Electoral fraud
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Electoral fraud is the deliberate intentional interference with the process of an election. Fraud can be used to inflate the votes for the favored candidate or deflate the votes of the opposition.
History
Notorious examples of electoral fraud, especially (and ironically) in advanced democracies where such crimes tend to be noticed, reported, and corrected, are recorded. Examples include the Daley Machine in 20th century Chicago and Tammany Hall in 19th century New York. Although the penalties for getting caught may be severe, the rewards for succeeding are likely to be immense, encouraging perpetrators to continue their fraudulence. Also, in recent times, accusations of voter suppression are often made to counter those alleging election fraud.Communists seized power in Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia from nominally-democratic governments between 1946 and 1948 with the aid of electoral fraud and maintained 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, including nazi Germany, all Communist régimes, and Ba'athist 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 referenda that favor the Party in power irrespective of economic conditions and the cruelties of the government.
Some claim that the Republican Party seized power in the United States between 2000 and 2004 with the aid of electoral fraud; even so, the leadership of the Republican Party has failed to dislodge Democratic dominance from State and especially large-city governments as would be necessary for the consolidation of dictatorial power (should such be the objective of its leaders), and the possibility of the Democratic Party making large gains in one or both Houses of Congress that would weaken the hold of the Republican Party upon the federal government remains in 2006.
List of recent controversies
- 2000 Florida controversy
- 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities
- 2004 United States presidential election controversy, exit polls
- [No Paper Trail Left Behind: The Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election, by Dennis Loo, Ph.D]
- Philippine general election, 2004
- Ukrainian presidential election, 2004
- Belarusian presidential election, 2006
- Mexico, 2006
Techniques
Voter intimidation and coercion
- 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 prevents them from voting, such as by voter suppression.
- 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.
- One 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-lever or voting-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.
- 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
- Altering voting machines to favor one candidate over another.
- 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,
Inflation or Deflation of Voters Lists
- Registering false voters such as the deceased.
- Subverting voter registration rules, such as with "fagot voters." (persons who had land assigned to them prior to an election and removed immediately after an election to meet requirements to vote) , 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
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
References
External links
- [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]
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