Reply #17: Preventing election fraud [View All]

[Time for change]

In this post of March 2006 I discussed in detail some major mechanisms for election fraud. I think that there are two types in particular that are imminently preventable:

Prevention of voter registration fraud
Widespread purging of registered Democratic voters (especially in Ohio) was probably the main reason why George Bush won the 2004 election. Great amounts of resources are put into getting out the vote on Election Day. Yet, there is good evidence that hundreds of thousands of voters in 2004 in Ohio alone were turned away at the polls because their registration was purged.

Vigilance is needed to make sure that registered voters STAY registered. It seems to me that a system for examining the voter rolls to make sure that our registered voters remain registered by Election Day is every bit as important as get out the vote efforts.


Prevention of central tabulator fraud
Just one volunteer in every precinct in every country (in states where elections are expected to be competitive), to obtain the pre-calculator vote count at the time that the polls close, should go a long way towards preventing central tabulator mediated election fraud. If the results of an election seem suspicious, comparing the pre-calculator counts to the post-calculator counts to identify mismatches (Mismatches between pre- and post-tabulator counts mean that the vote count was tampered with after it was reported out of the precinct) should identify the problem immediately after official results are reported if central tabulator fraud has occurred. That will tell us exactly where to investigate and what precincts need to be recounted immediately.