Seminar

All Eyes on Them A Field Experiment on Citizen Oversight and Electoral Integrity

Mateo Montenegro (CEMFI - Madrid;MIT)

February 2, 2022, 14:00–15:30

online

Room zoom

Job Market Seminar

Abstract

Can Information and Communication Technologies help citizens monitor their elections? We analyze a large-scale field experiment designed to answer this question in Colombia. We leveraged Facebook advertisements sent to over 4 million potential voters to encourage citizen reporting of irregularities and varied whether candidates were informed about the campaign in a subset of municipalities. Total reports, as well as evidence-backed ones, experienced a large increase. Across a wide array of measures, electoral irregularities decreased. Finally, the reporting campaign reduced the vote share of candidates dependent on irregularities. This light-touch intervention is more cost-effective than monitoring efforts traditionally used by policymakers.