A list of threats to voting systems, or electoral fraud methods considered as sabotage are kept by the
National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Misleading or confusing ballot papers 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 from the one intended is to run candidates or create political parties with similar names or symbols to an existing candidate or party. The goal is to mislead voters into voting for the false candidate or party. Such tactics may be particularly effective when many voters have limited literacy in the language used on the ballot. Again, such tactics are usually not illegal but they often work against the principles of democracy. Another possible source of electoral confusion is multiple variations of voting by different
electoral systems. This may cause ballots to be counted as invalid if the wrong system is used. For instance, if a voter puts a
first-past-the-post cross in a numbered
single transferable vote ballot paper, it is invalidated. For example, in Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom, up to three different voting systems and types of ballots may be used, based on the jurisdictional level of the election.
Local elections are determined by
single transferable votes;
Scottish parliamentary elections by the
additional member system; and UK Parliamentary elections by
first-past-the-post.
Ballot stuffing 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. • In the
1883 election for the district of Cook, in
Queensland, Australia, arrests were made in connection with accusations of ballot stuffing, and the election committee subsequently changed the result of the election • 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
2014 Afghan presidential election, Afghanistan's
National Directorate of Security (NDS) recorded Ziaul Haq Amarkhel, the secretary of Afghanistan's
Independent Election Commission, telling local officials to "take sheep to the mountains, stuff them, and bring them back", in an apparent reference to ballot stuffing • 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 •
Major League Baseball's
All-Star Game has had problems with ballot stuffing on occasion, such as in
1957, and
2015 • Ballot stuffing was reported during the
2024 Georgian parliamentary election.
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 of ballots One of methods of electoral fraud is to destroy ballots for an opposing candidate or party. While mass destruction of ballots can be difficult to achieve without drawing attention to it, in a very close election it may be possible to destroy a 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. During the
Bourbon Restoration in late 19th century Spain, the organized "loss" of voting slips (
pucherazo) was used to maintain the agreed alternation between the Liberals and the Conservatives. This system of local political domination, especially rooted in rural areas and small cities, was known as
caciquismo.
Invalidation of ballots 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: for example 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 votes to be erased from the ballot.
Tampering with electronic voting systems General tampering 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. 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.
Voter impersonation United Kingdom Academic research has generally found voter impersonation to be 'exceptionally rare' in the UK. The
Conservative government passed the
Elections Act 2022, which mandated photo identification.
United States Voter impersonation is considered extremely rare in the US by experts. Since 2013, several states have passed
voter ID laws to counter voter impersonation. Voter ID requirements are generally popular among Americans and proponents have argued that it can be difficult to detect voter impersonation without them. Voter ID laws' effectiveness given the rarity of voter impersonation, and their potential to disenfranchise citizens without the right ID have created controversy. By August 2016, four federal court rulings (Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and North Dakota) overturned laws or parts of such laws because they placed undue burdens on minorities. Allegations of widespread voter impersonation often turn out to be false. The North Carolina Board of Elections reported in 2017 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.
Artificial results 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. In
Turkmenistan, incumbent President
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov received 97.69% of votes
in the 2017 election, with his sole opponent, who was seen as pro-government, in fact being appointed by Berdymukhamedov. In
Georgia,
Mikheil Saakashvili received 96.2% of votes in the election following the
Rose Revolution while his ally
Nino Burjanadze was an interim head of state.
Postal ballot fraud In both the United Kingdom and the United States, experts estimate that voting fraud by mail has affected only a few local elections, without likely any impact at the national level. In April 2020, a 20-year voter fraud study by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the level of mail-in ballot fraud "exceedingly rare" in the United States, occurring only in "0.00006 percent" of instances nationally, and, with Oregon's mail-in-ballots, "0.000004 percent—about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning". Types of fraud have included pressure on voters from family or others, since the ballot is not always cast in secret; collection of ballots by dishonest collectors who mark votes or fail to deliver ballots; and insiders changing, challenging or destroying ballots after they arrive. A measure championed as a way to prevent some types of mail-in 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. 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 It subsequently identified roughly 3,500 cases of potential non-citizens who voted in
2019, but noted that it was not a coordinated effort and did not affect the result in any
riding. "But almost a year after Canadians headed to the polls, the agency says it's still trying to determine how many of those cases — if any — involved non-Canadian citizens casting ballots." The federal form to register a voter does not require proof of citizenship, == In legislature ==