The secret ballot, also known as the Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's identity in an election or a referendum is anonymous. This forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote buying. This system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.
Secret ballots are used in conjunction with various voting systems.
The most basic form of a secret ballot utilizes paper ballots upon
which each voter marks their choices. Without revealing the votes to
anyone, the voter folds the ballot paper in half and places it in a
sealed box. This box is later emptied for counting. An aspect of secret
voting is the provision of a voting booth
to enable the voter to write on the ballot paper without others being
able to see what is being written. Today, printed ballot papers are
usually provided, with the names of the candidates or questions and
respective check boxes. Provisions are made at the polling place
for the voters to record their preferences in secret, and the ballots
are designed to eliminate bias and to prevent anyone from linking voter
to ballot.
A privacy problem arises with moves to improve efficiency of voting by the introduction of postal voting and remote electronic voting. Some countries permit proxy voting, but some people argue that this is inconsistent with voting privacy. Popularity of the ballot selfie has challenged the secrecy of in-person voting.
Secret vs. public methods
The secret ballot became commonplace for individual citizens in liberal democracies worldwide by the late 20th century.
Votes taken by elected officials are typically public so
that citizens can judge officials' and former officials' voting records
in future elections. This may be done with a physical or electronic
in-person system or through a roll call vote.
Some faster legislative voting methods do not record who voted which
way, though witnesses in the legislative chambers may still notice a
given legislator's vote. These include voice votes
where the volume of shouting for or against is taken as a measure of
numerical support, and counting of raised hands. In some cases, a secret
ballot is used, for example to allow representatives to choose party
leadership without fear of retaliation against those voting for losing
candidates. The parliamentary tactics of forcing or avoiding a roll call
vote can be used to discourage or encourage representatives to vote in a
manner that is politically unpopular among constituents (for example if
a policy considered to be in the public interest is difficult to
explain or unpopular but without a better alternative, or to hide
pandering to a special interest) or to create or prevent fodder for
political campaigns.
Public methods of citizen voting have included:
Oral proclamation, where votes are shouted out one at a time, usually at an assembly
Going to a particular area at an assembly, such as a town meeting or the Iowa caucus. This is the origin of the term poll for an election, originally meaning "top of the head" which is what was being counted at these assemblies.
Small balls or other objects, such as corn, pebbles, beans, bullets, colored marbles, or cards. This is the origin of the term ballot, originally meaning "small ball".
Raising of hands at an assembly
Cutting a brightly colored ballot (with the color corresponding to
the party of choice) out of a newspaper and bringing it to a polling
place
Writing the name of the preferred candidate or outcome on a
piece of paper and putting it in a container (which excludes illiterate
voters)
Marking a government-printed ballot (which may exclude illiterate voters if they only include words and cannot get assistance, but some ballots include colors, symbols, or pictures to avoid this)
History
Ancient
In ancient Greece, secret ballots were used in several situations like ostracism and also to remain hidden from people seeking favors. In early 5th century BC the secrecy of ballot at ecclesia was not the primary concern, but more of a consequence of using ballots to accurately count the votes. Secret ballot was introduced into public life of Athens during second half of the fifth century.
In ancient Rome, the Tabellariae Leges (English: Ballot Laws)
were a series of four laws that implemented secret ballots for votes
cast regarding each of the major elected assemblies of the Roman Republic.
Three of the four laws were put in place in relatively quick succession
with one each in the years 139 BC, 137 BC and 131 BC, applying
respectively to the elections of magistrates, jury deliberations excepting charges of treason
as well as the passage of laws. The final of the four laws was
implemented more than two decades later in 107 BC and served solely to
expand the law passed in 137 BC to require secret ballots for all jury
deliberations, including treason.
Prior to these ballot laws, one was required to provide their
vote verbally to an individual responsible for tallying the votes, which
effectively made every voter's vote publicly known. Mandating secret
ballots had the effect of reducing the influence of the Roman
aristocracy who were capable of influencing elections through a
combination of bribes and threats. Secret balloting helps assuage both
of those concerns, as not only are one's peers unable to determine which
way you voted, there is additionally no proof that could be produced
that you did vote certain way, perhaps contravening directions .
France
Article 31 of the Constitution of the Year III of the Revolution (1795) states that "All elections are to be held by secret ballot". The same goes with the constitution of 1848:
voters could hand-write the name of their preferred candidate on their
ballot at home (the only condition was to write on white paper) or receive one distributed on the street. The ballot was folded in order to prevent other people from reading its contents.
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte attempted to abolish the secret ballot for the 1851 plebiscite with an electoral decree
requesting electors to write down "yes" or "no" (in French: "oui" or
"non") under the eyes of everyone. But he faced strong opposition and
finally changed his mind, allowing the secret ballot to take place.
According to the official web site of the Assemblée nationale (the lower house of the French parliament), the voting booth was permanently adopted only in 1913.
United Kingdom
The Polling by William Hogarth (1755). Before the secret ballot was introduced, voter intimidation was commonplace.A British "how to vote" card from 1880
The demand for a secret ballot was one of the six points of Chartism. The British parliament of the time refused to even consider the Chartist demands, but it is noted that Lord Macaulay,
in his speech of 1842, while rejecting Chartism's six points as a
whole, admitted that the secret ballot was one of the two points he
could support.
The London School Board election of 1870 was the first large-scale election by secret ballot in Britain.
However, the UK uses numbered ballots in order to allow courts to intervene, under rare circumstances, to identify which candidate voters voted for.
Australia and New Zealand
In Australia, secret balloting appears to have been first implemented in Tasmania on 7 February 1856.
Until the original Tasmanian Electoral Act 1856 was
"re-discovered" recently, credit for the first implementation of the
secret ballot often went to Victoria, where it was pioneered by the
former mayor of Melbourne, William Nicholson, and simultaneously South Australia. Victoria enacted legislation for secret ballots on 19 March 1856, and South Australian Electoral Commissioner William Boothby
generally gets credit for creating the system finally enacted into law
in South Australia on 2 April of that same year (a fortnight later). The
other British colonies in Australia followed: New South Wales (1858), Queensland (1859), and Western Australia (1877).
State electoral laws, including the secret ballot, applied for
the first election of the Australian Parliament in 1901, and the system
has continued to be a feature of federal elections and referendums.
The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918
does not explicitly set out the secret ballot but a reading of sections
206, 207, 325, 327 of the Act would imply its assumption. Sections 323
and 226(4) do however, apply the principle of a secret ballot to
polling staff and would also support the assumption.
Before the final years of the 19th century, partisan newspapers
printed filled-out ballots which party workers distributed on election
day so voters could drop them directly into the boxes. Individual states
moved to secret ballots soon after the presidential election of 1884, finishing with Kentucky in 1891 when it quit using an oral ballot.
Initially however, a state's new ballot did not necessarily have all four components of an "Australian ballot":
an official ballot being printed at public expense,
on which the names of the nominated candidates of all parties and all proposals appear,
being distributed only at the polling place and
being marked in secret.
Ballots or scanned images available to public for independent auditsBallot images saved by election scanners
After ballots are cast and no longer identifiable to the voter,
several states make the ballots and copies of them available to the
public, so the public can check counts and do other research with the
anonymous ballots.
Louisville, Kentucky, was the first city in the United States to adopt the Australian ballot. It was drafted by Lewis Naphtali Dembitz, the uncle of and inspiration for future Supreme Court associate justiceLouis Brandeis. Massachusetts adopted the first state-wide Australian ballot, written by reformer Richard Henry Dana III,
in 1888. Consequently, it is also known as the "Massachusetts ballot".
Seven states did not have government-printed ballots until the 20th
century. Georgia started using them in 1922. When South Carolina
followed suit, in 1950, this completed the nationwide switch to
Australian ballots. The 20th century also brought the first criminal
prohibitions against buying votes, in 1925.
While U.S. elections are now held primarily by secret ballot, there are a few exceptions:
North Carolina has a confidential ballot, but not a secret
ballot for early in-person voting (one-stop) and absentee-by-mail
voting. General Statute § 163-227.5 states that the "ballot shall have a
ballot number on it in accordance with G.S. 163-230.1(a2), or shall
have an equivalent identifier to allow for retrievability." If a voter
casts an absentee ballot or votes at a one-stop site (early voting) or
absentee-by-mail, but it is discovered that the voter was ineligible
(ex. died between casting ballot and election day), the ballot would be
retrieved using a unique number written at the top of the ballot. Each
county Election Director maintains a database with the names of each
voter and associated retrievable ballot number.
Mail-in ballots do not meet the definition of Australian ballots, as
they are distributed to voters’ homes, and there is no guarantee that
they are marked secretly. They may be used as absentee ballots, and Colorado, Oregon, and Washington conduct all elections by mail.
The Constitution of West Virginia specifies that voters may choose to cast an open ballot, though they must also have the option to cast a secret ballot.
International law
The right to hold elections by secret ballot is included in numerous treaties and international agreements that obligate their signatory states:
Article 21.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
states, "The will of the people...shall be expressed in periodic and
genuine elections which...shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent
free voting procedures."
Article 23 of the American Convention on Human Rights (the Pact of San Jose, Costa Rica) grants to every citizen of member states of the Organization of American States
the right and opportunity "to vote and to be elected in genuine
periodic elections, which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and
by secret ballot that guarantees the free expression of the will of the
voters".
Paragraph 7.4 of the Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE, obligates the member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
to "ensure that votes are cast by secret ballot or by equivalent free
voting procedure, and that they are counted and reported honestly with
the official results made public."
Article 5 of the Convention on the Standards of Democratic Elections, Electoral Rights and Freedoms in the Member States of the Commonwealth of Independent States obligates electoral bodies not to perform "any action violating the principle of voter's secret will expression."
Article 29 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
requires that all Contracting States protect "the right of persons with
disabilities to vote by secret ballot in elections and public
referendums"
Disabled people
ISG TopVoter, a voting machine which assures secret ballot for voters with disabilities
Ballot design and polling place architecture often deny the disabled
the possibility to cast a vote in secret. In many democracies disabled
persons may vote by appointing another person who is allowed to join
them in the voting booth and fill the ballot in their name. This does not assure secrecy of the ballot.
The United NationsConvention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
which entered into force in 2008 assures secret ballot for disabled
voters. Article 29 of the Convention requires that all Contracting
States protect "the right of the person with disabilities to vote by
secret ballot in elections and public referendums".
According to this provision, each Contracting State should provide for
voting equipment which would enable disabled voters to vote
independently and secretly. Some democracies, e.g. the United States, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Albania or India allow disabled voters to use electronic voting machines. In others, among them Azerbaijan, Canada, Ghana, the United Kingdom, and most African and Asian countries, visually impaired voters can use ballots in Braille
or paper ballot templates. Article 29 also requires that Contracting
States ensure "that voting procedures, facilities and materials are
appropriate, accessible and easy to understand and use." In some
democracies, e.g. United Kingdom, Sweden and the United States, all the polling places already are fully accessible for disabled voters.
Secrecy exceptions
The United Kingdom
secret ballot arrangements are sometimes criticized because it is
possible to link a ballot paper to the voter who cast it. Each ballot
paper is individually numbered and each elector also has a number. When
an elector is given a ballot paper, their number is noted down on the
counterfoil of the ballot paper (which also carries the ballot paper
number). This means, of course, that the secrecy of the ballot is not
guaranteed, if anyone can gain access to the counterfoils, which are
locked away securely before the ballot boxes are opened at the count.
Polling station officials colluding with election scrutineers may
therefore determine how individual electors have voted.
This measure is thought to be justified as a security arrangement
so that if there was an allegation of fraud, false ballot papers could
be identified. The process of matching ballot papers to voters is
formally permissible only if an Election Court
requires it; in fact the Election Court has rarely made such an order
since the secret ballot was introduced in 1872. One example was in a
close local election contest in Richmond-upon-Thames in the late 1970s
with three disputed ballots and a declared majority of two votes.
Reportedly prisoners in a UK prison were observed identifying voters'
ballot votes on a list in 2008. The legal authority for this system is set out in the Parliamentary Elections Rules in Schedule 1 of the Representation of the People Act 1983.
In the United States, most states guarantee a secret ballot. But some states, including Indiana and North Carolina,
require the ability to link some ballots to voters. This may for
example be used with absentee voting to retain the ability to cancel a
vote if the voter dies before election day. Sometimes the number on the ballot is printed on a perforated stub which is torn off and placed on a ring (like a shower curtain
ring) before the ballot is cast into the ballot box. The stubs prove
that an elector has voted and ensure that they can only vote once, but
the ballots themselves are both secret and anonymous. At the end of
voting day, the number of ballots inside the box should match the number
of stubs on the ring, certifying that every ballot was cast by a
registered elector, and that none of them were lost or fabricated.
Sometimes the ballots themselves are numbered, making the vote
trackable. In 2012 in Colorado, this procedure was ruled legal by
Federal District Judge Christine Arguello, who determined that the U.S. Constitution does not grant a right to a secret ballot.
Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates, or both. It differs from but often goes hand-in-hand with voter suppression. What exactly constitutes electoral fraud varies from country to country, though the goal is often election subversion.
Electoral legislation outlaws many kinds of election fraud, but other practices violate general laws, such as those banning assault, harassment or libel.
Although technically the term "electoral fraud" covers only those acts
which are illegal, the term is sometimes used to describe acts which are legal, but considered morally unacceptable, outside the spirit of an election or in violation of the principles of democracy.Show elections, featuring only one candidate, are sometimes classified as electoral fraud, although they may comply with the law and are presented more as referendums/plebiscites.
In national elections, successful electoral fraud on a sufficient scale can have the effect of a coup d'état, protest or corruption of democracy. In a narrow election,
a small amount of fraud may suffice to change the result. Even if the
outcome is not affected, the revelation of fraud can reduce voters'
confidence in democracy.
Law
In the US someone may be fined and/or imprisoned for not more than five years.
In France, someone guilty may be fined and/or imprisoned for not more
than one year, or two years if the person is an official (like a mayor
for example).
Electorate manipulation
Electoral fraud can occur in advance of voting if the composition of
the electorate is altered. The legality of this type of manipulation
varies across jurisdictions. Deliberate manipulation of election
outcomes is widely considered a violation of the principles of
democracy.
Artificial migration or party membership
In
many cases, it is possible for authorities to artificially control the
composition of an electorate in order to produce a foregone result. One
way of doing this is to move a large number of voters into the
electorate prior to an election, for example by temporarily assigning
them land or lodging them in flophouses.
Many countries prevent this with rules stipulating that a voter must
have lived in an electoral district for a minimum period (for example,
six months) in order to be eligible to vote there. However, such laws
can also be used for demographic manipulation as they tend to disenfranchise those with no fixed address, such as the homeless, travelers, Roma, students (studying full-time away from home), and some casual workers.
Another strategy is to permanently move people into an electoral district, usually through public housing.
If people eligible for public housing are likely to vote for a
particular party, then they can either be concentrated into one area,
thus making their votes count for less, or moved into marginal seats, where they may tip the balance towards their preferred party. One example of this was the 1986–1990 Homes for votes scandal in the City of Westminster in England under Shirley Porter.
Immigration law may also be used to manipulate electoral demography. For instance, Malaysia gave citizenship to immigrants from the neighboring Philippines and Indonesia, together with suffrage, in order for a political party to "dominate" the state of Sabah; this controversial process was known as Project IC.
A method of manipulating primary contests
and other elections of party leaders are related to this. People who
support one party may temporarily join another party (or vote in a
crossover way, when permitted) in order to elect a weak candidate for
that party's leadership. The goal ultimately is to defeat the weak
candidate in the general election by the leader of the party that the
voter truly supports. There were claims that this method was being
utilised in the UK Labour Party leadership election in 2015, where Conservative-leaning Toby Young encouraged Conservatives to join Labour and vote for Jeremy Corbyn in order to "consign Labour to electoral oblivion". Shortly after, #ToriesForCorbyn trended on Twitter.
Disenfranchisement
The composition of an electorate may also be altered by disenfranchising
some classes of people, rendering them unable to vote. In some cases,
states have passed provisions that raised general barriers to voter
registration, such as poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and
record-keeping requirements, which in practice were applied against
minority populations to discriminatory effect. From the turn of the
century into the late 1960s, most African Americans in the southern
states of the former Confederacy were disenfranchised by such measures.
Corrupt election officials may misuse voting regulations such as a
literacy test or requirement for proof of identity or address in such a
way as to make it difficult or impossible for their targets to cast a
vote. If such practices discriminate against a religious or ethnic
group, they may so distort the political process that the political
order becomes grossly unrepresentative, as in the post-Reconstruction or Jim Crow era until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Felons have been disenfranchised in many states as a strategy to prevent African Americans from voting.
Groups may also be disenfranchised by rules which make it
impractical or impossible for them to cast a vote. For example,
requiring people to vote within their electorate may disenfranchise
serving military personnel, prison inmates, students, hospital patients
or anyone else who cannot return to their homes. Polling can be set for
inconvenient days, such as midweek or on holy days of religious groups:
for example on the Sabbath or other holy days
of a religious group whose teachings determine that voting is
prohibited on such a day. Communities may also be effectively
disenfranchised if polling places are situated in areas perceived by
voters as unsafe, or are not provided within reasonable proximity (rural
communities are especially vulnerable to this).
In some cases, voters may be invalidly disenfranchised, which is
true electoral fraud. For example, a legitimate voter may be
"accidentally" removed from the electoral roll, making it difficult or impossible for the person to vote.
In the Canadian federal election of 1917, during the Great War, the Canadian government, led by the Union Party, passed the Military Voters Act and the Wartime Elections Act. The Military Voters Act
permitted any active military personnel to vote by party only and
allowed that party to decide in which electoral district to place that
vote. It also enfranchised those women who were directly related or
married to an active soldier. These groups were believed to be
disproportionately in favor of the Union government, as that party was
campaigning in favor of conscription. The Wartime Elections Act,
conversely, disenfranchised particular ethnic groups assumed to be
disproportionately in favour of the opposition Liberal Party.
Division of opposition support
Stanford University professor Beatriz Magaloni
described a model governing the behaviour of autocratic regimes. She
proposed that ruling parties can maintain political control under a
democratic system without actively manipulating votes or coercing the
electorate. Under the right conditions, the democratic system is
maneuvered into an equilibrium in which divided opposition parties act
as unwitting accomplices to single-party rule. This permits the ruling
regime to abstain from illegal electoral fraud.
Voter intimidation involves putting undue pressure on a voter or group of voters so that they will vote a particular way, or not at all. Absentee and other remote voting
can be more open to some forms of intimidation as the voter does not
have the protection and privacy of the polling location. Intimidation
can take a range of forms including verbal, physical, or coercion. This
was so common that in 1887, a Kansas Supreme Court in New Perspectives on Election Fraud in The Gilded Age said "[...] physical retaliation constituted only a slight disturbance and would not vitiate an election."
Violence or the threat of violence: In its simplest form,
voters from a particular demographic or known to support a particular
party or candidate are directly threatened by supporters of another
party or candidate or by those hired by them. In other cases, supporters
of a particular party make it known that if a particular village or
neighborhood is found to have voted the 'wrong' way, reprisals will be
made against that community. Another method is to make a general threat
of violence, for example, a bomb threat which has the effect of closing a particular polling place, thus making it difficult for people in that area to vote. One notable example of outright violence was the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack, where followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh deliberately contaminated salad bars in The Dalles, Oregon, in an attempt to weaken political opposition during county elections. Historically, this tactic included Lynching in the United States to terrorize potential African American voters in some areas
Attacks on polling places: Polling places in an area known to
support a particular party or candidate may be targeted for vandalism,
destruction or threats, thus making it difficult or impossible for
people in that area to vote
Legal threats: In this case, voters will be made to believe,
accurately or otherwise, that they are not legally entitled to vote, or
that they are legally obliged to vote a particular way. Voters who are
not confident about their entitlement to vote may also be intimidated by
real or implied authority figures who suggest that those who vote when
they are not entitled to will be imprisoned, deported or otherwise
punished.
For example, in 2004, in Wisconsin and elsewhere voters
allegedly received flyers that said, "If you already voted in any
election this year, you can't vote in the Presidential Election",
implying that those who had voted in earlier primary elections were
ineligible to vote. Also, "If anybody in your family has ever been found
guilty of anything you can't vote in the Presidential Election."
Finally, "If you violate any of these laws, you can get 10 years in
prison and your children will be taken away from you."
Another method, allegedly used in Cook County, Illinois, in 2004, is to falsely tell particular people that they are not eligible to vote
In 1981 in New Jersey, the Republican National Committee created the Ballot Security Task Force
to discourage voting among Latino and African-American citizens of New
Jersey. The task force identified voters from an old registration list
and challenged their credentials. It also paid off-duty police officers
to patrol polling sites in Newark and Trenton, and posted signs saying
that falsifying a ballot is a crime
Coercion: The demographic that controlled the voting ballot
would try to persuade others to follow them. By singling out those who
were against the majority, people would attempt to switch the voters'
decision. Their argument could be that since the majority sides with a
certain candidate, they should admit defeat and join the winning side.
If this did not work, this led to the threatening of violence seen
countless times during elections. Coercion, electoral intimidation was
seen in the Navy. In 1885 William C. Whitney started an investigation
that involved the men in the Navy. As said by Whitney "the vote of the
yard was practically coerced and controlled by the foremen. This
instance shows how even in the Navy there were still instances of people
going to great lengths for the desired elective to win
Disinformation
People may distribute false or misleading information in order to affect the outcome of an election. For example, in the Chilean presidential election of 1970, the U.S. government's Central Intelligence Agency
used "black propaganda"—materials purporting to be from various
political parties—to sow discord between members of a coalition between
socialists and communists.
Similarly in the United States, right-wing political operativesJacob Wohl and Jack Burkman
were indicted on several counts of bribery and election fraud in
October 2020 regarding a voter disinformation scheme they undertook in
the months prior to the November, 3 2020 general election. The pair hired a firm to make nearly 85,000 robocalls that targeted minority neighborhoods in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Michigan, and Illinois. Like Democratic constituencies in general that year, minorities voted overwhelmingly by absentee ballot, many judging it a safer option during the COVID-19 pandemic than in-person voting. Baselessly, the call warned potential voters if they submitted their votes by mail that authorities could use their personal information against them, including threats of police arrest for outstanding warrants and forced debt collection by creditors.
On October 24, 2022 Wohl and Burkman pleaded guilty in Cuyahoga County, OhioCommon Pleas Court to one count each of felony telecommunications fraud. Commenting on the tactic of using disinformation to suppress voter turnout, Cuyahoga County
Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley said the two men had "infringed upon the
right to vote", and that "by pleading guilty, they were held
accountable for their un-American actions.”
Vote buying occurs when a political party or candidate seeks to buy
the vote of a voter in an upcoming election. Vote buying can take
various forms such as a monetary exchange, as well as an exchange for
necessary goods or services.
This practice is often used to incentivise or persuade voters to turn
out to elections and vote in a particular way. Although this practice is
illegal in many countries such as the United States, Argentina, Mexico,
Kenya, Brazil and Nigeria, its prevalence remains worldwide.
Ballot
papers may be used to discourage votes for a particular party or
candidate, using the design or other features which confuse voters into
voting for a different candidate. For example, in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Florida's butterfly ballot
paper was criticized as poorly designed, leading some voters to vote
for the wrong candidate. While the ballot itself was designed by a
Democrat, it was the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, who was most harmed by voter errors because of this design.
Poor or misleading design is usually not illegal and therefore not
technically election fraud, but it can nevertheless subvert the
principles of democracy.
Sweden
has a system with separate ballots used for each party, to reduce
confusion among candidates. However, ballots from small parties such as Piratpartiet, Junilistan and Feministiskt initiativ have been omitted or placed on a separate table in the election to the EU parliament in 2009. Ballots from Sweden Democrats have been mixed with ballots from the larger Swedish Social Democratic Party, which used a very similar font for the party name written on the top of the ballot.
Another method of confusing people into voting for a different
candidate than intended is to run candidates or create political parties
with similar names or symbols as an existing candidate or party. The
goal is to mislead voters into voting for the false candidate or party
to influence the results.
Such tactics may be particularly effective when a large proportion of
voters have limited literacy in the language used on the ballot. Again,
such tactics are usually not illegal but often work against the
principles of democracy.
Transparent ballot box used in Ukraine to prevent election officials from pre-stuffing the box with fake ballotsA specialised ballot box used to assist ballot stuffing, featured in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in 1856
Ballot stuffing, or "ballot-box stuffing", is the illegal practice of one person submitting multiple ballots during a vote in which only one ballot per person is permitted.
A 2006 version of the Sequoia touchscreen voting machine had a yellow service "back" button on the back that could allow repeated voting under specific circumstances
During the 2018 Russian presidential election,
there were multiple instances, some caught on camera, throughout Russia
of voters and polling staff alike stuffing multiple votes in the ballot
box
In 1957, Cincinnati Reds fans aided by a local newspaper arranged for seven of the eight elected starting fielders to be Reds players
In 1999, the online ballot was stuffed by computer programmer Chris Nandor in favor of Boston Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra.
Nandor created a program that enabled him to vote multiple times for
Garciaparra and his teammates before his ballots—which were submitted
through a dial-up connection—were traced back to him
In 2015,
MLB annulled 65 million (out of a total of 620 million) online ballots
after it was reported that eight out of the starting nine positions for
the American League would have been Kansas City Royals players
Misrecording of votes
Votes may be misrecorded at source, on a ballot paper or voting machine, or later in misrecording totals. The 2019 Malawian general election
was nullified by the Constitutional Court in 2020 because many results
were changed by use of correction fluid, as well as duplicate,
unverified and unsigned results forms. California allows correction fluid and tape, so changes can be made after the ballot leaves the voter.
Where votes are recorded through electronic or mechanical means,
the voting machinery may be altered so that a vote intended for one
candidate is recorded for another, or electronic results are duplicated
or lost, and there is rarely evidence whether the cause was fraud or
error.
Many elections feature multiple opportunities for unscrupulous
officials or 'helpers' to record an elector's vote differently from
their intentions. Voters who require assistance to cast their votes are
particularly vulnerable to having their votes stolen in this way. For
example, a blind or illiterate person may be told that they have voted
for one party when in fact they have been led to vote for another.
Misuse of proxy votes
Proxy voting
is particularly vulnerable to election fraud, due to the amount of
trust placed in the person who casts the vote. In several countries,
there have been allegations of retirement home residents being asked to
fill out 'absentee voter' forms. When the forms are signed and gathered,
they are secretly rewritten as applications for proxy votes, naming
party activists or their friends and relatives as the proxies. These
people, unknown to the voter, cast the vote for the party of their
choice. In the United Kingdom, this is known as 'granny farming.'
Destruction or invalidation of ballots
One of the simplest methods of electoral fraud is to destroy ballots for an opposing candidate or party. During the Bourbon Restoration in late 19th century Spain, the organized “loss” of voting slips (es:pucherazo) was used to maintain the agreed alternation between the Liberals and the Conservatives (similar to the English Whigs and Tories. who prior to the Reform Act 1832 maintained Rotten and pocket boroughs. This system of local political domination, especially rooted in rural areas and small cities, was known as caciquismo.
While mass destruction of ballots can be difficult to execute
without drawing attention, in a very close election, it may be possible
to destroy a very small number of ballot papers without detection,
thereby changing the overall result. Blatant destruction of ballot
papers can render an election invalid and force it to be re-run. If a
party can improve its vote on the re-run election, it can benefit from
such destruction as long as it is not linked to it.
Another method is to make it appear that the voter has spoiled
his or her ballot, thus rendering it invalid. Typically this would be
done by adding another mark to the paper, making it appear that the
voter has voted for more candidates than entitled, for instance. It
would be difficult to do this to a large number of paper ballots without
detection in some locales, but altogether too simple in others,
especially jurisdictions where legitimate ballot spoiling by voter would
serve a clear and reasonable aim. Examples may include emulating
protest votes in jurisdictions that have recently had and since
abolished a "none of the above" or "against all" voting option, civil
disobedience where voting is mandatory, and attempts at discrediting or
invalidating an election. An unusually large share of invalidated
ballots may be attributed to loyal supporters of candidates that lost in
primaries or previous rounds, did not run or did not qualify to do so,
or some manner of protest movement or organized boycott.
In 2016, during the EU membership referendum,
Leave-supporting voters in the UK alleged without evidence that the
pencils supplied by voting stations would allow the referendum to be
rigged in favour of Remain by MI5 erasing their votes from the ballot. This has been described as the "use pens" conspiracy theory.
All voting systems face threats of some form of electoral fraud. The types of threats that affect voting machines vary.
Research at Argonne National Laboratories revealed that a single
individual with physical access to a machine, such as a Diebold Accuvote
TS, can install inexpensive, readily available electronic components to
manipulate its functions.
Other approaches include:
Tampering with the software of a voting machine to add malicious code that alters vote totals or favors a candidate in any way.
Multiple groups have demonstrated this possibility
Private companies manufacture these machines. Many companies will not allow public access or review of the machines' source code, claiming fear of exposing trade secrets
Tampering with the hardware of the voting machine to alter vote totals or favor any candidate.
Some of these machines require a smart card to activate the
machine and vote. However, a fraudulent smart card could attempt to gain
access to voting multiple times or be pre-loaded with negative votes to favor one candidate over another, as has been demonstrated
Abusing the administrative access to the machine by election officials might also allow individuals to vote multiple times
Election results that are sent directly over the internet from the
polling place centre to the vote-counting authority can be vulnerable to
a man-in-the-middle attack,
where they are diverted to an intermediate website where the man in the
middle flips the votes in favour of a certain candidate and then
immediately forwards them on to the vote-counting authority. All votes
sent over the internet violate the chain of custody and hence should be
avoided by driving or flying memory cards in locked metal containers to
the vote-counters. For purposes of getting quick preliminary total
results on election night, encrypted votes can be sent over the
internet, but final official results should be tabulated the next day
only after the actual memory cards arrive in secure metal containers and
are counted
South Africa
In 1994, the election which brought majority rule and put Nelson Mandela in office, South Africa's election compilation system was hacked, so they re-tabulated by hand.
Ukraine
In 2014, Ukraine's central election system was hacked. Officials found and removed a virus and said the totals were correct.
During the 2020 presidential election, incumbent President Donald Trump made numerous allegations of electoral fraud by Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
The Trump campaign filed numerous legal challenges to the results,
making unsubstantiated allegations accusing Democrats of manipulating
the votes in favor of Biden. The campaign lost 64 of 65 lawsuits. Election security experts, officials, analysts, and Trump's own Attorney General William Barr have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Concerns about voter impersonation have led the UK government to propose the Electoral Integrity Bill. Academic research shows very little evidence of impersonation, however.
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, but
documentation has been scarce and prosecutions rare. Numerous others,
such as Professor Larry Sabato, and a variety of studies have shown this to be "relatively rare" in the US.
Since 2013, when the US Supreme Court ruled that a provision of the
Voting Rights Act was no longer enforceable, several states have passed voter ID laws,
ostensibly to counter the alleged fraud. But many experts counter that
voter ID laws are not very effective against some forms of
impersonation. These ID laws have been challenged by minority groups
that claimed to be disadvantaged by the changes. By August 2016, four
federal court rulings overturned laws or parts of such laws because they
placed undue burdens on minority populations, including African
Americans and Native Americans.
In each case: Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, and
may adversely affect minority voters. The states were required to accept
alternatives for the November 2016 elections. These cases are expected
to reach the US Supreme Court for hearings. In April 2020, a 20-year
voter fraud study by MIT University
found the level of fraud "exceedingly rare" since it occurs only in
"0.00006 percent" of instances nationally, and, in one state, "0.000004
percent—about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning in
the United States.
Allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 United States presidential election by busing out-of-state voters to New Hampshire were found to be false. Suspicions of hacking of electronic voting machines in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were determined to be unfounded.
The North Carolina Board of Elections reported in 2017 on
questions of voter fraud and the state's proposed voter ID law. The
report showed that out of 4,769,640 votes cast in the November 2016
election in North Carolina, only one illegal vote would potentially have
been blocked by the voter ID law. The investigation found fewer than
500 incidences of invalid ballots cast, the vast majority of which were
cast by individuals on probation for felony
who were likely not aware that this status disqualified them from
voting, and the total number of invalid votes was far too small to have
affected the outcome of any race in North Carolina in the 2016 election.
In particularly corrupt regimes, the voting process may be nothing
more than a sham, to the point that officials simply announce whatever
results they want, sometimes without even bothering to count the votes.
While such practices tend to draw international condemnation, voters
typically have little if any recourse, as there would seldom be any ways
to remove the fraudulent winner from power, short of a revolution.
Fraud with absentee or postal ballots has been found occasionally in the United Kingdom, and the United States
and has been alleged in Malaysia.
In both the United Kingdom and the United States, experts estimate
there is more fraud with postal ballots than in-person voting, and that
even so it has affected only a few local elections.
Types of fraud have included pressure on voters from family or others, since the ballot is not cast in secret;[
collection of ballots by dishonest collectors who mark votes or fail to deliver ballots;[ and insiders changing or destroying ballots after they arrive.
A significant measure to prevent some types of fraud has been to
require the voter's signature on the outer envelope, which is compared
to one or more signatures on file before taking the ballot out of the
envelope and counting it. Not all places have standards for signature review,
and there have been calls to update signatures more often to improve this review. While any level of strictness involves rejecting some valid votes and accepting some invalid votes,
there have been concerns that signatures are improperly rejected from
young and minority voters at higher rates than others, with no or
limited ability of voters to appeal the rejection.
Some problems have inherently limited scope, such as family
pressure, while others can affect several percent of the vote, such as
dishonest collectors and signature verification.
In legislature
Vote
fraud can also take place in legislatures. Some of the forms used in
national elections can also be used in parliaments, particularly
intimidation and vote-buying. Because of the much smaller number of
voters, however, election fraud in legislatures is qualitatively
different in many ways. Fewer people are needed to 'swing' the election,
and therefore specific people can be targeted in ways impractical on a
larger scale. For example, Adolf Hitler achieved his dictatorial powers due to the Enabling Act of 1933.
He attempted to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority to pass the
Act by arresting members of the opposition, though this turned out to be
unnecessary to attain the needed majority. Later, the Reichstag was
packed with Nazi party members who voted for the Act's renewal.
In many legislatures, voting is public, in contrast to the secret ballot
used in most modern public elections. This may make their elections
more vulnerable to some forms of fraud since a politician can be
pressured by others who will know how the legislator voted. However, it
may also protect against bribery and blackmail, since the public and
media will be aware if a politician votes in an unexpected way. Since
voters and parties are entitled to pressure politicians to vote a
particular way, the line between legitimate and fraudulent pressure is
not always clear.
As in public elections, proxy votes are particularly prone to
fraud. In some systems, parties may vote on behalf of any member who is
not present in parliament. This protects those members from missing out
on voting if prevented from attending parliament, but it also allows
their party to prevent them from voting against its wishes. In some
legislatures, proxy voting is not allowed, but politicians may rig
voting buttons or otherwise illegally cast "ghost votes" while absent.
Detection and prevention
The three main strategies for the prevention of electoral fraud in society are:
Auditing the election process
Deterrence through consistent and effective prosecution
Cultivation of mores that discourage corruption
Some of the main fraud prevention tactics can be summarised as secrecy and openness. The secret ballot
prevents many kinds of intimidation and vote selling, while
transparency at all other levels of the electoral process prevents and
allows detection of most interference.
Election auditing refers to any review conducted after polls close
for the purpose of determining whether the votes were counted accurately
(a results audit) or whether proper procedures were followed (a process
audit), or both.
Audits vary and can include checking that the number of voters
signed in at the polls matches the number of ballots, seals on ballot
boxes and storage rooms are intact, computer counts (if used) match hand
counts, and counts are accurately totaled.
Election recounts are a specific type of audit, with elements of both results and process audits.
Prosecution
In
the United States the goal of prosecutions is not to stop fraud or keep
fraudulent winners out of office; it is to deter and punish years
later. The Justice Department has published Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses in eight editions from 1976 to 2017, under Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Trump.
It says, "Department does not have authority to directly intercede in
the election process itself. ... overt criminal investigative measures
should not ordinarily be taken ... until the election in question has
been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election
contests concluded." Sentencing guidelines provide a range of 0–21 months in prison for a first offender; offense levels range from 8 to 14. Investigation, prosecution and appeals can take over 10 years.
In the Philippines, former PresidentGloria Macapagal Arroyo was arrested in 2011 following the filing of criminal charges against her for electoral sabotage, in connection with the 2007 Philippine general election. She was accused of conspiring with election officials to ensure the victory of her party's senatorial slate in the province of Maguindanao, through the tampering of election returns.
The secret ballot, in which only the voter knows how they have voted, is believed by many to be a crucial part of ensuring free and fair elections through preventing voter intimidation or retribution.
Others argue that the secret ballot enables election fraud (because it
makes it harder to verify that votes have been counted correctly) and that it discourages voter participation. Although the secret ballot was sometimes practiced in ancient Greece and was a part of the Constitution of the Year III
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 Australianstate—of Tasmania on 7 February 1856. By the turn of the century, the practice had spread to most Western democracies.
In the United States, the popularity of the Australian ballot
grew as reformers in the late 19th century sought to reduce the problems
of election fraud. Groups such as the Greenbackers, Nationalist, and
more fought for those who yearned to vote, but were exiled for their
safety. George Walthew, Greenback, helped initiate one of the first
secret ballots in America in Michigan in 1885. Even George Walthew had a
predecessor in John Seitz, Greenback, who campaigned a bill to
"preserve the purity of elections" in 1879 after the discovery of Ohio's
electoral fraud in congressional elections.
The efforts of many helped accomplish this and led to the spread
of other secret ballots all across the country. As mentioned on February
18, 1890, in the Galveston News "The Australian ballot has come to
stay. It protects the independence of the voter and largely puts a stop
to vote to buy." Before this, it was common for candidates to intimidate
or bribe voters, as they would always know who had voted which way.
Transparency
Most
methods of preventing electoral fraud involve making the election
process completely transparent to all voters, from nomination of
candidates through casting of the votes and tabulation. A key feature in ensuring 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.
End-to-end 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. However,
the ballot receipt does not permit voters to prove to others how they
voted, since this would open the door towards forced voting and
blackmail. End-to-end systems include Punchscan and Scantegrity, the latter being an add-on to optical scan systems instead of a replacement.
In many cases, election observers
are used to help prevent fraud and assure voters that the election is
fair. International observers (bilateral and multilateral) may be
invited to observe the elections (examples include election observation
by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
European Union election observation missions, observation missions of
the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), as well as international
observation organised by NGOs, such as CIS-EMO,
European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), etc.).
Some countries also invite foreign observers (i.e. bi-lateral
observation, as opposed to multi-lateral observation by international
observers).
In addition, national legislatures of countries often permit
domestic observation. Domestic election observers can be either partisan
(i.e. representing interests of one or a group of election contestants)
or non-partisan (usually done by civil society groups). Legislations of
different countries permit various forms and extents of international
and domestic election observation.
Election observation is also prescribed by various international
legal instruments. For example, paragraph 8 of the 1990 Copenhagen
Document states that "The [OSCE] participating States consider that the
presence of observers, both foreign and domestic, can enhance the
electoral process for States in which elections are taking place. They,
therefore, invite observers from any other CSCE participating States and
any appropriate private institutions and organisations who may wish to
do so to observe the course of their national election proceedings, to
the extent permitted by law. They will also endeavour to facilitate
similar access for election proceedings held below the national level.
Such observers will undertake not to interfere in the electoral
proceedings".
Critics note that observers cannot spot certain types of election fraud like targeted voter suppression or manipulated software of voting machines.
Statistical indicators and election forensics
Various forms of statistics can be indicators of election fraud—e.g., exit polls
which diverge from the final results. Well-conducted exit polls serve
as a deterrent to electoral fraud. However, exit polls are still
notoriously imprecise. For instance, in the Czech Republic, some voters
are afraid or ashamed to admit that they voted for the Communist Party
(exit polls in 2002 gave the Communist party 2–3 percentage points less
than the actual result). Variations in willingness to participate in an
exit poll may result in an unrepresentative sample compared to the
overall voting population.
When elections are marred by ballot-box stuffing (e.g., the
Armenian presidential elections of 1996 and 1998), the affected polling
stations will show abnormally high voter turnouts with results favouring
a single candidate. By graphing the number of votes against turnout
percentage (i.e., aggregating polling stations results within a given
turnout range), the divergence from bell-curve distribution gives an
indication of the extent of the fraud. Stuffing votes in favour of a
single candidate affects votes vs. turnout distributions for that
candidate and other candidates differently; this difference could be
used to quantitatively assess the number of votes stuffed. Also, these
distributions sometimes exhibit spikes at round-number turnout
percentage values. High numbers of invalid ballots, overvoting or undervoting are other potential indicators. Risk-limiting audits are methods to assess the validity of an election result statistically without the effort of a full election recount.
Though election forensics
can determine if election results are anomalous, the statistical
results still need to be interpreted. Alan Hicken and Walter R. Mebane
describe the results of election forensic analyses as not providing
"definitive proof" of fraud. Election forensics can be combined with
other fraud detection and prevention strategies, such as in-person
monitoring.
One method for verifying voting machine accuracy is Parallel Testing,
the process of using an independent set of results compared to 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.
Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR)
is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting
system. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for
voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was
cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to
provide a means to audit the stored electronic results. This method is
only effective if statistically significant numbers of voters verify that their intended vote matches both the electronic and paper votes.
On election day, a statistically significant 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 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 does not 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 ensure the integrity of electronic voting machines is independent software verification and certification.
Once a software is certified, code signing can ensure 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 where voters cannot be sure that counting inside is done as intended.
One method that people have argued would help prevent these
machines from being tampered with would be for the companies that
produce the machines to share the source code, which displays and
captures the ballots, with computer scientists. This would allow
external sources to make sure that the machines are working correctly.
Federal legislation of the 20th century to protect voting rights, especially of ethnic and language minorities who had been disenfranchised
for decades by states' constitutions and practices. Initially, it
enforced the constitutional right of African Americans in the South to
vote, where millions of people had been mostly disenfranchised since the
turn of the 20th century and excluded from politics. The law has also
protected other ethnicities, such as Hispanics, Asians, Native
Americans, and language minorities in other states, who have been
discriminated against at various times, especially in the process of
voter registration and electoral practices.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States)88–352, 78 Stat.241, enacted July 2, 1964) was a piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and other minorities.
