So you want to fradulently vote. Your state doesn't require an ID? It's easy!
1) Anytime before an election, pull the voter rolls. It's public information, accessable to everyone. If you're involved with a campaign, you may even have a Voter Vault-style database available to you. 2) Sort the data to note people on the rolls who are of the following: a) Possibly dead or moved or otherwise unable to vote.(remember, attempts to clean the voter rolls are consistently opposed by many as attempts to disenfranchise otherwise legal voters) b) People who are legal, registered voters, but never vote. c) People who are legal, registered voters, but only vote in major elections. Say, once every 4 years for President. 3) Get people involved to assert that they are a certain person who fits 2a-2c. 4) Send people over to the polling place toward the end of the day, preferably after the post-work rush as poll watchers, and have them report back to whoever's in charge as to who hasn't voted yet. 5) Send people over to vote as those people who probably won't be voting.
1) The government generally will not investigate this sort of fraud because it largely goes unnoticed. They're choosing voters that are unlikely to vote, so no one will complain. Sometimes people catch it (http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/09/09/1472583/one-voters-story.html), and I recall a case from the 1980s in NYC that dealt with this directly, but these are the exceptions, obviously.
2) The government investigators will not contact every person who voted after an election to see if they actually voted, either. So there's no way to find out if John Smith, who never votes but was registered when he renewed his license, has suddenly shown an interest in a local election.
Voter ID laws exist to ensure that this sort of activity can't happen. Unless the government is actually willing to investigate this sort of activity, we'll never know how truly widespread it is, but it's way, WAY too easy not to be concerned with.
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Date: 10/9/11 16:03 (UTC)So you want to fradulently vote. Your state doesn't require an ID? It's easy!
1) Anytime before an election, pull the voter rolls. It's public information, accessable to everyone. If you're involved with a campaign, you may even have a Voter Vault-style database available to you.
2) Sort the data to note people on the rolls who are of the following:
a) Possibly dead or moved or otherwise unable to vote.(remember, attempts to clean the voter rolls are consistently opposed by many as attempts to disenfranchise otherwise legal voters)
b) People who are legal, registered voters, but never vote.
c) People who are legal, registered voters, but only vote in major elections. Say, once every 4 years for President.
3) Get people involved to assert that they are a certain person who fits 2a-2c.
4) Send people over to the polling place toward the end of the day, preferably after the post-work rush as poll watchers, and have them report back to whoever's in charge as to who hasn't voted yet.
5) Send people over to vote as those people who probably won't be voting.
Congratulations! You're successfully committed voter fraud!
Now, here's the rub:
1) The government generally will not investigate this sort of fraud because it largely goes unnoticed. They're choosing voters that are unlikely to vote, so no one will complain. Sometimes people catch it (http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/09/09/1472583/one-voters-story.html), and I recall a case from the 1980s in NYC that dealt with this directly, but these are the exceptions, obviously.
2) The government investigators will not contact every person who voted after an election to see if they actually voted, either. So there's no way to find out if John Smith, who never votes but was registered when he renewed his license, has suddenly shown an interest in a local election.
Voter ID laws exist to ensure that this sort of activity can't happen. Unless the government is actually willing to investigate this sort of activity, we'll never know how truly widespread it is, but it's way, WAY too easy not to be concerned with.