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Election Fraud - How Prevalent?

BPSCG

Penultimate Amazing
B
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Mar 27, 2002
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Do you think we're really having significantly more election fraud this year than we used to?

Or is it just that this is without doubt the most heavily-scrutinized election ever, and that both major parties are A) watching the process like hawks to make sure the other guy isn't doing it, while B) doing it themselves?
 
It's really too early to determine the "voter fraud" question. WIth those legions of sharks, errr lawyers, swimming about, Nov 2 will be a long night.

Charlie (vote early and vote often!) Monoxide
 
I would guess yes in Oregon due to the mail in ballots.

I think at this very moment someone in Oregon is filling out his one hundred mail in ballots. Another 5 people are filling out ballots for their children away at college and 10 people are filling out ballots for their spouses.

CBL
 
I think this unprecedented attention being given to the possibility of election fraud has to do with the unusual closeness of the race. When you have a more considerable margin separating the candidates, any form of chicanery that would be negligible enough to keep under wraps wouldn't have nearly as great of a chance of affecting the outcome of the election. Though, there have been tight contests in the past where this hasn't happened, but, then again, we still can't deny how the Florida "butterfly" ballot fiasco has seriously compounded voter anxiety this time around.
 
I haven't seen any statistics that would say either way, and I doubt we will until after the election.

If I were a betting man, though, I woud put good money on there being more voter fraud this year. Politics is a game where morals and ethics are liabilities and the election is so tight that both parties know that even a little bit of cheating can tip the scales in their favor, so the 'risk vs. reward' factor operates much more heavily in favor of reward. So this would encourage them to cheat like crazy. I can only hope that cheating by both parties will cause them to cancel each other out.
 
Nyarlathotep said:
I haven't seen any statistics that would say either way, and I doubt we will until after the election.

If I were a betting man, though, I woud put good money on there being more voter fraud this year. Politics is a game where morals and ethics are liabilities and the election is so tight that both parties know that even a little bit of cheating can tip the scales in their favor, so the 'risk vs. reward' factor operates much more heavily in favor of reward. So this would encourage them to cheat like crazy. I can only hope that cheating by both parties will cause them to cancel each other out.
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Do you mean more than last year or more than ever?

Because while I do not know about last year, I sincerely doubt this is as bad as it gets considering the type of shenanigans that occurred before in places like Tammany Hall.
 
Grammatron said:
Do you mean more than last year or more than ever?

Because while I do not know about last year, I sincerely doubt this is as bad as it gets considering the type of shenanigans that occurred before in places like Tammany Hall.
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More than the last election or any election within my memory. But you have a point about Tammany Hall and such because times were such that corruption could be open and blatant, which at least for now, is no longer the case.
 
Honestly, I don't think there will necessarily be more voter fraud than before. I just think that the fraud will MATTER more. 7-10% fraud, just to pull a number out, doesn't matter in a landslide. But 7-10% fraud matters a hell of a lot in a close race.
 
I'm going to be the oddball, and suggest that election fraud is almost non-existent.

I think about minor crimes that are present in America today. Take insurance fraud. A lot of people do it. I've known people who bragged to me about doing it.

Tax fraud? I've met plenty of people who brag about declaring lunches as business expenses, even though there's no business involved.

When people do something and get away with it, they like to boast, just a little. I've never met anyone who even hinted that they had ever voted more than once.

I think the closest thing to "fraud" in an election involves a few shenanigans about who can and can't vote. You might have someone who is voting, even though he knows that he is ineligible due to a criminal conviction. Or maybe someone who doesn't meet a residency requirement, but votes anyway. On the opposite side, you might have people trying to do everything they can to suppress turnout. Or you have cases which we have seen where legitimate registrations have been "lost", if the collector thought they might be for the other party.

But significant phony balloting or multiple voting? I, for one, don't think it happens in any measurable amount.

One place it undoubtedly used to happen is Chicago, and looking at that city and what went on is instructive. The primary motivator for voter fraud in that city was local politics. There, precinct committeemen had some power, and there was plenty of corruption involved in awarding and working with local contracts. It was well known that if you wanted your garbage picked up, it was wise to make sure that there was a good turnout in your precinct for the local Democratic Machine candidate, but remember, this wasn't ideologically driven. At the time, the opponent of that candidate wasn't a Republican, it was a rogue Democrat who wasn't part of Mayor Daley's apparatus. In that case, there was a financial incentive, through graft and corruption, to commit vote fraud.

Is there really enough of an incentive to commit fraud in order to slightly sway the election of a President?
 
Meadmaker said:
Is there really enough of an incentive to commit fraud in order to slightly sway the election of a President?
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There's certainly enough for the Demopublicans to actually write it into law in pretty much every state.
 
Another reason for the perception of fraud is that new ballot machines were rushed intop place before there was adequate testing. We are replacing tried and true and error prone punch card ballots with untried and untested and sometimes error prone electronic voting. The advantage of punch cards is that the error is generally unbiased and electronic errors can cause large swings in the vote count.

Fraud and error are different but are sometime perceived to be the same.

CBL
 
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