opponent is not treated as an enemy of the state.

The central aim of Professor Kovačić’s book is to show how election forensics can be embedded in the electoral process - not as an occasional analysis following disputed elections and not as a tool of one side against another, but as a permanent mechanism of public verifiability, legal protection and democratic accountability. In that sense, the book is not only analytic but also practical. It is a reaffirmation of the need to institutionalise the forensic verification of elections, to open all relevant data to public scrutiny, to clarify the rules, to make political competition more level, and to build trust in elections through verification rather than by appealing to trust.

Professor Kovačić asked me to edit the book for speakers of English. I have no doubts that in New Zealand we hold our elections on the basis of robust administrative and other procedures, though I feel that we must consider the role of media and ensure the political neutrality of our public service. In any case, I do hope that some readers will find this book of interest.

Dr David Lillis trained in physics and mathematics at Victoria University and Curtin University in Perth, working as a teacher, researcher, statistician and lecturer for most of his career. He has published many articles and scientific papers, as well as a book on graphing and statistics.