Electoral fraud

Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Acts of fraud tend to involve affecting vote counts to bring about a desired election outcome, either by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate or depressing the vote share of the rival candidates.

History

While there are many known instances of electoral fraud, it remains a difficult phenomenon to study and characterize. This follows from its inherent illegality. Harsh penalties aimed at deterring electoral fraud make it likely that any individuals who perpetrate acts of fraud do so with the expectation that it will not be discovered.

Some examples in the 20th century include Communists seizing power in Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia from nominally democratic governments between 1946 and 1948 with the aid of electoral fraud and maintaining formal power through rigged elections. Ferdinand Marcos, once fairly elected as President of the Philippines, remained in power and became increasingly dictatorial and kleptocratic as he succeeded in marginalizing dissent and opposition.

Many dictatorships hold elections in which results predictably show that nearly 100% of all eligible voters vote and that nearly 100% of those eligible voters vote for the prescribed (often only) list of candidates for office or for referendums that favor the Party in power irrespective of economic conditions and the cruelties of the government.

Some notorious examples of electoral fraud in the United States of America include the widespread election manipulation committed by the Daley Machine in 20th century Chicago and Tammany Hall in 19th century New York.

Many point out that there is strong evidence that the Republican Party committed electoral fraud in the United States in the 2000 and 2004 general elections. They allege that Republican partisans were responsible for removing valid voters from the registration rolls, intimidating voters and polling place workers, preventing recounts, and tampering with the new electronic voting machines. Unprecedented discrepencies between exit polling and actual election results, always to the benefit of Republican candidates, are cited as evidence for these allegations. It has been noted that the president of the parent company of Diebold Election Systems, which manufactures many of the electronic voting machines, was among many corporate executives who pledged to "deliver the election" for George W. Bush.

It was noted in October of 2006 by political scientist/columnist Michael Barone that there were several studies by polling companies which indicated that there was bias in the exit polls conducted in 2004. One study noted that the highest levels of bias were indicated when the exit polls were conducted by female graduate students.

List of recent controversies

• 2000 United States election
• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities
• 2004 United States presidential election controversy, exit polls
• Philippine general election, 2004
• Ukrainian presidential election, 2004
• Belarusian presidential election, 2006
• Mexican general election, 2006
• Washington gubernatorial election, 2004

Techniques

Voter intimidation and coercion

• Intimidation of voters that prevents them from voting, such as by voter suppression.
• For example, in 2004, police stationed outside a Cook County, Illinois, polling place were requesting photo ID and telling voters if they had been convicted of a felony that they could not vote.[1]
• Also in 2004, for example, In Pima, Arizona, voters at multiple polls were confronted by an individual, wearing a black t-shirt with “US Constitution Enforcer” and a military-style belt that gave the appearance he was armed. He asked voters if they were citizens, accompanied by a cameraman who filmed the encounters.[2]
• Voters often complain about misinformation campaigns via flyers or phone calls encouraging them to vote on a day other than election day or spreading false information regarding their right to vote. In Polk County, Florida, in 2004, for example, voters received a call telling them to vote on November 3. Also in 2004, in Wisconsin and elsewhere voters received flyers that said, “If you already voted in any election this year, you can’t vote in the Presidential Election.” Also, “If anybody in your family has ever been found guilty of anything you can’t vote in the Presidential Election.” Finally, “If you violate any of these laws, you can get 10 years in prison and your children will be taken away from you.”[3]
• Another simple, but notorious method of voter intimidation is the shoe polish method, which is often used in company towns. This method entails coating the voting machines lever or button of the opposing candidate(s) with shoe polish. To understand how this works, take the example of an employee of the company who, against the advice of the party in power, votes for the opposing candidate(s). After they leave the voting booth, a conspirator to the fraud (a precinct captain or other local V.I.P.) will handshake the voter. The conspirator will then subtly check their hand for any shoe polish and will note that the voter has left some shoe polish after the handshake. Soon afterwards that unfortunate voter gets fired from their job.
• Buying or coercing votes from persons who would normally vote for another candidate or would not vote at all, but who are nevertheless eligible to vote.
• Intimidation of voters that alters their vote. "Four-legged voting," where precinct workers would pull the levers on voting machines instead of the voter.
• Absentee and other remote voting can be more open to some forms of intimidation and coercion as the voter does not have the protection and privacy of the polling location.
• In Britain, one historically popular technique has been long known as granny farming, after a contemptuous slang designation for retirement homes. In this, party activists visit retirement homes, purportedly to help the elderly and immobile exercise their voting rights. Residents are asked to fill out 'absentee voter' forms, allowing them a proxy or postal vote. When the forms are signed and gathered, they are then secretly rewritten as applications for proxy votes, naming party activists or their friends and relatives as the proxies. These people, unknown to the voter, then cast the vote for the party of their choice. This trick relies on elderly care home residents typically being absent-minded, or suffering from dementia.

Physical tampering

• Subverting the vote casting process by recording multiple votes without voters, often called "ghost voting."
• Ballot stuffing
• Booth capturing is a persistent problem in Indian democracy where thugs of one party "capture" a polling booth and stamp their votes, threatening everyone.
• "Losing" or "misplacing" ballot boxes.
• Destroying election material in order to annul results for individual polling stations or even whole constituencies,

Voting machines

• Changing the software of the voting machine to count wrong.
• Deleting all votes if the balance was not as desired. Voting machines without paper trail leave no possibility for a recount.
• Altering voting machines to favor one candidate over another, for example with different sizes of the sensitive area of a touchscreen. This accidently happend in the 2006 elections in florida.
• Man in the middle attack between screen, keyboard and voting machine., through "colonization" (the process of transporting groups of men from other cities and lodging them in flophouses.

By voters

• Voting in multiple precincts, carousel voting. Men who were known to sell their vote and vote in multiple precincts were known as "floaters."
• Impersonating a voter.

During tabulation

• Bribery or corruption of election officials.

Through legislative means

• Gerrymandering (drawing voting district lines in such a way as to obtain a favorable result) or including prison inmates in a local population are also often argued to be forms of electoral fraud.
• Creating additional barriers to vote can also be considered fraud, such as requiring extensive forms of identification.
• Mandating voter matching standards be too strict (purging voters from the rolls and disenfranchising eligible voters) or too loose (leaving ineligible voters on the rolls and making the vulnerability to fraud).
• Creating election deadlines that are unreasonable to certain portions of the electorate, such as requiring active duty military ballots be delivered before it would be possible for them to be mailed.

Fraud prevention

In countries with strong laws and effective legal systems, lawsuits can be brought against those who have allegedly committed fraud. In countries with high rates of corruption and in countries new to democracy, international observers may be brought in to observe the elections.

See also

• Ballot stuffing
• Branch stacking
• Dirty tricks
• Purging of the Florida State Registry
• Political corruption
• Show election

External links

• Voter Fraud - an article from the ACE Project
• Independent Verification: Essential Action to Assure Integrity in the Voting Process, Roy G. Saltman, August 22, 2006
• Legal provisions to prevent Electoral Fraud - an article from the ACE Project
• Was the 2004 Election Stolen?by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., June 1, 2006.
• Black Box Voting
• Article referencing "four-legged voting"
• Vote Fraud Actors and Motivation
• Vote Fraud Strategy and Tactics
• No Paper Trail Left Behind: The Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election, by Dennis Loo, Ph.D
• Electronic Voting: Safe or Fraudulent?