Talk:Electoral fraud/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Evaluation

There were quite a few sections that needed citations such as the “Misrecording of Votes” section and the “Destruction or invalidation of ballots” section I also feel that not enough time was given to certain sections where they could have maybe provided examples of this type of voter fraud taking place. Some of the organization of this article could be improved on. For example, in the “Misrecording of Votes” section it mentions that it is similar to misuse of proxy votes when we haven’t even come across that section at this point in the article. I think it would be better to talk about misuse of proxy votes before mentioning in misrecording of votes. At the end of the article it only mentions notable voting legislation in the United States as its own section. I think that if they are going to include voting legislation they should include other countries as well or make it its own article. Calgalhil (talk) 23:26, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

To do

Someone should check out Black box voting. They have a take on modern day election fraud[1]. Allso Hacking Democracy film? (see f.ex. amazon or if it's not there i think i saw it on the net somewhere) anyone watch it? any ideas? --82.181.201.182 (talk) 04:17, 24 October 2008 (UTC) Chicago not mentioned, tsk tsk tsk. Ghost voting not mentioned, tsk tsk tsk.

Slightly OT: If anyone ever wants to start "Wikisarcasm: The Cynical Encyclopedia", a good start for them would be the original revision of this article. Ashiibaka tlk 03:16, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"involving court challenges and counter-challenges."

I'm not sure whether this phrase ought to be in the first sentence of the article—Trevor Caira 17:33, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Democracy needs to be changed to republic when speaking of the United States. We are not ruled by the majority.

Democracy does not need to be changed to republic when speaking of the United States. Although the US is a republic, it is also a democracy. Note the inclusion of the following in the Wikipedia definition: 'In practise, "democracy" is the extent to which a given system approximates this ideal...' --RG (talk) 13:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Secret Ballot

I think the "Secret Ballot" section lacks a NPOV. The Secret Ballot is one technique that is used to fight election fraud, but like many of the techniques used it is a double edged sword. Just as picture IDs are both a method to prevent election fraud, and an enabler of other types of fraud (disenfranchisement), so too is the Secret Ballot.

Public voting is still very common, and the polities practicing it are not corrupt. To begin with every representative system requires open public voting. You need to see how your representative voted. In Switzerland, one of the nations with the longest history of good government and direct democracy, open voting by raised hands is still practiced in many elections.

Secret Ballot enables ballot stuffing. Secret Ballot's can be lost or replaced, this isn't possible with either written or 'by hands' voting. Many electronic voting methods make it difficult or impossible for the voter to verify that their vote has been counted correctly. With open voting this is not a problem. Voting mistakes are easily fixed in open voting, and nearly impossible to fix in secret ballots.

I don't think these tradeoffs are well represented by the section of the article, below.

Secret ballotMain article: Secret ballot

The secret ballot, in which only the voter knows how individuals have voted, is a crucial part of ensuring free and fair elections through preventing voter intimidation or retribution. Although it was sometimes practiced in ancient Greece and was a part of the French Constitution of 1795, it only became common in the nineteenth century. Secret balloting appears to have been first implemented in the former British colony -- now an Australian state -- of Tasmania on 7 February 1856. By the turn of the century the practice had spread to most Western democracies. Before this, it was common for candidates to intimidate or bribe voters, as they would always know who had voted which way.

ZeroXero (talk) 19:12, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

In context to the Secret Ballot section, I believe there needs to be a better clarification of sources. For example, citation 39, which is located in this section, leads to an online magazine website called The Federalist. The article used from the Federalist does not seem to be completely informative; the editor seems to carry some bias. I question whether citation 39 is a legitimate source to use in this section and throughout Wikipedia.

Ciolkokm9975 (talk) 06:36, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Naming: "Electoral fraud" versus "Election fraud"

Personally, I find "electoral fraud" to be a weaker (and clumsier) term than "election fraud"--the word "electoral" is slanted more towards use in reference to electors. At least in my experience, a majority of media and academic works use "election fraud" to refer to the phenomenon discussed in this article.---Knoepfle 03:50, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

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Is Hacking the Papal Election by Bruce Schneier notable enough to add to the article?

Revisions were done as suggested, adding more text would be the next thing to do. --Noypi380 02:30, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

What about Serbia 2000,when 1.000.000. people protested and when Milosevic admitted that they stole election.It should be in the listDzoni 12:13, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

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"Unfortunately they have little to observe when elections are electronic." Unfortunately? That's not neutral.

BEGIN MY COMMENT: I agree with Knoepfle. I'd much prefer "election fraud" as the title or "voter fraud". GBrady (talk) 13:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

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"Election fraud" and "electoral fraud" are the same thing. "Electoral" is the adjectival form of "election" (for ex. "electoral politics, which is not necessarily about "electors" in any technical sense). But in English we often and properly use a noun as a modifier (for ex. "book theft"). Usually this is done when there is no available adjectival form, but it is also done when the adjectival form is not well known (for ex., if I had used "adjective form" few would have noticed). In this case they are equally acceptable, though I would slightly prefer "election fraud" as it is plainer English and more common (2.61 million google results vs 1.18 million for "electoral fraud").--RG (talk) 12:22, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

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"Voter fraud" is a term in which the noun "voter" is used as a modifier. It means fraud by voters or related to voters. More in the Disambiguation section below.--RG (talk) 12:22, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

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Disambiguation: "Electoral/Election fraud" from "Voter fraud"

As one who rarely makes significant changes, knowing how fiercely some changes are opposed, I am assuming that this is the place for me, hopefully, to gain or at least gauge support for my position before waging war with writers much more experienced at this than I (some of whom I fully suppose are being paid to do so, considering the importance of these articles to one interest or another).

In my opinion, and in the opinion of the Brennan Center (the legacy of Justice Brennan, who, while a Liberal, nevertheless would not have been likely to make adolescent errors in legal language, and the same should be true of his foundation) the greatest flaw in this present article is its equation of Electoral Fraud (which I agree is properly called "Election Fraud") with Voter Fraud. They are two entirely different and separate issues, the latter comparable to the falling of individual leaves, vis-à-vis the former resembling the falling — make that "felling" of the whole tree.

The Brennan Center says:

The "voter fraud" cry has been increasingly used to justify policies that suppress legitimate voters. But the cry is baseless; allegations of voter fraud—especially polling place impersonation fraud—almost always prove to be inflated or inaccurate. The Brennan Center carefully examines allegations of fraud to get at the truth behind the claims. The truth of the matter is that voter fraud—votes knowingly cast by ineligible individuals—is exceedingly rare; one is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud. Our work debunking the voter fraud myth is available at Truth About Fraud.

In 2007, the Brennan Center released The Truth About Voter Fraud, the most extensive analysis of voter fraud claims to date. The report finds that most allegations of fraud turn out to be baseless—and that of the few allegations remaining, most reveal election irregularities and other forms of election misconduct, rather than fraud by individual voters. The type of individual voter fraud supposedly targeted by recent legislative efforts—especially efforts to require certain forms of voter ID—simply does not exist. A presentation describing vote suppression measures promoted by the U.S. Department of Justice can be found here.

ProudPrimate (talk) 21:03, 16 June 2010 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by ProudPrimate (talk • contribs) 21:01, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

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I think that Electoral or Election Fraud should be used. Voter Fraud implies fraud commited by persons who are ineligible to vote or are voting illegally (ie more then once), whereas Electoral or Election, I feel, encompasses a wider range of election\voting abuses. Biloxibc 3\23\12 11:42 (CST)

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There is no place for the term "voter fraud" in the introductory section of the article except possibly as an example of one type of election fraud.
"Voter fraud" (fraud on the part of voters or closely related to voters) is a subset of vote fraud (fraud related to votes such as ballot stuffing, which may be done by people other than voters), which is in turn a subset of election fraud.
To the extent that the term "voter fraud" has been popularized in recent years by those who say that it is a serious problem in the US, it has been used to mean fraud on the part of voters (voting when not eligible to cast a valid vote), not as a replacement for election fraud in general. Such a replacement would not be justified even if there were support for it. There are many types of "election fraud" that have no direct connection to action by voters. (And even if this were a US-specific article, which it isn't, whether voter fraud is or is not a widespread problem in the United States isn't relevant to a discussion of what the term means in comparison to the term "election fraud.")
Voter fraud should have its own subsection in the "Specific Methods" section, which itself should be renamed "Types of election fraud" and should include a subsection for "voter fraud" in which voter fraud and any surrounding controversy could be discussed.--RG (talk) 12:42, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

blatant bias

I cut the following passage out of the article altogether:

The Republican Party seized power in the United States from its nominally-democratic government between 2000 and 2006 with the aid of electoral fraud and maintained formal power through rigged elections.

That is an example of blatant bias, as usual without evidence since it has been clearly established that the vote fraud, if any, was perpetrated by the democrats.

--82.156.49.1 12:27, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Replacing the previous blatant bias with your own, in what appears to be an anonymous attempt at igniting a politically motivated flame war, isn't exactly helping things. You might wish to remember that in future posts. --Dh100 15:38, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Because of the partisan controversy the statement that "The Republican Party seized power..." which sounds as if the Republican Party of the United States is as unscrupulous as commies, fascists, and Ba'athists, it is best to tone down the language or use weasel words to qualify the statement. "Some claim" is too weak.

The Democratic party still operates, even if pushed to near-irrelevance in current American federal politics, but it has not been outlawed, and it has not been relegated to a permanent and limited role in politics. If there is any danger it is that democracy may have disappeared in the Republican party. The Democrats can still win big in the 2006 midterm elections, and in view of some pervasive scandals in the Republican Party, one would expect the Democrats to make huge gains in 2006.

Even so, Democrats have control of many State governments and especially city governments. Dictatorship would be unambiguous if the federal-level Republican Party attempted to decertify such governments.

Should the Democrats win one or both of the Houses of the American Congress, then the contention that the "Republicans seized power" with language similar to that that I originally used to describe vote fraud in some east-European countries will become irrelevant. But big gains by the Republican Party which has accepted some totalitarian characteristics and can do whatever it likes irrespective of the values, ethical and economic, of the American people, would leave no doubt that the USA made a dictatorial turn around 2000. --66.231.41.57 03:00, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

This section has largely been rendered irrelevant because of the large gains of the Democratic Party in the 2006 US general election.--Paul from Michigan 12:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

how are points two and three bad in techniques section

You cant vote if you are not a citizen or have been convicted of a felony, and ID is required to vote. Other than, making it look like someone had a gun with them, what is wrong with what was done?

What's wrong with points two and three? For starters, both techniques are designed to intimidate legitimate voters from voting legitimately. Both violate Illinois law about leaving voters free from interference when they're at a polling place. Moreover, photo ID is, in fact, not required by Illinois law; a voter may use other forms of identification, including a utlity bill, a bank statement, a paycheck, or a government document. Also, former felons may vote in Illinois; only current felons--people actually in jail--are proscribed.Jny2cornell 21:18, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess i was basing it on my state's election law, Illinois is pretty lax.

Kinds of tampering with electronic voting (was "Recent Edit")

(Re edits near this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electoral_fraud&diff=prev&oldid=85096854)

Anonymous Editor:

This content is not being deleted. This content if being put into correct categories. These are examples of Physical Tampering. You are deleted additional content each time you try to revert, please look at the change log. Electiontechnology 22:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

You deleted:

• ... Voting machines without paper trail have no possibility for a recount, leaving repeating of the election as the only option.
• *Altering voting machines to favor one candidate over another, for example with different sizes of the sensitive area of a touchscreen. This accidently happend in the 2006 elections in florida.

plus "deleting votes" makes more sense in the place of voting instead of "tabulation" where it's already mentioned.

And this: "Election officials misinforming voters of when their vote is recorded and later recording it themselves." ... makes no sense at all without the context of an electronic voting machine.

the "man in the middle attack" is in this case a hardware-hack, not software!

the miami-problems weren't software neither but problems of the touchscreen!

proof: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electoral_fraud&diff=85137136&oldid=85096854

it absolutly makes sense to have a own section for electronic voting since there are 6 unique threads specific to it.

i just reorganised it again, please do not delete anything again!!!

User:Taintain 00:06, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

What you are missing

1. These are not specific to electronic voting or ballot boxes, and making that distinction is erroneous., Ballot stuffing, and Booth capturing are problems with any voting system or ballot box.
2. The Man in the middle attack in this case wasn't hardware, it was firmware, which is software. It was the software that callibrate the machines, but I'll add all three.
3. the miami-problems weren't software neither but problems of the touchscreen! : At best it was a mix of hardware and software. Maybe you could say a hardware flaw caused the software error, but the error was in the software.
4. It is just plain false that Voting machines without paper trail have no possibility for a recount, leaving repeating of the election as the only option.
5. Altering voting machines to favor one candidate over another, for example with different sizes of the sensitive area of a touchscreen. This accidently happend in the 2006 elections in florida. :The reference is useful. I incuded the reference, but that description is inaccurate. Further, this is an article on fraud, not accidents. You don't claim fraud, the article does not claim fraud even. There's a perfect section for this Electronic_voting#Documented_problems I'll put it there.
6. The Deleting all votes if the balance was not as desired. makes more sense in the tabulation section because that's when you would know the balance.
7. You Deleted:

• The section"Corrupt Election Officials" The fraud in the example is the election officials action, whether the ballot is cast electronically or not.
• A demonstration how physical tampering could allow the replacement of software of Diebold AccuVote-TS was conducted by the Center for Information Technology Policy, at the University of Princeton.
• Deleting all votes if the balance was not as desired.

These edits are poorly written, poorly organized and marginally accurate. I added information and corrected errors. If you want to add or edit information, please do, but please stop wholesale deleting of information.

Electiontechnology 01:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

What I am missing

1. Ballot stuffing in the meaning of putting more than one ballot in the box is unique to ballot boxes. In the meaning of impersonating someone else it's covered below in the article. On Booth capturing you're right.
2. That man in the middle attack was hardware (so it does not fit into "altering software"):One can envision a small board that would be places inside the (rather spacious) keyboard housing and that would terminate the cables from the motherboard., see http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/images/9/91/Es3b-en.pdf section 7.1.
3. For Miami the newspaper article said the "touchsreen was worn out" => hardware-problem => does not fit into "altering software"
4. i wonder how to recount without paper, printing out the same results again ?
5. It might be a documented problem but the method could also be used for fraud, so leave it there
6. Deleting all votes if the balance was not as desired. makes only sense near the ballot box because there also the records could be deleted. in the tabulation office they wouldn't delete it, they would change it in their favor.
7. deleted or not

• see above, also i think it doesn't make sense to sort the fraud methods by "who could do it"
• i wrote that orginally and just moved it
• i wrote that orginally and just moved it

User:Taintain 18:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Response

1. Please read the Wikipedia entry for ballot stuffing. Ballot stuffing is the illegal act of one person submitting multiple ballots during a vote in which only one ballot per person is permitted. It is not unique to a ballot box.
2. Like I said, I added all forms to the man in the middle scenario. (It's not "altering software" as you said, it's "Altering or replacing voting machines hardware, software, or firmware)
3. For Miami the newspaper did not say the "touchscreen was worn out." Please read more carefully. It said "As for a conspiracy, election officials say that the machines can get out of sync if a particular spot is overused [...] Election officials in Miami-Dade and Broward counties are trained to recalibrate.." Calibration is a software issue. Like I said "At best it was a mix of hardware and software. Maybe you could say a hardware flaw caused the software error, but the error was in the software."
4. Recounts: An electronic record can be written to multiple physical locations, parallel systems, independent recording sytems,... In fact a recent report found that when a recount of VVPAT's was done in Cuyahoga county Ohio that 10% of the paper was missing or illegible. [2] The electronic ballots were retained and the paper ballots were unable to be recounted.
5. I didn't remove the Miami story or the possibility for fraud, I moved the reference to the accident.
6. There's a difference between destroying all votes in the event the tabulation was not favorable and attempting to alter individual votes as they are cast.
7. there's no "or not"

• It's not sorted by "who could do it" it's sorted by Technique
• If you wrote it, you did so anonymously, and you didn't move it, you deleted it. Proof:[3]

Response again

1. So how do you submit multiple votes at a voting machine ? Please come up with a solution which is not covered by already covered methods like tampering with the machine, inflating voter lists, impersonating, ... . For physical ballot boxes there is a way not usable with voting machines: putting two ballots in there.
2. Have you actually read section 7.1 of that document ? For the third time: it's inserting a hardware-board between keyboard, screen and the main voting machine. Please read it finally!
3. overusing a spot does not change software
4. The corrupted election officials delete all the memory and claim it was a machine-problem, they might get away with it. Destroying all paper ballots and claiming there was a gust of wind sounds harder to justify.
5. again: It might have been accident but the method could also be used for fraud.
6. "tabulation" was for me "central tabulation of all the results". i just split that in two
7. delete

• "corrupted eletion officials" as a section title is not a "method", it's "who". the method was the "deleting ..."
• yes, i wrote that without logging in back then and probably forgot it because of all the messing up by you.

the main problem you seem to have is a section containing anything with "electronic voting". why is that ? it absolutly makes sense to have a own section for electronic voting since there are at least 6 unique threads specific to it. i hope my Dispute resolution request will sort that out. User:Taintain 21:46, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Another Response

1. Depending on the type of voting machines used there are a few different ways. AVS WinVote machines used an single administrative card to access a ballot, theoretically anyone with access to one of those cards could stand in front of a voting machine and vote all day. Another example that has been making news recently is with Sequoia Voting machines. (Not to dog Sequoia, the feature is optional) There is a button on the back of the machine that essentially brings up a new ballot. So again, without supervision one could stand there all day voting.
2. I'm not sure what you don't get here. Yes I understand that hardware is one avenue to implement a man in the middle attack. I've read the document thougroughly, I'm not sure why that single method would discount other methods that include software or firmware
3. I think that you might not understand what the problem was, if it was a hardware problem, recalibration wouldn't have fixed the problem.
4. ok, you asked how could there be a recount with electronic records and that's the question I answered.
5. I agree the method could be used for fraud. I'm not sure why you think I don't. I recommend if you want to elaborate on these problems, you could learn more about the vulnerabilities of touchscreens and expand the section accordinglyl.
6. I like the division of the tabulation section. I think it was a very good idea. I'm glad this discussion is yeilding improvements to this article.
7. .

• The technique is the corruption
• Electronic Voting is not a electoral fraud technique. I'm all for discussing the merits of diffferent systems used in voting. The implication that eletronic voting in inherently fraudulent is inaccurate. I'm not saying electronic voting has no place in the article, but it must be included in an accurate way. Electiontechnology 22:53, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Yet another response

1. ok, didn't know that, i included it in ballot stuffing.
2. the problem is that you put 3 different fraud methods into one paragraph, i just split that up
3. in the end it doesn't matter if it's soft- or hardware. i just think it's worth it's own paragraph
4. so you can recount the "stored votes" but not "intended votes" which might be different if someone tampered with the machine, i wouldn't call that a recount.
5. i put it there like it was
6. ok
7. the method is "misinforming voters", corruption is just one way of going there. might also be done by the guy doing civil service to the elderly lady. i renamed it to Social engineering, that's mostly used in IT-security, maybe there's a better term. the pretending helper is now also there.

• there are several fraud techniquies which are unique to voting machines. they should have their own section

more responsing...

Sometimes it seems like your edits are spot on and have great content and then other times it just seems like I don't know what.

1. Thanks.
2. I have no problem with splitting them up, but the way you wrote it was limiting they types of fraud.
3. Right. That's fine, but accidents don't belong here. Talk about the possibility, the technique, whatever, it's just not relevant to have references to described accidents.
4. What makes you think you can ever recount "intended votes?" The "intended votes" might be tampered with just the same if they were in a paper medium.
5. See 3: "Back like it was is" = not ok
6. .
7. The Social engineering title is pretty good, it might overlap some with the coercion, but I agree it's a better title.

• I have no problem with you writing sections relating to voting machines. I hope you don't think I'm stoping you! Branch out, write it's own section, it's just not a technique. -Electiontechnology 03:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

even more responding

touchscreens: if you read the article from the miami herald you see that calling it "accident" is very nice and trying to be neutral. others would call that straight fraud. and this "accident" show that it's possible to use that method as intentional fraud.

recount: in a lot of countries it'S everybody right to cast his vote, stay in the election office and watch the counting. this makes one pretty sure that there wasn't any manipulation with the votes. if i do the same in a election office with voting machines i don't know a damn and i can press the recount-button a hundred times without feeling more sure about my vote.

techniques: "Physical tampering with voting machines" is a lot more a technique than "by voters", "During tabulation in the polling place" and "During central tabulation of the results".

NPOV?

I am assuming the following section, from the second paragraph of History is NPOV:

every election in which the DNC has been victorious

I think this refers to the Democrat party in the US, but not sure so not going to change it. If it refers to something else that probably needs to be expanded on. -- 86.128.253.74 18:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is a US political reference, and fairly common vandalism for this article. It's been reverted. -Electiontechnology 19:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Critics argue... democratic rambling

Critics argue that there is strong evidence that the Republican Party committed electoral fraud in the United States in the 2000 and 2004 general elections. They allege that Republican partisans were responsible for removing valid voters from the registration rolls, [1][2][3] intimidating voters and polling place workers,[4][5][6] preventing recounts,[7][8] and tampering with the new electronic voting machines. Unprecedented discrepancies between exit polling and actual election results, always to the benefit of Republican candidates, are cited as evidence for these allegations.[9] It has been noted that the president of the parent company of Diebold Election Systems, which manufactures many of the electronic voting machines, was among many corporate executives who pledged to "deliver the election" for George W. Bush.[10][11] With the introduction of unshielded electronic voting, the radio signals emmitted by every electronic device again threaten the secrecy of the ballot. In 2006 the Dutch government banned a certain type of voting machines because of this.[12]

This is straight up POV. It's in the history of voter fraud? It's disrupting wikipedia to make a point. Believe it or not, both sides accuse each other of cheating. Unless there is a court case ruling that major vote fraud happened to affect the overall results, it shouldn't be in there. Oh, sure there's some news stories about possible voter fraud against Republicans, but there's the same stories coming against the Democrats. Here in Wisconsin a group of Democrats used dead people's addresses to vote. St. Louis had a similar incident. You know why you hear more fraud done by Republicans? Because the media is biased.

Look at this website with sourced information about cases of voter fraud. The accusations come from both sides. Besides, why didn't the Republicans "cheat again" in this election? I mean, they were able to do it rather easily last election, right? Just because it's sourced by a couple of bitter reporters doesn't mean it's not POV.

Even if it was true, does that mean it should be added to the history of election fraud page? It's highly POV because there were no trials that proved that Bush won the election based on voter fraud. If it was proven, then yes, but it's all just speculation and doesn't fit the big picture of the article. And changing "Many argue" to "Critics argue" still makes it a weasel word.--aviper2k7 22:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not aware of it ever being proven that Kennedy won the 1960 election because of electoral fraud either, but that is also so widely believed that it is listed. 82.29.208.195 22:33, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

ALA

I removed this text:

• For example, see "ALA Election Fraud".[4]

Because it is only sourced to a blog of an involved party. It isn't obvious to me that the purported incident even counts as "electoral fraud"; apparently a caucus within the organization didn't include someone in their slate because they disagreed with him. Whatever the case, we'd need a reliable, 3rd-party source for the matter. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 02:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not a "purported" incident. It's an actual case of actual election fraud.

Well, let me ask this. When group X holds an election and purposely omits a group member from the list of persons running, for admitted political reasons, with an admission that this omission is wrong, admittedly so people will not vote for that person, is that considered election fraud? I think so. What do others think?

Let's establish that before looking for various sources (although besides the person "they disagreed with," the party committing the election fraud admits to it quite openly, and I can provide the links, when necessary).

Reasonable answers will not include anything about me personally as ad hominem arguments are of no value. I have not made up these facts. I have not even added anything at all -- I just added "for example, see." Even the offending party admits to the facts. So please leave me out when answering. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 03:41, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Folks are omitted from ballots all of the time. The Democratic Party refused to seat delegates for Lyndon LaRouche on the grounds that he was not a actual supporter of the Democratic Party policies. That's freedom of association, not electoral fraud. (Though he saw it differently, of course.) But it's not what we, as Wikipedia editors, think that matters. We're not here to conduct original research, We're here to verifiably summarize rteliable sources using the neutral point of view. So let me ask again: what reliable, 3rd-party sources have called this incident "electoral fraud"? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 03:51, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

This material has been added seven times by a single user, and removed seven times by six different accounts or IPs:

• 00:48, April 27, 2007 LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (for example, see http://www.shush.ws/wordpress/?p=245)
  • 17:53, August 8, 2007 Akriasas (remove ALA example)
• 04:17, August 9, 2007 LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (rv - why remove - ALA itself admitted purposely leaving his name off ballot for political reasons -- this is a perfect example of election fraud since the ALA admitted it was election fraud)
  • 03:29, August 16, 2007 68.22.201.168
• 05:43, August 17, 2007 LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (rv - same comment as a few days ago - plus person who removed this is a member of the ALA and uses dozens of sock puppets to treat Wikipedia as another ALA propaganda tool)
  • 07:14, August 17, 2007 Average Earthman (Who are the ALA? Why is it notable? Why only a blog article link, aren't there any news articles? Sure we should come up with a better example.)
• 23:33, August 17, 2007 LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (rv - The ALA is a major American institution affecting school and public libraries nationwide. Read the linked material. Such admitted election fraud, with specific reasons why, is truly exemplary.)
  • 22:04, August 22, 2007 Average Earthman (rv. I don't feel you've used this as the best or an exceptional example of electoral fraud, I feel you've used this as an excuse for yet another dig at this organisation.)
• 02:02, August 30, 2007 LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (my motivations are irrelevant and you must assume good faith. This is a link to an admission by the ALA that the ALA itself purposefully committed election fraud. Thus, no example could be better.)
  • 02:11, August 30, 2007 ArglebargleIV (revert addition of ALA sentence -- it's not a link to an ALA admission, it's a link to a blog posting, which are low quality references.)
• 03:25, August 30, 2007 LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (it is not a mere low quality blog posting -- it is the blog of the very person the ALA admitted it defrauded. It is absolutely wiki worthy, especially with the evidence the victim provides.)
  • 22:28, September 1, 2007 82.29.208.195 (Remove tiny, irrelevent and easily ignored electoral fraud of no major significance in an organisation that few on this planet have heard of.)
• 01:25, September 2, 2007 LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (rv newbie - actually the ALA is a major American institution, around for a long time, with a steady grip on America's libraries. Its admitted election fraud is all the more significant therefore.)
  • 02:30, September 2, 2007 Will Beback (undo supposed fraud sourced only from blog of involved party)

So the question, "What do others think?" has already been answered, 6-1, in opposition to including this example. Please acknowledge the consensus, or change the debate by producing a suitable source for the facts and notability of this incident. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:17, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Funny! Good try. Let's hear from other people here, not in history. Funny, really!!! Clever! --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 04:31, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

"History"? A month is "history"? Please address the concerns raised by myself and others. Are there no other sources to verify this incident? If not then that indicates it's not a notable case. So far as the quality of the article goes, is this the most notable incident of electoral fraud in a non-profit organization? If so there should be many references available. If we can find them then it'd be great to include this incident here. Until we can, and while it's still sourceable only to blogs, we should leave it out. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:45, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Will, let's be friends, we can work on this together. By history I meant the history comments that are very limited, not the passage of time. As far as finding other sources, I think that does not need to be answered now until it is first established if the example I gave is indeed election fraud. If it is, then sources can be found, and those sources will be from the actual perpetrators and the actual victim and members of the perpetrator organization. As far as quality of the incident goes, the ALA is a major organization that committed major election fraud and admitted to doing so and explained why it did so and that right there is truly exceptional and wikiworthy because I'll bet finding admitted cases of election fraud before the election was held would be like finding a drop of water in the oceans.

Will, sit back and think, set aside any preconceived notions you may have. Here's as organization admitting openly to election fraud and explained why and how it committed that fraud. That is truly shocking, don't you think, making such admissions? Fraud is usually hush hush, mush mush. Not in this case. In this case its blasted out loud by the offending party. Truly shocking. Truly wikiworthy, especially on a wiki page about election fraud and in a paragraph discussing such fraud in private organizations. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 05:14, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind offer of working toegether. I'll choose engagement over "sitting back" until we've resolved this. In my experience it's better to do research first and then draw conclusions, rather than drawing conclusions and then trying to find sources to support them. Horse first, then cart. Is our only draft animal for this assertion an involved blog? If the case is notable it would have gone to court or been reported in the press. Lots of non-profit internal battles go to court. What's the legal status of this claim? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 05:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Legal status is unknown to me. But certainly a court decision is not a requirement for inclusion in a wiki article. And if the victim shrugs it off as another example of abuse, does that mean the election fraud is not wikiworthy? --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 05:30, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

If the "victim shrugs it off" and just whines on his blog then it isn't a notable case. If the victim goes to court and overturns the electoral fraud, which in turn is covered by the media, then it is a notable case. Wikipedia can only summarize what's already been reported elsewhere, and this case seems to have gone unreported. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 05:43, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good example at all; it is far too parochial, the local US media don't appear to have the slightest interest in it, let alone the rest of the world's media (remember, this is English language wikipedia, not US librarians wikipedia), and it appears to me that this isn't electoral fraud at all - it's a group with published aims picking their representatives and leaving off someone who disagrees with their aims off a postcard listing their candidates. Not off the ballot. You think this is the only time this has ever happened? You think the rest of the world cares one jot? Average Earthman 12:32, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Illegal Immigrant Electoral Fraud

Would party/special-interest-group gatherings of non-citizens to vote ("Today we march, tomorrow we vote!") with deliberate misrepersentation of their legal status be considered "electoral fraud" in this article? Revolutionaryluddite 18:06, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

A gathering isn't electoral fraud. If there's a source for actual fraud on a notable scale then it would be worth including. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 18:15, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Legally no one can be asked to provide proof of citizenship. Anyone can register to vote, so why not. Unless a survey is done we'll never know. 2601:181:8301:4510:99:A88F:8EB0:F858 (talk) 23:57, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Ghost Voting

In Cook County, Illinois, where ghost voting is illegal, the part on ghost voting is incorrect in the main article. "Ghost Voting" refers to having people who are dead remain on the voting rolls, and then sending a confederate to the polling place to vote the dead person's ballot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.224.114.33 (talk) 11:15, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Communist countries

"Some examples of election fraud in the 20th century include Communists seizing power in Bulgaria, 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" I have found no reference to this therefore I am deleting it Spastas (talk) 04:29, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Rigged elections were symptoms of the establishment of Communist regimes. The Communists had complete control of the political system in Albania, East Germany, and Yugoslavia from the moment of liberation. Rigged elections indicated the reality of an enforced arrangement. Bulgaria had a coalition government in which the Communists showed an increasingly-heavy hand, and communists took over by killing potential opponents. Elections did not matter. Czechoslovakia (until 1948) and Hungary (until 1947) had a free election in which Communists did not win. Communists forced their own coups after which meaningful opposition was impossible.

In Poland the Soviet-backed Communists and their fellow-travelers were nearly in a civil war with anti-Communists, but the Soviet Union forced a 'peace' to the advantage of the Communists. The Communists and their fellow-travelers allowed the three Times Yes" referendum that they falsified and an election that was first presented as free and fair -- until the Communists stopped the electoral activities of their opponents who could not then win. After King Michael's Coup in Romania a military government took over but Soviet pressure forced the inclusion of Communists in the government despite the rarity of Communists. In roughly two years Romania had a Communist-dominated government, but only after an election that ratified who was boss. Rigged elections in Poland and Romania sealed the doom of liberal democracy in both countries for forty years. Pbrower2a (talk) 02:48, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

List of controversial elections

This list is largely subjective an quickly becoming an irrelevant and sprawling list. I strongly suggest deletion. --Electiontechnology (talk) 03:43, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

• What about creating an actual List to collect all of them? 67.190.69.65 (talk) 06:25, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

ACORN and Obama

Okay. I think the stories about ACORN and its reportedly massive, multistate election frauds can no longer be ignored on this page. US Presidential candidate Barack Obama's direct support for and from ACORN can no longer be ignored either.

Now I am no expert in this area. Neither am I here for political reasons. I'm here because the Obama/ACORN/election fraud story has become so widespread in the media that it should now be included somehow on this page. I don't know how.

Here's just a few articles to consider:

• Vote Drives Defended, Despite Fake Names,
• Multiple Registrants Tell Cuyahoga County Elections Board ACORN Workers Begged for Signatures; Pair Signed Multiple Vote Cards for ACORN,
• Obama and Acorn Community Organizers, Phony Voters, and Your Tax dollars,
• Wright 101; Obama Funded Extremist Afrocentrists Who Shared Rev. Wright’s Anti-Americanism,
• Palin: Obama Must ‘Rein In’ ACORN,
• etc.

So I'll leave this for others to write, but it cannot be ignored any further on this electoral fraud page. Remember, this is a page for encyclopedic facts, not political battles. Other than raising the issue based on the numerous stories from across the country on this story, I will not be further involved in this matter since it is likely to get ugly even though the facts are the facts. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 19:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

XFD -- 24.191.234.242 (talk) 23:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

The sources are not wholly reliable. Barack Obama won the Presidency twice, fair and square.Pbrower2a (talk) 22:42, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Examples

Do we really need an examples section? There has been electoral fraud in pretty much every country on the planet at some point. A complete list would be huge, and an incomplete list just creates the false impression that countries which people have info on are more corrupt than they are. For example the US and UK are both mentioned several times even though by international standards they run reasonably fair elections. I think it's enough to have a few examples under 'techniques' when they provide a good illustration of how it can happen. --Helenalex (talk) 04:02, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I think examples would be great. There is not examples of election fraud on wikipedia even though there is good documentation of fraud in many countries. The US I think is listed as 20th on the list of least corrupt countries. http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/2007-transparency-international-corruption-perceptions.html

They have also had some of the most recent well documented examples. ie 2000 and 2004 Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

But how do we decide what gets included? If we go for 'best known' it will be skewed towards the US even though that country is not especially corrupt, and if we throw in all the examples we can find the section will be ridiculously long. And anyway, how would it improve the article? --Helenalex (talk) 02:40, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I would agree. I do not think it belongs on this page. I was just mussing that it is unfortunate the wiki does speak about example of electoral fraud. I think it should. And that these pages should be part of a category or list and linked to this one. The category could be electoral fraud with subcategories of countries and then specific instances in specific countries mentioned in the subcategory.

There should be a section that gives a short overview of significant cases which then link to a more in depth page. The US has the best documentation for fraud. There will be the most on the US even though there are more egregious examples from other places. The US elections are however more important than those from other places, and I am not even from the US. I do not follow the Albania election for example but all of the world follows the US elections. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:41, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I have restored (with considerable condensation)the section on the disenfranchisement of African-Americans because that disenfranchisement was one of the longest (almost a century) and had huge historical and social effects, and because it affected the lives of so many people. The disenfranchisement of Southern blacks involved several forms of vote fraud, and although the system needed no vote fraud to maintain the system, the vote fraud made the system possible along with all of its pernicious effects.--Paul from Michigan (talk) 07:04, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

• I think the list that was on this site until September 2008 has value and was a good start of a spin-off list of controversial elections, linked on this page. I will probably create a page for this list in the next couple days unless someone is interested in preempting me by arguing that such a list does not belong on Wikipedia. - Kgwo1972 (talk) 19:33, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Examples are valuable, notably during pivotal changes in voting. There is a lot of bias these days toward paper ballots and against electronic voting machines; while, in the past, paper ballots were thrown out in favor of mechanical voting machines (which have their own problems) due to rampant fraud. Some literature about technology in voting covers some such events; more of these would be useful to help scrub the bias out of the minds of the reader.

This is a particular topic of interest for me, and I've been looking at election integrity and electronic voting machines. I've determined we can exceed the integrity achievable by paper ballots via a clear-box electronic voting system—this *requires* public observers and correct handling procedure from poll open to poll close, after which you have permanently closed the window for election tampering—which means if the machine disagrees with the paper, you must trust the machine. This presents two problems.

The first is original research, and you can all wait for that to get some review and discourse as I publish it all. The second is that of factual bias: simply mentioning the above in an encyclopedic context creates a bias; if the above is correct, then that bias is necessary or else the article is biased (giving credence to things which are incorrect so as to make a presentation "fair and balanced" is bias, and a type of cognitive fallacy). Sorting out emerging research always presents this problem. --John Moser (talk) 21:48, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Vote buying

There is a small piece on vote buying which details voters selling their votes for cash. H.L. Menckhen called 20th Century elections "an advance auction of stolen goods" due to candidates often promising voters more and more bennies. Richard Nixon rammed a 20% hike in social security through Congress in 1972, then made sure every senior citizen got a personal letter from him along with the new higher benefit check shortly before the 1972 election. If that is not an example of buying votes, what is? 12.41.204.3 (talk) 14:15, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you have reliable sources that call it vote buying? If you do then it might be able to be worked in, if not it does not belong because it is your personal opinion and editor's personal opinions do not belong. A new name 2008 (talk) 14:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

In that case all tax cuts are vote-buying, and all corporate subsidies are vote-buying. If the government shreds a regulation which has lost you money, is that vote-buying?

Moreover, the pensioners weren't required to (and couldn't) prove that they had voted for Nixon in exchange for the money. Unlike, you know, REAL vote-buying (as opposed to the fake kind flagged by disingenuous right-wing whinging) in the UK in the 19th century. BillMasen (talk) 14:38, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

That was likely cited from the works of James Bovard, who has an excellent record of citing examples of how incumbent Presidents often use the leverage of their office to buy that all-important second term. The user likely put it in the discussion page first because he did not want to get into an edit war. I have the link to a page called "The Capsizing of American Democracy" by Bovard which points out what Nixon did in 1972. USN1977 (talk) 14:39, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

But the president is supposed to get votes by improving people's lives, right? Voters don't like corruption. If you expunge corruption in your government and you win the election because of it, is this 'vote-buying'? The mind boggles.

To call it this would wrongly dignify genuine vote-buying and wrongly denigrate doing something which voters want. BillMasen (talk) 15:36, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Misleading Ballots

"Poor or misleading design is not usually illegal and therefore not technically election fraud, but can subvert the principles of democracy." If it's not electoral fraud, what's it doing in the Wikipedia article on electoral fraud? All the other cases are clear cut cases of criminal activity designed to influence elections, while this section seems to be about legal electoral tricks, or in the case of the 2000 Florida election, simply an unfortunate mistake. Seems a bit out of place to me. --Joker1189 (talk) 18:17, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Let's just specify when misleading or confusing ballots are election fraud. They are election fraud when the design is intended to mislead or confuse voters so as to cause the ballot not to reflect the voter's intent and distort the election results. They are not election fraud when the design is misleading or confusing due only to simple incompetence.--RG (talk) 13:16, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Temporary removal of the section: 2000 Election in Florida and Help America Vote Act

I removing the subject section because it is riddled with obvious and subtle inaccuracies. Portions can be added back as verifiable sources are found. Sparkie82 (t•c) 01:15, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I added some of this back into a new section about legislation.

A reference to the 2000 election was in a list that used to be part of this article, but was deleted a few years ago. I resurrected the list and put it into a separate article, List of controversial elections. Sparkie82 (t•c) 07:04, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Allegations violate BLP

Allegations of fraud or immoral behavior by two specific named men appear in section 1.4. I have reported this violation of BLP policy to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. No RS is provided that says the two men named had any role in preparing the misleading information, nor that they knew about it. Their foundation funded a large national group whose state office prepared the flier in question. Rjensen (talk) 23:52, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

BLP noticeboard discussion

• - Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Electoral_fraud

Hi - there is a report and discussion thread at the noticeboard in regard to disputed contentious content in regards to the living people - the Koch family members - I have remove it - please do not replace it without consensus support at the noticeboard, Thanks - Youreallycan 00:04, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Ref removal

Could someone justify the removal of Alvarez, Michael; Hall, Thad; Hyde, Susan (2008). Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation. ? Hipocrite (talk) 15:35, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

It appears that the justification for this was left on my talk page, so I'll copy it over and reply here. The original comment was:

This also is not a broad brush to allow any opinionated allegations into the article <ref>{{cite book |first1=Michael |last1=Alvarez |first2=Thad | last2=Hall | first3=Susan | last3=Hyde |year=2008 |title=Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation}}</ref> - I removed it also - its someones opinion and would need attribution. Youreallycan 15:27, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

As an edited collection of political science papers this is clearly a reliable source Wikipedia:RS#Scholarship. All three of the editors are highly regarded in this field. Similarly this is not the only place this broader description of election fraud is offered -- for example I also happen to have this book handy, which gives a similar definition (and Myagkov is probably one of the three most important scholars in this field, along with Walter Mebane and Alberto Simpser). That being said, it certainly wouldn't hurt to give the article a more-inclusive title, such as "Electoral fraud and manipulation", although that could conceivably make it a bit to broad of a topic. a13ean (talk) 16:59, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Inapropriate removal of sourced content

Could someone explain the removal of this sourced content? Hipocrite (talk) 15:36, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

1) it's synthesis -- none of the sources mention "fraud" or anything illegal; the editor invented that allegation out of his own imagination; 2) the people who did it say it was an accident--that information was deliberately left off for pov; 3) using current political hot button issue is designed to affect 2012 election and is POV. "fraud" is a legal criminal term -- find an old example if this is a true fraud case there will be court cases. Rjensen (talk) 16:33, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to focus on just one of your three points - point 2. Please review the article, specifically "Americans for Prosperity alleged it was a misprint." Would you like to retract your second point? Are you edit warring over content you have not reviewed in detail? Hipocrite (talk) 18:43, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

the edit on 21:28, 15 March 2012‎ by A13ean specifically left out the "misprint" bit, displaying a deliberate POV. The point is that it undermines the neutrality required of all editors. Rjensen (talk) 01:33, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

This statement is both false and an assumption of bad faith. My edit was simply an exact revert of your edit because the edit summary you gave "fraud is a crime and you need a law enforcement official or court rling" did not make sense given the definition of electoral fraud in the lede. Note that this is explained in my edit summary which states: "rv good faith edit -- as it states in the lede: "the term is sometimes used to describe acts which are legal but nevertheless considered morally unacceptable, outside the spirit of electoral laws, or in violation of the principles of democracy". If you had given a different rational for removing the paragraph, such as the explicit mention of the Koch family, I would not have restored the entire paragraph, but would have edited it to remove the explicit mention of the Koch family as was later done. Please strike your statement. a13ean (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

my edit at 10:15, 15 March 2012‎ clearly stated: "BLP violation -- allegations of criminal behavior about an individual based on blog by his opponents". I also alerted the BLP notifications desk. A13ean knew that when he reinserted the statement about the Koch brothers. Rjensen (talk) 16:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Why do you continue to assume bad faith on my part? I saw your single diff on my watchlist, compared the rationale given in the edit summary to the definition in the lede of the article, decided it was a poor reason, and reverted it. I didn't have any particular reason to check the entire edit history until after your subsequent post to BLP/N. a13ean (talk) 17:36, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

editors who write about moral issues (electoral fraud) certainly know that accusing a person of crime/ immoral behavior violates a major Wikipedia rule (the BLP rule). Rjensen (talk) 17:47, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

You would argue that you are "neutral?" Hipocrite (talk) 06:05, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

neutral regarding use of Wikipedia to attack people or promote a political cause in 2012? no I'm against it. Neutral regarding Wisconsin politics? yes I am neutral. Rjensen (talk) 11:07, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit Requests

Remove vandalism located near the end of the first paragraph of the article, immediately before the last sentence. Please remove those 19 words and correctly punctuate. Sparkie82 (t•c) 20:30, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done Tra (Talk) 21:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Sparkie82 (t•c) 01:01, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

The Article links to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was landmark legislation but did not deal with voting rights. There should be a link to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.54.237.117 (talk) 20:08, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Definition of electoral fraud

The current definition begins with "Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election." The inclusion of the word "illegal" is inappropriately restrictive and should be replaced with a concept that defines electoral fraud in terms of its parent term election, "a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office." Any intentional practice that distorts the electoral process in such a way as to undermine the ability of the population to make this choice through the election is a form of electoral fraud, whether that practice is legal or illegal. Various methods of election fraud may not be adequately precluded by existing laws and regulations, especially as election methods change and evolve. Laws and regulations may also be purposely formulated to facilitate electoral fraud. This is true in countries that have relatively good reputations for fair elections, as well as in those that do not. --RG (talk) 13:52, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Do you know of any reliable sources that discuss this? Thanks a13ean (talk) 20:12, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

The "International Foundation for Electoral Systems" released in May 2012 the white paper "Assessing Electoral Fraud in New Democracies: Refining the Vocabulary" which discusses this and related issues in some detail. RG (talk) 12:26, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Honduras 2013

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4607-anatomy-of-election-fraud-the-2013-honduran-election-in-five-simple-steps

Civil War election of 1864. Soldiers were allowed to vote for the first time. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the ballot to write your name was delivered bypro-Lincoln gangs. Democratic( or whatever party was then) were given a sound beating if the dared even show a ballot. The North was sick of the war and Lincoln was in trouble. 2601:181:8301:4510:99:A88F:8EB0:F858 (talk) 00:03, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

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Why is the 2015 UK election listed here.

I admit i'm new to wikipedia. But I am curious as to why the UK 2015 general election is listed as an example. I just went through the citations listed for it, and a number of them are opinion columns, not news articles. One of the citations is even a link to a Wordpress blog, which I do not think constitutes as a reliable source. I recommend looking at this closely and seeing if a clean up is necessary. Secureline (talk) 08:06, 17 November 2015 (UTC) 08:05, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Correct on all counts. I think I removed it before seeing your note. General examples need to be backed up by WP:RS. e.g. "The Trashcan general elections received international criticism from the United Nations and other sources."(reliable citation) Unless the article is about Trashcan! Cherry picking is WP:UNDUE and WP:SYNTH.6

Blogs are generally not considered reliable. Thanks for pointing that out! Student7 (talk) 18:57, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

US Presidential elections 2000 and 2004?

What about the Presidential elections in the USA in the years 2000 and 2004?--141.19.228.15 (talk) 15:49, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

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Bias/misleading in Voter Impersonation section

The statement "Some commentators, such as former Federal Election Commission member Hans von Spakovsky, have claimed that voter impersonation fraud, in which one person votes by impersonating another, eligible voter, is widespread, a claim that others, such as Professor Larry Sabato, dismiss as "relatively rare".[46]" is not only not in the page it references(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_impersonation) but also misrepresents the contents of that page. Considering that an intentionally-deceptive link was use to replace an entire page despite that page being no longer than the section above(Tampering with electronic voting machines), this act was clearly vandalism.

Face it, voter impersonation happens. You can't have 300,000,000+ people and expect 0 of them to commit a crime. All parties do it. The only reason I can think of why people would be making a statement that is so absurd that its probably on par with claiming that no homes will be burglarized tonight, would be if they're a fan of voter fraud. Quit vandalizing these articles to push your bias. If I bet my life that illegal votes would be cast in this next election, I would still be alive for the next election. If you can't stop vandalizing Wikipedia to push a political narrative, then please get a life. 63.152.68.159 (talk) 17:16, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

While it doubtless happens, there's negligible voter impersonation fraud because it's far too labour intensive to materially affect the result. Other schemes like vote stuffing are enormously more common because even a single person doing that can potentially swing a whole election.GliderMaven (talk) 13:59, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

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Less citation sparsity/more updated resources

There are many good things about this article, one of them being it does a good job of covering the topic thoroughly yet concisely and it remains pretty neutral throughout its entirety. The main thing that should be changed, as pointed out by the banner at the top of the page, is that there needs to be more sources and less original information. Two places where I believe that this is most prominent is in the sections of Misrecording of Votes and of the Destruction or Invalidation of Ballots. Neither of these sections have any references to outside material at all, as both of these sections come from original sourcing. Brinkmdd5641 (talk) 16:44, 16 March 2017 (UTC)brinkmdd5641

This article neatly includes both the main topic and its closely related subtopics, which allows one to see the potential of such an article. As such, there are a few changes that could be made to the article to enhance its content. To start, some convoluted sentences exist within the article that would become much clearer if they were condensed. Examples of a couple sentences lacking clarity are the last sentence at the end of the introduction and the first sentence of the "Specific Methods" section. Another element to note is that politically, there is phrasing within the "Disenfranchisement" section which states that because of the United States' disproportionate incarceration rates, minorities are being disenfranchised through the US prison system. This might be true but it is not cited, and resultantly, the statement currently serves as more of a perplexing political implication. Similarly, the information about California's Sequoia voting machine is a little distracting because it creates a scenario for voter fraud and then negates the possibility for it within the same short paragraph.

There are also several paragraphs that exist without any explicit citations or factual information verifying their claims. These include the sections "Attacks on polling places," "Misrecording votes," "Destruction or invalidation of votes," and the latter part of "Transparency." The attribution of additional attention and properly cited, credible sources to each of these subtopics would considerably improve the state of the article. As far as sources are concerned, I did select the links of some of them check on their currency and credibility. A few of thembrin are either not particularly credible or no longer exist, making them unusable by Wikipedia standards. Below is a list of the few questionable resources I found, listed by the source number that the article assigns to them, categorized by the issues they seem to have.

Link to the source no longer exists/page not found:
Source #12: "Did bomb threat stifle vote? (Capital Times)". Madison.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2009. Retrieved 2012-05-03
Source #16: "Incidents Of Voter Intimidation & Suppression". Web.archive.org. 2006-11-08. Archived from the original on April 4, 2007. Retrieved 2012-05-03
Source #21: Church Report (Covert Action in Chile 1963–1973), United States Senate Church Committee, 1975

These appear to be more like a blog or a product of self-publishing:
Source #55: "Is Something Rotten In Ankara's Mayoral Election? A Very Preliminary Statistical Analysis". Erikmeyersson.com. 2014-04-01. Retrieved 2015-05-29.
Source #57: "Capital Fraud in Turkey? Evidence from Citizen Initiatives". Erikmeyersson.com. 2014-04-11. Retrieved 2015-05-29.

Best, --Burmeine2051 (talk) 19:22, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

This is great and detailed description. As I read through, I had the same thoughts about some lacking citations. I'm glad you took the time to layout the exact citations you were concerned with; that made it extremely understandable and clear. To go on from the idea of the need of more updated sources, I couldn't agree more. I noticed that although a majority of the sources may be reliable, it would be better to have updates. The world changes so quickly, especially around politics due to technology and social media that it's vital to keep up with "what's new."

Alexancj4764 (talk)alexancj4764 21:38, 15 March 2017

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