Preserving Electoral Integrity Without Disenfranchising the Poor: Suggestions for Improving a Voter Residence Verification System in Colombia

Vote-buying—a particularly corrosive form of political corruption—is present in many jurisdictions, especially in the Global South. And not only is vote-buying itself a form of corruption, but the practice exacerbates other forms of corruption, because politicians need to raise enough money to buy enough votes to beat their opponents (who are also engaged in vote-buying), and in order to raise enough money, politicians often enter into deals with private parties who (illegally) “lend” the politician the money he or she needs to buy enough votes to win the election, and then, once in office, the politician pays back the private parties—either directly, with embezzled funds, or with inflated government contracts (see, for example, here and here).

But sometimes a candidate might worry that she won’t be able to buy enough votes from voters who actually live in the district where the candidate is running. This is especially true when competing candidates are trying to buy votes. In a competitive district, a relatively small number of votes can swing the election, so politicians have an incentive to scrounge for extra votes. This, understandably, also drives up the “price” for votes in the district. In Colombia, one way that politicians have developed to increase the pool of voters they can “buy,” and hence keep the price down, is to pay voters to illegally register in a district other than the district where they actually live. (In Colombia, as in many countries, adult citizens may only register to vote in the district where they actually reside.) So, the politician pays these voters twice—first to illegally register in another district, and then to vote in that district for the politician—and on both registration day and election day the politician will arrange for the transportation of these non-resident voters to the district where the politician is running. This practice, known as electoral transhumance, is illegal, yet there have long been concerns that it is pervasive in many parts of the country.

In October 2015, Colombia introduced a new tool to fight this sort of electoral fraud. Using so-called “big data analytics,” the authorities were able to cross-reference the National Electoral Registry databases with the System for the Identification of Potential Beneficiaries of Social Programs (known as SISBEN), and as a result of these checks, nearly 1.6 million voter registrations to vote were declared void—a large number in a country with 33 million registered voters. That seems like a big win, and a nice example of how new technologies can help crack down on pervasive corruption (here, electoral corruption). But a closer look reveals that the picture is not as rosy as it first appears: Despite its good intentions, and some positive results, this purge of the voter rolls ended up disproportionately disenfranchising low-income voters. Continue reading