Walter R. Mebane, Jr.

Professor, Department of Political Science and Department of Statistics

7735 Haven Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045

email: wmebane@umich.edu

Courses

• Political Science 485 (Fall 2024), ``Election Forensics''

• Political Science 799 (Fall 2022), ``Multivariate Analysis''

• Statistics 480 (Winter 2024), ``Survey Sampling Techniques''

• Political Science 794 (Winter 2018), ``Methodology Seminar''

• Political Science 599 (Fall 2017), ``Intro to Empirical Methods in Political Analysis''

• Political Science 787 (Fall 2013), ``Multivariate Analysis''

Fall 2024 Office Hours: Monday 2--4

• Courses taught at Cornell.

Software Available for Downloading, with Documentation

• Election Forensics R Package (eforensics tarball) and (eforensics GitHub). Diogo Ferrari, Kevin McAlister, Walter Mebane and Patrick Wu, 2019.

• Robust Estimation Software (multinomRob). Walter R. Mebane, Jr., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon, 2003.

• Genetic Optimization Using Derivatives for R (RGENOUD). Walter R. Mebane, Jr., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon, 2001. (The ancestral GENOUD C program from 1997 is here.)

• Genetic Optimization and Bootstrapping of Linear Structures (GENBLIS). Walter R. Mebane, Jr., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon, 1998.

Papers Available for Downloading

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr.. 2024. `` eforensics Analysis of the Venezuela 2024 Presidential Elections''

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr.. 2023. `` Lost Votes and Posterior Multimodality in the eforensics Model'' Prepared for presentation at the PolMeth 2023, Stanford University, Palo Alto CA, July 9--11.

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr.. 2023. `` eforensics Analysis of the Turkish 2023 Presidential Election''

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr.. 2022. `` eforensics Analysis of the Kenya 2022 Presidential Election''

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr.. 2022. `` eforensics Analysis of the Philippines 2022 Presidential and Vice Presidential Elections''

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr., Diogo Ferrari, Kevin McAlister and Patrick Y. Wu. 2022. `` Measuring Election Frauds''

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr. 2021. `` eforensics Analysis of the Peru 2021 Presidential Election''

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr. 2020. `` Inappropriate Applications of Benford's Law Regularities to Some Data from the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States''

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr. 2019. `` Evidence Against Fraudulent Votes Being Decisive in the Bolivia 2019 Election''

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr. 2019. `` eforensics: A Bayesian Implementation of A Positive Empirical Model of Election Frauds''

• Patrick Y. Wu, Walter R. Mebane, Jr., Logan Woods, Joseph Klaver, and Preston Due. 2019. `` Partisan Associations of Twitter Users Based on Their Self-descriptions and Word Embeddings'' Prepared for presentation at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, Aug 29--Sep 1.

• Alejandro Pineda and Walter R. Mebane, Jr.. 2019. `` Using Neural Networks to Classify Based on Combined Text and Image Content: An Application to Election Incident Observation'' Prepared for presentation at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, Aug 29--Sep 1.

• Blake Miller, Fridolin Linder and Walter R. Mebane, Jr.. 2019. `` Active Learning Approaches for Labeling Text: Review and Assessment of the Performance of Active Learning Approaches'' Prepared for presentation at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, Aug 29--Sep 1.

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr., Samuel Baltz and Fabricio Vasselai. 2018. `` Using Agent-Based Models to Simulate Strategic Behavior in Elections'' Prepared for presentation at the PolMeth XXXVI, MIT, July 18--20, 2019.

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr. 2019. `` Election Forensics Study of 2019 Democratic Republic of Congo Election'' Working paper.

• Diogo Ferrari, Kevin McAlister and Walter R. Mebane Jr. 2018. `` Developments in Positive Empirical Models of Election Frauds: Dimensions and Decisions'' Prepared for presentation at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for Political Methodology, Provo, UT, July 16--18.

• Diogo Ferrari, Kevin McAlister and Walter R. Mebane Jr. 2018. `` Developments in Positive Empirical Models of Election Frauds: Varying Dimensions'' Prepared for presentation at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 5--8.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., Patrick Wu, Logan Woods, Joseph Klaver, Alejandro Pineda and Blake Miller. 2018. `` Using Twitter to Observe Election Incidents in the United States: Does Who Observes Matter?'' Prepared for presentation at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 5--8.

• Samuel Baltz, Kevin McAlister, Fabricio Vasselai, Alejandro Pineda and Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2018. `` Agent-Based Models of Strategic Electoral Behavior in Election Forensics'' Prepared for presentation at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 5--8.

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr. 2017. `` Anomalies and Frauds(?) in the Kenya 2017 Presidential Election'' Working paper.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., Alejandro Pineda, Logan Woods, Joseph Klaver, Patrick Wu and Blake Miller. 2017. `` Using Twitter to Observe Election Incidents in the United States'' Prepared for presentation at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, August 31--September 3.

• Diogo Ferrari and Walter R. Mebane Jr. 2017. `` Developments in Positive Empirical Models of Election Frauds'' Prepared for presentation at the 2017 Summer Meeting of the Society for Political Methodology, Madison, WI, July 13--15.

• Walter R. Mebane, Jr., and Matthew Bernhard. 2017. `` Effects of Voting Technologies and Recount Methods on Votes in Wisconsin and Michigan'' Working paper.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., Alejandro Pineda, Logan Woods, Joseph Klaver, Patrick Wu and Blake Miller. 2017. `` Using Twitter to Observe Election Incidents in the United States'' Prepared for presentation at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 6--9.

• Kirill Kalinin and Walter R. Mebane, Jr. 2016. `` Worst Election Ever in Russia?'' Working paper.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2016. `` Voting Technologies and Ward Vote Data from Wisconsin'' Working paper.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2016. `` Austria 2016 Presidential Election, Election Forensics Statistics'' Working paper.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., Joseph Klaver and Blake Miller. 2016. `` Frauds, Strategies and Complaints in Germany'' Prepared for presentation at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 7--10.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2016. `` Election Forensics: Frauds Tests and Observation-level Frauds Probabilities'' Prepared for presentation at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 7--10.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2016. `` Brief Election Forensics Report on the 2015 Legislative Elections in Turkey'' Working paper.

• Hicken, Allen and Walter R. Mebane, Jr. 2015. `` A Guide to Election Forensics'' Prepared for IIE/USAID subaward \#DFG-10-APS-UM, ``Development of an Election Forensics Toolkit: Using Subnational Data to Detect Anomalies.''

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2015. `` Election Forensics Toolkit DRG Center Working Paper'' Prepared for IIE/USAID subaward \#DFG-10-APS-UM, ``Development of an Election Forensics Toolkit: Using Subnational Data to Detect Anomalies.''

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Jonathan Wall. 2015. `` Election Frauds, Postelection Legal Challenges and Geography in Mexico'' Prepared for presentation at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, September 3--6.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2015. `` Election Forensics: Latent Dimensions of Election Frauds and Strategic Voting'' Prepared for presentation at the 2015 Summer Meeting of the Society for Political Methodology, Rochester, NY, July 23--25.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. and Joseph Klaver. 2015. `` Election Forensics: Strategies versus Election Frauds in Germany'' Prepared for presentation at the 2015 Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association, Vienna, Austria, June 25--27.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Kirill Kalinin. 2014. `` Geography in Election Forensics'' Prepared for presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 28--31.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., Naoki Egami, Joseph Klaver and Jonathan Wall. 2014. `` Positive Empirical Models of Election Fraud (that May Also Measure Voters' Strategic Behavior)'' Prepared for presentation at the 2014 Summer Meeting of the Political Methodology Society, University of Georgia, July 24--26.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., John E. Jackson and Jonathan Wall. 2014. `` Preference Heterogeneities in Models of Electoral Behavior'' Prepared for presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 3--6.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2013. `` Using Vote Counts' Digits to Diagnose Strategies and Frauds: Russia'' Prepared for presentation at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, August 29--September 1.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2013. `` Election Forensics: The Meanings of Precinct Vote Counts' Second Digits'' Prepared for presentation at the 2013 Summer Meeting of the Political Methodology Society, University of Virginia, July 18--20.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Thomas Bradley Kent. 2013. `` Second Digit Implications of Voters' Strategies and Mobilizations in the United States during the 2000s'' Prepared for presentation at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 11--14.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2012. `` Second-digit Tests for Voters' Election Strategies and Election Fraud'' Prepared for presentation at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 12--15.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2010. `` Election Fraud or Strategic Voting? Can Second-digit Tests Tell the Difference?'' Prepared for presentation at the 2010 Summer Meeting of the Political Methodology Society, University of Iowa, July 22--24, 2010.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2010. `` Memo on second-digit tests done on precinct counts for Democratic Senate primary in South Carolina, 2010'' 12 June 2010. Data and program files.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Kirill Kalinin. 2010. `` Electoral Fraud in Russia: Vote Counts Analysis using Second-digit Mean Tests'' Prepared for presentation at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 22--25.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2010. `` Election Fraud or Strategic Voting?'' Prepared for presentation at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 22--25.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2009. "Note on the presidential election in Iran, June 2009" ; (attached files)'' June 15, 2009 (updated June 29, 2009).

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Kirill Kalinin. 2009. `` Electoral Falsification in Russia: Complex Diagnostics Selections 2003-2004, 2007-2008.'' Russian Electoral Review [REO] 2/09, 57-70 (in Russian).

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Kirill Kalinin 2009. `` Comparative Election Fraud Detection.'' Prepared for presentation at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Toronto, Canada, Sept 3--6 (earlier version presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 2--5).

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2008. `` Machine Errors and Undervotes in Florida 2006 Revisited (pdf)'' Prepared for the symposium How We Vote, Institute of Bill of Rights Law, William & Mary School of Law, Williamsburg, VA, March 14, 2008. Revised (with Addendum) for the 2009 Convention of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA, January 7-10. Data and program files (large file > 100MB).

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2008. `` Election Forensics: Outlier and Digit Tests in America and Russia (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for presentation at The American Electoral Process conference, Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, Princeton University, May 1-3, 2008.

• Herron, Michael C., Walter R. Mebane Jr. and Jonathan N. Wand. 2008 `` Voting Technology and the 2008 New Hampshire Primary (pdf)'' Prepared for the symposium How We Vote, Institute of Bill of Rights Law, William & Mary School of Law, Williamsburg, VA, March 14, 2008. Data and program files.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2007. `` Election Forensics: Statistical Interventions in Election Controversies (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for presentation at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Aug 30-Sep 2.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2007. `` Statistics for Digits (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for presentation at the 2007 Summer Meeting of the Political Methodology Society, Pennsylvania State University, July 18--21.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2007. `` Election Forensics: Statistics, Recounts and Fraud (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for presentation at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 12--16.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2007. `` Evaluating Voting Systems To Improve and Verify Accuracy (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for presentation at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, San Francisco, CA, February 16, 2007, and at the Bay Area Methods Meeting, Berkeley, CA, March 1, 2007.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and David L. Dill. 2007. `` Factors Associated with the Excessive CD-13 Undervote in the 2006 General Election in Sarasota County, Florida (pdf).'' Draft of January 18, 2007.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2006. `` Election Forensics: The Second-digit Benford's Law Test and Recent American Presidential Elections (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for delivery at the Election Fraud Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, September 29--30, 2006.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2006. `` Election Forensics: Vote Counts and Benford's Law (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for delivery at the 2006 Summer Meeting of the Political Methodology Society, UC-Davis, July 20-22.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2006. `` Detecting Attempted Election Theft: Vote Counts, Voting Machines and Benford's Law (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for delivery at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 20-23, Palmer House, Chicago.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2005. `` Timing and Turnout in Ohio'' TomPaine.com, 21 July 2005.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2005. `` Voting Machine Allocation in Franklin County, Ohio, 2004: Response to U.S. Department of Justice Letter of June 29, 2005''

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2005. `` Democratic National Committee Voting Rights Institute Report on the 2004 Election in Ohio: Reports, Archival Computing Files and Replication Data Files''

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2005. ``Does it Help or Hurt Kerry if Nader is on the Ballot? (with Israel Waismel-Manor) (pdf); (postscript)''

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2005. ``Partisan Messages, Unconditional Strategies and Coordination in American Elections (pdf); (postscript)''

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2003. ``The Wrong Man is President! Overvotes in the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida (pdf)'' Appears in Perspectives on Politics, September 2004.
Replication data.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon. 2003. ``Robust Estimation and Outlier Detection for Overdispersed Multinomial Models of Count Data (pdf); (postscript)'' Appears in the American Journal of Political Science, April 2004.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Gregory J. Wawro. 2002. ``Presidential Pork Barrel Politics (pdf); (postscript).''

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon. 2002. ``Coordination and Policy Moderation at Midterm (pdf); (postscript).'' Appears in the American Political Science Review, March 2002.

• Wand, Jonathan N., Kenneth W. Shotts, Jasjeet S. Sekhon, Walter R. Mebane, Jr., Michael C. Herron, Henry E. Brady. 2001. ``The Butterfly Did It: The Aberrant Vote for Buchanan in Palm Beach County, Florida''. Appears in the American Political Science Review, December 2001. RELATED WORK

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2001. `` Coordination among American Voters with Heterogeneous Expectations (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for delivery at the Annual Public Choice Society Meeting 2001, March 9-11, San Antonio, Texas.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., Marc T. Ratkovic and Michael W. Tofias. 2001. ``Legislative Context, Legislator Quality and Campaign Contributions (pdf); (postscript)'' Prepared for delivery at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 19-22, Palmer House, Chicago. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2000 Summer Methods Conference, UCLA, July 20-22.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2000. ``Coordination, Moderation, and Institutional Balancing in American Presidential and House Elections. (postscript); (pdf)'' Appears in the American Political Science Review, March 2000.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2000. ``Congressional Campaign Contributions, District Service and Electoral Outcomes in the United States: Statistical Tests of a Formal Game Model with Nonlinear Dynamics." In Political Complexity: Nonlinear Models of Politics, Diana Richards, ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. (html; ps)

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Jonathan Wand. 1999. ``The Dynamics of Campaign Contributions in U.S. House Elections. (postscript); (pdf)'' Paper presented at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2-5, 1999.

• Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Jonathan Wand. 1999. ``Poisson-Normal Dynamic Generalized Linear Mixed Models of U.S. House Campaign Contributions. (postscript); (pdf)'' Paper presented at the 1999 Summer Political Methodology Meetings, 15-18 July 1999 at Texas A&M University.

• Wand, Jonathan, and Walter R. Mebane Jr. 1999. ``Learning in Campaigns: A Policy Moderating Model of Individual Contributions to House Candidates. (postscript); (pdf)'' Paper presented at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 15-17, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL.

• Sekhon, Jasjeet and Walter R. Mebane, Jr. 1998. ``Genetic Optimization Using Derivatives: Theory and Application to Nonlinear Models (ps).'' Political Analysis, vol 7.

Miscellaneous

• Letter Sent to the Editor of Common Dreams Regarding ``Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked,'' by Thom Hartmann Walter R. Mebane, Jr., November 8, 2004.

• Letter Sent to Kathy Dopp (organizer of ustogether.org) Regarding the Responses to my Letter that were Posted at ustogether.org Walter R. Mebane, Jr., November 12, 2004.

Other