On more than one occasion Donald Trump has stated in reference to the election that the system is rigged. In other words, voter fraud.
Voter fraud has occurred in various elections (both in the United States and in other countries). It can also take many forms, which consist of the following:
• Demographic manipulation, in which a number of people are moved into a certain area (whether it be a nation, region, or locality) just prior to an election to help a certain candidate or candidates win.
• Disenfranchisement, in which people are prevented from voting by means of discrimination or prohibiting the use of absentee ballots.
• Division of opposition support, a situation where a dominant political party maintains political control due to opposition parties being divided, and hence contribute to one-party rule.
• Voter intimidation, where voters are subject to violence or the threat of violence to vote for a certain candidate or on a certain issue. Vandalism is another form of voter intimidation, as are legal threats, i.e. people are told by the authorities that they are not allowed to vote, and doing so would result in imprisonment.
• Vote buying. A candidate buys votes via bribing voters.
• Misinformation, i.e. presenting false information to voters to affect the outcome of an election. This is usually done in the form of giving voters the wrong date/time to vote, or the wrong polling place.
• Misleading ballots. A ballot can be designed in order to confuse voters, and thus render them invalid once cast.
• Ballot stuffing, when an individual submits more than one ballot on Election Day.
• Misrecording of votes, where an individual is in need of assistance when casting his or her ballot, and the election official who assists the individual records their vote in total disregard of who or how the individual intended to vote.
• Misuse of proxy votes, in which an individual is asked to fill out an absentee ballot. Once done, the absentee ballot is rewritten as an application for a proxy vote, naming someone (usually the person who requested that the absentee ballot be filled out) as a proxy. The unsuspecting accomplices in this type of fraud are usually people who live in retirement homes, particularly those who are not of sound mind.
• Destruction or invalidation of ballots, where election officials will destroy ballots or place a mark on a ballot (e.g. making it look like an individual voted for more candidates than allowed to).
• Tampering with electronic voting machines. In various cases electronic voting machines are rigged (either in advance or when someone casts their ballot) in order to manipulate the outcome of an election.
• Voter impersonation, where an individual impersonates someone else in order to vote. Other cases involve a deceased person casting their ballot, or perhaps even someone who moved from one state or locality to another state or locality and thus voted in both areas.
So how voter fraud shall be prevented? Voter identification should be mandatory. Updating the voter registries would remove all deceased individuals, as well as those individuals who moved to a different state or locality. Having electronic voting machines that cannot be rigged would help.
Preventing voter fraud is a herculean task, but it can be done. In fact, it needs to be done, from the bottom (i.e., the local level) on up.
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