Photo by V. Miller
March 16, 2005
Color of Elections
Election Corruption Through Profiling
Dustin James Shea, 13, Jacksonville, Ill.
Jordan William Pennell, 13, Jacksonville, Ill.
Finalists, Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge, 2004
Project background: Last year, Dustin and Jordan surveyed the color preferences of their classmates. When they became concerned about the amount of personal information collected over the Internet, they wanted to find out if information such as color preference could be used to corrupt an election.
Tactics and results: Dustin and Jordan organized a mock presidential election. They chose Presidents Garfield and Hayes as candidates because they were obscure, looked alike, and had similar backgrounds. They then printed individualized ballots. Garfield ballots were printed on paper of the color the voter liked, while Hayes ballots were printed on paper of the color the voter disliked. To minimize the impact of the actual candidate on the outcome, they printed half of the Garfield ballots with Hayes' face and name, and vice versa. They also ran a control election with all ballots printed on white paper.
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| Photo by V. Miller |
The control election was one vote from a tie, but the color-rigged election favored Garfield 62 percent to 38 percent.
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