This article has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page. It may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.Tagged since January 2008. It may require general cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since January 2008.

Part of the Politics series

Elections

Allotment (sortition) By-election Electoral fraud Show election Fixed-term election General election Primary election Indirect election Local election Referendum

Terminology

Apportionment Crossover voting Gerrymandering Redistribution (redistricting) Secret ballot Suffrage

Subseries

Political party Voting Voting systems

Lists

Elections by country Election results by country Electoral calendar

Politics portal

v • d • e

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, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates, or both. Exactly what constitutes electoral fraud under law varies from country to country; methods which are illegal in one country may not be in another. Many kinds of voter fraud are outlawed in specific electoral legislation, but others are in violation of more general laws such as those banning assault, harrassment or libel. Although technically the term 'electoral fraud' covers only those acts which are specifically illegal, the term is sometimes used to describe acts which, although legal, are considered to be morally unacceptable, outside the spirit of electoral laws or in violation of the principles of democracy. Show elections, in which only one candidate has a real chance of winning, are sometimes considered to be electoral fraud although they may comply fully with local laws.

Especially with national elections, successful electoral fraud can have the effect of a coup d'état or corruption of democracy. In a narrow election a small amount of fraud may be enough to change the overall outcome. However even if the outcome is not affected fraud can still have a damaging effect if not punished, as it can reduce voters' confidence in democracy. Even the perception of fraud can be damaging as it makes people less inclined to accept the outcome of elections. In extreme cases this can lead to the breakdown of democracy and the establishment of a dictatorship.

Electoral fraud is not limited to political polls and can happen in any kind of election where the potential gain is worth the risk for the cheater, as in elections for labor union officials, student councils, sports judging, and the awarding of merit to books, films, music, or television programming.

Despite 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 either will not be discovered or will be excused after the fact.

Examples of electoral fraud

Reconstruction, an effort to secure the voting rights of former slaves, ultimately failed in the states of the former Confederate States of America as reactionary interests used violence and intimidation against freedmen as well as political legerdemain to disenfranchise African-Americans, including poll taxes and so-called literacy tests, for almost a century after the American Civil War, ensuring the continuing hegemony of élite agrarian interests at the expense of all other interests in the South until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Enabled by the Reichstag Fire Decree on March 23, 1933, Hitler arrested or murdered all MPs from the Communist Party of Germany that were unable to flee or hide, and some from the Social Democratic Party of Germany. He also intimidated most of the other MPs into supporting him. This helped the NSDAP to get the needed two-thirds-majority to pass the Enabling Act giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

In Romania, a heavily-rigged election formalized the takeover by Communists and the destruction of a multi-party democracy in 1946.

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 through rigged elections.

Many dictatorships hold show 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.

Slobodan Milošević was accused of rigging both elections in 1996 and 2000 which was followed by mass popular protests. He resigned in October 2000.¹

It is also widely held that the Ukrainian election of 2004 was also hit by ballot rigging and voter intimidation on all sides. ²

Both virulent tabloid press accusations and continuing anecdotal public claims of postal vote fraud in both Birmingham and Hackney still dog many aspects of United Kingdom general election, 2001 and United Kingdom general election, 2005 which are being reviewed in the court of appeal.^3456789

There have also been other claims over the Euro-election of 2004 and several local elections in recent years, (including at the 2004 European and local government elections in Birmingham)¹⁰¹¹¹²

The Ugandan election of 2006 ¹³ and the Kenyan ¹⁴ election of 2007 were marred by opposition claims that the ruling party had cheated its way back in to power with the heavy use of electoral fraud. ¹³

Techniques

Electoral fraud can occur at any stage in the democratic process, but most commonly occurs during election campaigns or during vote-counting. The two main types of electoral fraud are preventing eligible voters from casting their vote freely (or voting at all); and altering the results. A list of threats to voting systems, or electoral fraud methods, is kept by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.¹⁵

Gerrymandering

Main article: Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering, or the drawing of electorate boundaries in order to produce a particular result, is usually not illegal and thus technically not electoral fraud, although it is sometimes considered to be a violation of principles of democracy.¹⁶ In some cases, gerrymandering may take the form of true electoral fraud if laws governing the drawing of electoral boundaries are broken or officials are bribed or otherwise coerced into altering boundaries in a way which favours a particular group.

Intimidation

Voter intimidation involves putting undue pressure on a voter or group of voters so that they will vote a particular way, or not at all. Absentee and other remote voting can be more open to some forms of intimidation as the voter does not have the protection and privacy of the polling location. Intimidation can take a range of forms.

• Violence or the threat of violence: In its simplist form, voters from a particular demographic or known to support a particular party or candidate are directly threatened by supporters of another party or candidate or those hired by them. In other cases supporters of a particular party make it known that if a particular village or neighbourhood is found to have the 'wrong' way, reprisals will be made against that community. Another method is to make a general threat of violence, for example a bomb threat which has the effect of closing a particular polling place, thus making it difficult for people in that area to vote.¹⁷

• Attacks on polling places: Polling places in an area known to support a particular party or candidate may be targeted for vandalism, destruction or threats, thus making it difficult or impossible for people in that area to vote.

• Legal threats: In this case voters will be made to believe, accurately or otherwise, that they are not legally entitled to vote, or that they are legally obliged to vote a particular way. Voters who are not confident about their entitlement to vote may also be intimidated by real or implied authority figures who suggest that those who vote when they are not entitled to will be imprisoned, deported or otherwise punished.¹⁸¹⁹ For example in 2004, in Wisconsin and elsewhere voters allegedly received flyers that said, “If you already voted in any election this year, you can’t vote in the Presidential Election”, implying that those who had voted in earlier primary elections were ineligible to vote. 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.”²⁰²¹ Another method, allegedly used in Cook County, Illinois in 2004, is to falsely tell particular people that they are not eligible to vote.¹⁹

• Economic threats: In company towns in which one company employs most of the working population, the company may overtly or covertly threaten workers with the loss of their jobs if they do not vote the way their employer wants them to. One method of doing this is the 'shoe polish method'. 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 afterward that unfortunate voter gets fired from his or her job.

Vote buying

Voters may be given money or other rewards for voting in a particular way, or not voting. This may also be done indirectly, for example by paying clergymen to tell their parishioners to vote for a particular party or candidate.

Misinformation

In some elections parties or candidates, or their supporters, may distribute false or misleading information in order to affect the outcome of the election. Most commonly, smear campaigns (the circulation of false rumours) are made against a particular candidate or party. Smear campaigns are not necessarily illegal and can therefore not always be considered election fraud. However in some countries smear campaigns may violate libel or slander laws and in others, as the Phillipines, such campaigns are specifically illegal. In 2007 British politician Miranda Grell was convicted under the Representation of the People Act 1983 for making a false statement about another candidate in order to gain electoral advantage.

Political smear campaigns can also double as diversionary tactics. An example from the 2008 U.S. Presidential election campaigns are Republican Party accusations²² of voter registration fraud aimed at community-based organizations, such as ACORN. Known for targeting their voter registration drives primarily in lower-income communities, ACORN has acknowledged problems²³ with some new voter registrations they have collected, citing issues²⁴ they claim²⁵ are common among major voter registration drives regardless of political affinity or party affiliation.

Another way in which misinformation can be used in voter fraud is to give voters incorrect information about the time or place of polling, thus causing them to miss their chance to vote.

Physical tampering

• Ballot stuffing, also called "ghost voting."
• Booth capturing is a persistent problem in Indian democracy where thugs of one party "capture" a polling booth and stamp their votes, threatening everyone.
• Theft or destruction of ballot boxes.
• Destroying election material in order to annul results for individual polling stations or even whole constituencies.

Physical tampering with voting machines

• Tampering with the software of a voting machine to add malicious code and alter vote totals or favor any candidate. A demonstration how this could be done on a Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) AccuVote-TS was conducted by the Center for Information Technology Policy, at Princeton University.²⁶. Another demonstration with a different voting system was shown on Dutch TV by the group "Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet".²⁷²⁸
• Tampering with the hardware of the voting machine to alter vote totals or favor any candidate.²⁹.
• Intentional misconfiguration of the ballot design to misidentify a candidates party.
• Abusing the administrative access to the machine by election officials might also allow individuals to vote multiple times.

Inflation or deflation of voters lists

• Registering false voters such as the deceased or even fictitious persons³⁰.
• 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),³¹ through "colonization" (the process of transporting groups of men from other cities and lodging them in flophouses).³²

Social engineering

• People pretending to help elderly or blind persons with their vote.
• Election officials misinforming voters of when their vote is recorded and later recording it themselves. This apparently happened during municipality elections in Landerd, Netherlands in 2006 where a candidate was also an election official and got the unusual amount of 181 votes in the polling place where he was working. In the other three polling places together he got 11 votes.³³ Only circumstantial evidence could be found because the voting machine was a direct-recording electronic voting machine, in a poll by a local newspaper the results were totally different. The case is still under prosecution.³⁴
• Electorate, precinct or party workers may cast a vote instead of the person whose vote it is, on the pretence of helping them to vote. Elderly and disabled people, as well as those who are not fluent in the language on the ballot paper, are particularly vulnerable to this. In several countries there have been allegations of retirement home residents being 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. In the United Kingdom, this is known as 'granny farming' and has been restricted in recent years by a change in the law which prevents a single voter acting as a proxy for more than two non-family members therefore requireing more people to be involved in any fraud.
• As a spoiling tactic, running candidates and creating political parties with similar names as the main rivals in a constituency with the aim that enough voters will be misled into voting for the false candidate or party to influence the results.

By voters

• Impersonating a voter.
• Voting in multiple precincts, carousel voting. Men who were known to sell their vote and vote in multiple precincts were known as "floaters."³² In the United States, fifty-two people have been convicted of federal election fraud for voting in multiple locations since 2002. In some countries like El Salvador, Namibia or Afghanistan voters get a finger marked with election ink to prevent multiple votes. In Afghanistan's elections of 2005, this method failed as the ink used could easily be removed.
• Voter import: In Bulgaria the controversial Movement for Rights and Freedoms is said to combine the former two, by "importing" voters from Turkey at the day of the election, who then vote in every single polling station within a city. Similarly, in Malaysia immigrants from neighbouring Philippines and Indonesia were given citizenship together with voting rights in order for a political party to "dominate" the state of Sabah in a controversial process referred to as Project IC.³⁵
• Vote selling: This is possible as long as a voter has a way to prove how he voted. Because of this a secret ballot is preferred and postal- or internet voting is just accepted as an exception in most electoral systems. (also see Blocks of Five) In Mexico and several other places, voters willing to sell their vote are asked to take a picture of their ballot with a cellphone camera to validate their payment.
• Changing parties: voters (in elections for party leader) who change membership of parties in order to elect a weaker candidate to run against the leader of their original party.

During tabulation in the polling place

• Bribery, corruption or threatening of election officials.
• Destroying all ballots if the balance was not as desired.
• Tampering with tabulation software (applicable only to computer assisted tabulation).
• Spoiling votes: for example, by marking more candidates than allowed.
• Counting ballots more than once if they contain votes as wanted by the fraudster. The opposite is to let them disappear in case of unwanted votes.³⁶
• Obstructing vote counting.³⁷
• Double marking. A corrupt election official will conceal a piece of pencil lead underneath his fingernail, in which he covertly marks an unvoted box in an area where the maximum number of votes has already been cast. Since this ballot is then considered overvoted, it is discarded, effectively throwing out the voter's vote.

During central tabulation of the results

• Bribery or corruption of election officials. This apparently happened in the Philippine general election, 2004 and is suspected in the Italian general election, 2006.
• Interfering in the data transmission.

Through legislative means

• 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 system vulnerable to fraud).
• Creating election deadlines that are unreasonable to certain portions of the electorate, such as requiring active duty military ballots to be delivered before it would be possible for them to be mailed.

Election fraud in legislature

Election fraud in legislature is qualitatively different because the number of voters is smaller. For example,

• The two-thirds majority Hitler needed to pass the Enabling Act, which gave him dictatorial power, was only attained by arresting enough members of the opposition. The act had a two-year expiration date, which had the option for renewal. After the start of the Second World War, the last opposition to the act's renewal was extinguished. Hitler treated the Enabling Act's renewal as a matter of appearance, knowing he could get the renewal rubber stamped by a Reichstag made up entirely of Nazi party members.
• Creating additional barriers to vote can also be considered fraud, such as requiring extensive forms of identification.
• The controversial method of using a paper-clip or bubblegum to jam a representative's voting button in absence.³⁸
• In 2004 security expert Bruce Schneier published a theoretical paper how election fraud in the papal election could be done.³⁹

Fraud prevention

The introduction of secret ballots in the 19th century made electoral fraud more difficult, forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery. Secret balloting appears to have been first implemented in the former Australian colony -- now a state -- of Tasmania on 7 February 1856. The first President of the United States elected using a secret ballot was president Grover Cleveland in 1892.

The best way to protect the electorate from electoral fraud is to have an election process which is completely transparent to all voters, from nomination of candidates through casting of the votes and tabulation. A key feature in insuring the integrity of any part of the electoral process is a strict chain of custody.

To prevent fraud in central tabulation, there has to be a public list of the results from every single polling place. This is the only way for voters to prove that the results they witnessed in their election office are correctly incorporated into the totals.

Various forms of statistics can be indicators for election fraud e.g. exit polls which are very different from the final results. Having reliable exit polls could keep the amount of fraud low to avoid a controversy. Other indicators might be unusual high numbers of invalid ballots, overvoting or undervoting. It has to be kept in mind that most statistics do not reflect the types of election fraud which prevent citizens from voting at all like intimidation or misinformation.

There may, however, be a problem with exit-polls or other verifications methods dependent on the honesty of the voters; for instance, in the Czech Republic (previously part of Czechoslovakia), some voters are afraid or ashamed to admit that they voted for the Communist Party, often claiming to have voted for other party than Communists (exit polls in 2002 gave Communist party 2-3 percents lower gain than was the actual case).

Prosecution

In countries with strong laws and effective legal systems, lawsuits can be brought against those who have allegedly committed fraud; but determent with legal prosecution would not be enough. Although the penalties for getting caught may be severe, the rewards for succeeding are likely to be worth the risk. The rewards range from benefits in contracting to total control of a country.

In Germany there are currently calls for reform of these laws because lawsuits can be and are usually prolonged by the newly elected Bundestag⁴⁰

Election observation

International observers (bilateral and multilateral) may be invited to observe the elections (examples include election observation by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), European Union election observation missions, observation missions of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), as well as international observation organized by NGOs, such as European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), etc.). Some countries also invite foreign observers (i.e. bi-lateral observation, as opposed to multi-lateral observation by international observers).

In addition, national legislations of countries often permit domestic observation. Domestic election observers can be either partisan (i.e. representing interests of one or a group of election contestants) or non-partisant (usually done by civil society groups). Legislations of different countries permit various forms and extents of international and domestic election observation.

Election observation is also prescribed by various international legal instrucments. For example, paragraph 8 of the 1990 Copenhagen Document states that "The [OSCE] participating States consider that the presence of observers, both foreign and domestic, can enhance the electoral process for States in which elections are taking place. They therefore invite observers from any other CSCE participating States and any appropriate private institutions and organizations who may wish to do so to observe the course of their national election proceedings, to the extent permitted by law. They will also endeavour to facilitate similar access for election proceedings held below the national level. Such observers will undertake not to interfere in the electoral proceedings".

Examples from the USA include:

• Justice Department⁴¹
• Political parties, e.g., the United States Democratic Party's election protection program.⁴²
• Poll watchers from election integrity groups. Most of them also offer information websites and phone hotlines for voters to report problems. Some of them also help with voter registration. Examples are VoteTrust USA and Verified Voting Foundation.

Critics note that observers cannot spot certain types of election fraud like targeted voter suppression or manipulated software of voting machines.

End-to-end Auditablity

End-to-end auditable voting systems provide voters with a receipt to allow them to verify their vote was cast correctly, and an audit mechanism to verify that the results were tabulated correctly and all votes were cast by valid voters. However, the ballot receipt does not permit voters to prove to others how they voted, since this would open the door towards forced voting and blackmail. End-to-end systems include Punchscan and Scantegrity, the latter being an add-on to optical scan systems instead of a replacement.

Testing and certification of electronic voting

Further information: Certification of voting machines

One method for verifying voting machine accuracy is Parallel Testing, the process of using an independent set of results compared against the original machine results. Parallel testing can be done prior to or during an election. During an election, one form of parallel testing is the VVPAT. This method is only effective if statistically significant numbers of voters verify that their intended vote matches both the electronic and paper votes.

On election day, a statistically significant number of voting machines can be randomly selected from polling locations and used for testing. This can be used to detect potential fraud or malfunction unless manipulated software would only start to cheat after a certain event like a voter pressing a special key combination (Or a machine might cheat only if someone doesn't perform the combination, which requires more insider access but fewer voters).

Another form of testing is Logic & Accuracy Testing (L&A), pre-election testing of voting machines using test votes to determine if they are functioning correctly.

Another method to insure the integrity of electronic voting machines is independent software verification and certification. Once software is certified, code signing can insure the software certified is identical to that which is used on election day. Some argue certification would be more effective if voting machine software was publicly available or open source.

Certification and testing processes conducted publicly and with oversight from interested parties can promote transparency in the election process. The integrity of those conducting testing can be questioned.

Testing and certification can prevent voting machines from being a black box where voters can not be sure that counting inside is done as intended.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Electoral fraud

See also

• ACCURATE
• American Center for Voting Rights
• Ballot stuffing
• Branch stacking
• Caging list
• Cooping
• Florida Central Voter File (purging controversy)
• Open Voting Consortium
• Political corruption
• Postal voting
• Show election
• Smear campaign

References

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.
• 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?