Electoral fraud

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Electoral fraud is when people illegally try to influence an election. The goal is to help a preferred candidate or hurt others, and it can also involve suppressing the votes of groups or individuals. Voter suppression and electoral fraud often go hand in hand, but fraud is about breaking the law to subvert the outcome.

What counts as electoral fraud can vary by country, but it usually includes actions like bribery, intimidation, ballot stuffing, tampering with voting machines, or false registration. Some practices violate general laws (such as assault or libel) rather than election rules alone. Some actions are morally wrong or undermine democracy even if they are technically legal under the letter of the law.

Common methods of fraud and manipulation include:
- Altering who is eligible to vote or where people can vote, sometimes by moving people into districts or restricting registration. This can disenfranchise groups such as the homeless, students, or people without fixed addresses.
- Intimidation or coercion to influence how a person votes or whether they vote at all.
- Disinformation and false information about polling places, voting times, or how to vote, aimed at suppressing turnout.
- Vote buying or trading favors for a vote.
- Tampering with ballots, destroying or spoiling ballots, or misrecording votes.
- Ballot design or confusing ballots that cause people to vote for the wrong candidate.
- Fraud involving voting machines and electronic totals, including attempts to alter results.
- Proxy voting abuse, where someone votes on behalf of another without proper authorization.
- Illegitimate attempts to change the electorate by including or excluding voters, such as misleading people about their eligibility or using fake rolls.

The scale and impact of fraud can vary. In many democracies, large-scale fraud could overturn an election, while smaller incidents can still shake public trust. Electoral systems also address the risk of fraud through safeguards such as secret ballots, transparent counting, and careful record-keeping.

Preventing and detecting fraud relies on several key ideas:
- Secrecy of the ballot protects voters from pressure and retaliation, while openness and transparency help detect problems elsewhere in the process.
- A strict chain of custody for ballots and tamper-evident seals help prevent interference with ballots and results.
- End-to-end verifiable voting systems give voters a way to confirm their vote was counted correctly, and provide a basis for auditing the overall results.
- Audits and recounts check that the number of voters, ballots, and tallies add up, and that procedures were followed.
- Voting observers, both international and domestic, help monitor elections and deter fraud.
- When necessary, legal prosecutions deter wrongdoing and punish those who break election laws. Penalties vary by country and crime.

Certain facts are often cited in debates about fraud. For example, impersonating a voter at the polling place is considered very rare in many places, and studies of mail-in voting have found fraud to be extremely uncommon. Nevertheless, politicians and activists sometimes cite fraud claims to argue for stricter rules, so many systems require careful verification, such as matching signatures on envelopes or other checks, while trying to avoid unnecessarily excluding eligible voters.

Fraud can also occur in legislatures, where votes can be influenced by pressure or improper influence. Because legislative voting is often public in some systems, it can be both easier to influence and easier to detect when improper pressure is used.

Across the world, many countries use standards for observing elections, independent audits, and transparent reporting to reduce the risk of fraud. The goal is to keep elections fair and to maintain public trust in the democratic process.