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Using SAS software to expose voter fraud, the Miami Herald wins Pulitzer Prize This week the Miami Herald won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for a series of stories that revealed rampant voter fraud in Miami’s 1997 mayoral election – and SAS� software’s powerful analytic capabilities were a key part of the paper’s computer-assisted investigation. The Herald’s exposure of corruption via the series ‘Dirty Votes: the race for Miami mayor’ led to at least 42 arrests, an overturned election, appointment of a new mayor, and efforts to reform election laws. Dan Keating, the Miami Herald’s research/technology editor said "The flexibility of SAS software allowed us to make hard and soft merges between a variety of data sources, such as the voter roll, property appraiser records, city personnel files, absentee witness lists, death certificates, and convicted felons. Printouts of those merges provided the ‘tip sheets’ that reporters used to hit the streets and track down illegal votes. We had to work fast, so the ability to handle diverse datasets in various formats – and to quickly combine and clean the records – was a huge help." This is not the first time the Miami Herald has used SAS software for computer-assisted analysis and won an award - in 1993 it won a Pulitzer award for revealing how lax zoning, inspection, and building codes contributed to destruction by Hurricane Andrew. And last year, the Herald was a Pulitzer finalist for its reporting on analyses done on a series of databases to reveal police theft through fraudulent overtime. "SAS Institute congratulates the Miami Herald on its use of technology – and persistent, responsible reporting – to bring this fraud to light," said Dr Jim Goodnight, president and co-founder of SAS Institute, the world’s leading provider of software for data mining and analytical solutions. "We are delighted that, for a second time, SAS software has contributed to Pulitzer-level journalism at the Herald." Monday’s announcement of the 1999 winners and finalists by the Columbia University Journalism Schools, which administers the Pulitzer Prize programme, came as the year’s largest single gathering of SAS software users in the world – the SAS Users Group International (SUGI) – convened in Miami Beach, just six miles from the Herald’s offices. Around 3,000 people from around the world are attending SUGI this year.