Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Voting Fraud shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Voting Fraud offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Voting Fraud at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Voting Fraud? Wrong! If the Voting Fraud is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Voting Fraud then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Voting Fraud? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Voting Fraud and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Voting Fraud wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Voting Fraud then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Voting Fraud site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Voting Fraud, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Voting Fraud, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

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.

Election fraud is probably as old as elections themselves. The first suspicion dates back to 471 BC in the Athenian democracy. Archaeologists found 190 pieces of Ostracism used then as ballots with only 14 different handwritings.

Electoral fraud is illegal in most countries including dictatorships likely to both control the electoral process and excuse any measures that achieve a desired result.

Especially with national elections, successful election fraud can have the effect of a coup d'état or Election#Corruption of democracies. But even if it does not go this far, the 500 million dollar campaigning during the United States general elections, 2006 shows how much might be at stake in some countries. CAMPAIGN 2006: 11 Days to go 'Orgy' of spending on political ads -- $500 million breaks state record (SF Chronicle, October 27, 2006) Insider Risks in Elections (Bruce Schneier, July 2004)

A look at some List of narrow elections with a margin of less than 0.1% shows that sometimes there would not be much fraud needed to change the outcome.

Extreme examples of election fraud are Show election that are a common event in dictatorial regimes that still feel the need to establish some element of public legitimacy, some even showing 100% of eligible voters voting on behalf of the régime. Most people only call a regime democratic as long as electoral fraud is rare, isolated, and small, or that electoral fraud by opposing groups roughly cancels the effects.

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.

History 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.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 States and territories of Australia -- of Tasmania on 7 February 1856. The first President of the United States elected using a secret ballot was president Grover Cleveland in 1892.

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 Ku Klux Klan 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, intimidated or murdered all members of the Communist Party of Germany and some of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. This helped the NSDAP to get the needed two-thirds-majority to pass the Enabling Act of 1933 giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

Some examples of election fraud in the 20th century include Communist Party 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 kleptocracy 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 Richard J. Daley Political machine in 20th century Chicago and Tammany Hall in 19th century New York.

There have been cases of electoral fraud with postal votes in the UK (including at the UK elections, 2004 in Birmingham) Judge upholds vote-rigging claims (BBC, 4. April 2005) New fears over postal vote fraud (Guardian, 13. April 2005) Labour to halt postal vote fraud but only after election (Times, April 11, 2005) and in the US in 2005. Connors pleads guilty to election fraud (Times Union, November 30. 2006)

List of controversial elections

Techniques Voter intimidation and coercion

Physical tampering

====Physical tampering with voting machines====

A list of other threats to voting systems is kept by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Threats to Voting Systems (NIST)

The most comprehensive study on attacking electronic voting machines has been compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice. The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World

Inflation or deflation of voters lists | last = Williamson | first = Chilton | title = American Suffrage from Property to Democracy | publisher = Princeton U. Press | date = 1968 | location = Princeton, NJ | id = ASIN B000FMPMK6 --> through "colonization" (the process of transporting groups of men from other cities and lodging them in [flophouses).{{cite book | last = Saltman | first = Roy G. | authorlink = Roy G. Saltman | title = The History and Politics of Voting Technology | publisher = Palgrave Macmillan | date = Jan 2006 | url = http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403963924 | id = ISBN 1-4039-6392-4-->

Social engineering

By voters | last = Saltman | first = Roy G. | authorlink = Roy G. Saltman | title = The History and Politics of Voting Technology | publisher = Palgrave Macmillan | date = Jan 2006 | url = http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403963924 | id = ISBN 1-4039-6392-4--> In the USA Fifty-two people have been convicted of federal election fraud for voting in multiple locations since 2002. Let The Recounts Begin In some countries like El Salvador, Namibia or Afghanistan voters get a finger marked with ink to prevent multiple votes. In the Afghanistan elections in 2005 this didn't work well because the ink could be rubbed off.

During tabulation in the polling place

During central tabulation of the results

Through legislative means

Smear campaign

Election fraud in legislature Election fraud in legislature is different because the number of voters is a lot smaller. Still there can be some examples found:

Fraud prevention 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 to 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.

Preventing citizens from voting The best way to prevent voter suppression is to protect the secrecy of the votes. The targeting of voters using caging lists can be reduced by protecting data privacy of the population. Any voter intimidation should be brought to court.

There should be regulations on the minimum number of polling places, election officials and voting machines per voter in a district. This prevent officials from artificially producing long lines in districts with unwanted political tendencies. Voting machines should be tested before the election starts. Voting on a Sunday or public holiday also would take the timely pressure off the voters.

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 Bundestag Reform der Wahlprüfung (German)

Election observation In countries with high rates of corruption and in countries new to democracy, international observers, e.g., from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) may be brought in to observe the elections. OSCE has observed over 150 elections and referendums between 1995 and 2006, sending more than 15,000 observers. Recently observed elections have been the Afghanistan presidential elections in October 2004, the 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities#International election monitoring and the Belarusian presidential election, 2006.

Besides international observers there might be local observers:

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 (E2E) 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. The ballot receipt does not permit voters to prove to others how they voted.

Testing and certification of electronic voting 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 Statistical significance numbers of voters verify that their intended vote matches both the electronic and paper votes.

On election day, a Statistical significance 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 a 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 of voting machines. 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 Voting where voters can not be sure that counting inside is done as intended.

See also

References External links

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.

Election fraud is probably as old as elections themselves. The first suspicion dates back to 471 BC in the Athenian democracy. Archaeologists found 190 pieces of Ostracism used then as ballots with only 14 different handwritings.

Electoral fraud is illegal in most countries including dictatorships likely to both control the electoral process and excuse any measures that achieve a desired result.

Especially with national elections, successful election fraud can have the effect of a coup d'état or Election#Corruption of democracies. But even if it does not go this far, the 500 million dollar campaigning during the United States general elections, 2006 shows how much might be at stake in some countries. CAMPAIGN 2006: 11 Days to go 'Orgy' of spending on political ads -- $500 million breaks state record (SF Chronicle, October 27, 2006) Insider Risks in Elections (Bruce Schneier, July 2004)

A look at some List of narrow elections with a margin of less than 0.1% shows that sometimes there would not be much fraud needed to change the outcome.

Extreme examples of election fraud are Show election that are a common event in dictatorial regimes that still feel the need to establish some element of public legitimacy, some even showing 100% of eligible voters voting on behalf of the régime. Most people only call a regime democratic as long as electoral fraud is rare, isolated, and small, or that electoral fraud by opposing groups roughly cancels the effects.

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.

History 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.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 States and territories of Australia -- of Tasmania on 7 February 1856. The first President of the United States elected using a secret ballot was president Grover Cleveland in 1892.

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 Ku Klux Klan 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, intimidated or murdered all members of the Communist Party of Germany and some of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. This helped the NSDAP to get the needed two-thirds-majority to pass the Enabling Act of 1933 giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

Some examples of election fraud in the 20th century include Communist Party 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 kleptocracy 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 Richard J. Daley Political machine in 20th century Chicago and Tammany Hall in 19th century New York.

There have been cases of electoral fraud with postal votes in the UK (including at the UK elections, 2004 in Birmingham) Judge upholds vote-rigging claims (BBC, 4. April 2005) New fears over postal vote fraud (Guardian, 13. April 2005) Labour to halt postal vote fraud but only after election (Times, April 11, 2005) and in the US in 2005. Connors pleads guilty to election fraud (Times Union, November 30. 2006)

List of controversial elections

Techniques Voter intimidation and coercion

Physical tampering

====Physical tampering with voting machines====

A list of other threats to voting systems is kept by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Threats to Voting Systems (NIST)

The most comprehensive study on attacking electronic voting machines has been compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice. The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World

Inflation or deflation of voters lists | last = Williamson | first = Chilton | title = American Suffrage from Property to Democracy | publisher = Princeton U. Press | date = 1968 | location = Princeton, NJ | id = ASIN B000FMPMK6 --> through "colonization" (the process of transporting groups of men from other cities and lodging them in [flophouses).{{cite book | last = Saltman | first = Roy G. | authorlink = Roy G. Saltman | title = The History and Politics of Voting Technology | publisher = Palgrave Macmillan | date = Jan 2006 | url = http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403963924 | id = ISBN 1-4039-6392-4-->

Social engineering

By voters | last = Saltman | first = Roy G. | authorlink = Roy G. Saltman | title = The History and Politics of Voting Technology | publisher = Palgrave Macmillan | date = Jan 2006 | url = http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403963924 | id = ISBN 1-4039-6392-4--> In the USA Fifty-two people have been convicted of federal election fraud for voting in multiple locations since 2002. Let The Recounts Begin In some countries like El Salvador, Namibia or Afghanistan voters get a finger marked with ink to prevent multiple votes. In the Afghanistan elections in 2005 this didn't work well because the ink could be rubbed off.

During tabulation in the polling place

During central tabulation of the results

Through legislative means

Smear campaign

Election fraud in legislature Election fraud in legislature is different because the number of voters is a lot smaller. Still there can be some examples found:

Fraud prevention 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 to 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.

Preventing citizens from voting The best way to prevent voter suppression is to protect the secrecy of the votes. The targeting of voters using caging lists can be reduced by protecting data privacy of the population. Any voter intimidation should be brought to court.

There should be regulations on the minimum number of polling places, election officials and voting machines per voter in a district. This prevent officials from artificially producing long lines in districts with unwanted political tendencies. Voting machines should be tested before the election starts. Voting on a Sunday or public holiday also would take the timely pressure off the voters.

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 Bundestag Reform der Wahlprüfung (German)

Election observation In countries with high rates of corruption and in countries new to democracy, international observers, e.g., from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) may be brought in to observe the elections. OSCE has observed over 150 elections and referendums between 1995 and 2006, sending more than 15,000 observers. Recently observed elections have been the Afghanistan presidential elections in October 2004, the 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities#International election monitoring and the Belarusian presidential election, 2006.

Besides international observers there might be local observers:

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 (E2E) 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. The ballot receipt does not permit voters to prove to others how they voted.

Testing and certification of electronic voting 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 Statistical significance numbers of voters verify that their intended vote matches both the electronic and paper votes.

On election day, a Statistical significance 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 a 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 of voting machines. 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 Voting where voters can not be sure that counting inside is done as intended.

See also

References External links



 

Voting Fraud



 
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