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Apart from everything else, if you're not trying to ensure that a candidate wins, regardless of their popularity, and are instead trying to skew the odds toward
by cge 4y ago
Apart from everything else, if you're not trying to ensure that a candidate wins, regardless of their popularity, and are instead trying to skew the odds toward a candidate who already has a reasonable chance of winning, election fraud becomes easier and harder to detect.
As others have pointed out, these "judges" were actually minor, elected election officials, close to being volunteers. They were doing this to make small additions at a local scale. There was no need to add fake voter registrations, to modify vote counting, or to add votes not connected to legitimately registered voters: they just added ballots and records for registered voters they knew weren't going to show up. At a local enough scale, you might simply know, personally, of voters who are out of town, for example.
This doesn't require any major conspiracy at multiple levels. Depending on the organization of the election, it might be possible for a single poll worker to do it on their own. It would be very hard to defend against at higher levels. Most voter ID ideas wouldn't help (short of digital IDs and cryptographic signatures), because it's being done by the people who would be checking the IDs. Having multiple, adversarial officials keeping records of each person coming in could help, but now you've multiplied the number of people you need at each precinct. Contacting people listed as having voted could help, but they could well have been chosen specifically because they would be unlikely to notice or respond. Checking counts and registrations wouldn't help, because the counts and registrations would be valid. Voting technology mostly doesn't matter, and in fact, the method is likely easier with paper ballots.
It is limited in how much of an effect it can have, of course, but in tight races, or down-ballot races where few people actually fill out those races on their ballot, that might be all you need, or you might be interested in just statistically helping your party by making larger numbers of your party's candidates win, rather than helping one particular candidate.
- tptacek 4y agoEJs pretty much everywhere are volunteers. A big part of the integrity of the system comes down to controls that are instituted at the precinct level, where there's less oversight but also less ability to plausibly influence the election, coupled with much stricter oversight at the central counting stations. Downballot elections typically happen concurrently with statewide elections, so that doesn't help you: they don't get counted separately, and you're still stuck evading the same controls that protect the statewide elections. There are tight elections, but in a reasonably run election system, any one precinct is going to have a very narrow margin --- in the best case for attackers --- to influence results. You can't predict where that narrow margin is going to actually be helpful. But it's going to be incredibly risky anywhere you try it. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a crime.
- ipspam 4y agoYou hit the nail on the head: "they just added ballots and records for registered voters they knew weren't going to show up." Which is exactly why charities and get out the vote campaigns shouldn't be given voter roles and voter statuses.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago>Most voter ID ideas wouldn't help (short of digital IDs and cryptographic signatures), because it's being done by the people who would be checking the IDs. Not exactly. Keep going on this scenario. If voters had to show ID like in Europe, when someone shows up and is denied to vote because “they already voted” it would be an immediate red flag for fraud. With the IDless system, someone could be denied and it does not necessarily imply malice. There is a whole system of provincial ballots - because this and other mistakes in ballots happen often enough. Voter ID wouldn’t secure anything but in Europe it brings more confidence, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t in the USA.
- lbriner 4y ago> Not exactly Yes, exactly. The ID checks "at the gate" don't help if the people on the inside running the system can just go and add some additional votes, either for people who didn't turn up (which they know about) or if there is no cryptographic proof of attendence then just by going up to the machine, who doesn't know how many voters are expected anyway, and presses the button a few more times. The truth is that a lot of the system is fundamentally based on trust so it is crucial that people who commit fraud against voting are treated as extreme criminals who are trying to subvert the importance of a democratic vote. Not sure how many people would fiddle it if they risked getting a 30 year prison sentence.