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You just have to know that the guy who you are voting for doesn't also show up. That seems rather tough.....

zimpenfish 9y ago
That's if you only fake one vote, yes. But it would be relatively easy to visit a whole bunch of polling stations (even on foot you could do 15-20 in a day). And also easy to get a whole bunch of people doing this. (I'm surprised this hasn't actually been tried before now.)
- Chathamization 9y ago
  > But it would be relatively easy to visit a whole bunch of polling stations That would make it harder. If you try it for one vote in one place there's a decent chance you might get away with it. You have to hope that the person isn't voting at the same time you are, that the poll workers don't recognize the person, that others voting there don't, etc. It's quite possible you'll get caught, considering these are local areas, but there's enough people that you might get away with it once. But try it 10-20 times, and the likelihood that you're going to get caught increases a lot. And even trying it 10-20 times doesn't mean 10-20 votes, since if the person already voted you'll get a provisional ballot. So even trying to get a handful of extra votes is extremely risky. If you tried to organize a dozen people to do the same, the chance you're going to get caught goes up massively - both because of the possibility of getting caught in the polling place mentioned before, and the fact that if you try to organize a group like that there's a good chance something will leak out/someone will tell people. You're in a situation where it's very likely to be caught and, even in the off chance that you succeeded, you wouldn't even be creating enough votes to impact the vast majority of elections. This is why in person voter fraud is so rare.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  It has - there were Facebook posts from students in the last UK election boasting that they'd voted multiple times. Nothing happened to them. I thought you had to show ID to vote in the UK. But I've done postal voting for the last 10 years or so. So I guess my memory is bad.

That's if you only fake one vote, yes. But it would be relatively easy to visit a whole bunch of polling stations (even on foot you could do 15-20 in a day). And also easy to get a whole bunch of people doing this. (I'm surprised this hasn't actually been tried before now.)

Chathamization 9y ago
> But it would be relatively easy to visit a whole bunch of polling stations That would make it harder. If you try it for one vote in one place there's a decent chance you might get away with it. You have to hope that the person isn't voting at the same time you are, that the poll workers don't recognize the person, that others voting there don't, etc. It's quite possible you'll get caught, considering these are local areas, but there's enough people that you might get away with it once. But try it 10-20 times, and the likelihood that you're going to get caught increases a lot. And even trying it 10-20 times doesn't mean 10-20 votes, since if the person already voted you'll get a provisional ballot. So even trying to get a handful of extra votes is extremely risky. If you tried to organize a dozen people to do the same, the chance you're going to get caught goes up massively - both because of the possibility of getting caught in the polling place mentioned before, and the fact that if you try to organize a group like that there's a good chance something will leak out/someone will tell people. You're in a situation where it's very likely to be caught and, even in the off chance that you succeeded, you wouldn't even be creating enough votes to impact the vast majority of elections. This is why in person voter fraud is so rare.
peoplewindow 9y ago
It has - there were Facebook posts from students in the last UK election boasting that they'd voted multiple times. Nothing happened to them. I thought you had to show ID to vote in the UK. But I've done postal voting for the last 10 years or so. So I guess my memory is bad.