Voter Suppression Introduction & Outline

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 Voter Suppression in the United States

Voter suppression in the United States consists of various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote. Such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Voter suppression has historically been used for racial, economic, gender, age and disability discrimination. Before and during the American Civil War, most African-Americans had not been able to vote. After the Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, causing some Southern Democrats and former Confederate states to institute actions such as poll taxes or language tests that were ostensibly not in contradiction to the U.S. Constitution at the time, but were used to limit and suppress voting access, most notably African American communities that made up large proportions of the population in those areas, but in many regions the majority of the electorate as a whole was functionally or officially unable to register to vote or unable to cast a ballot. African Americans' access to registration and voting in the South was often difficult until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and continues to be a subject of debate.

In the 21st century, some fear voter suppression has been revived, at least in part due to the 2013 US Supreme Court ruling of Shelby v. Holder, which removed protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Since then (and as of March 24, 2021), more than 361 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 47 states according to the Brennan Center for Justice, An example being a Georgia legislative bill SB 202, that was signed into law after an upsurge in voting in 2020 election, and which "reduced the number of ballot boxes in communities of color, limited voting hours, added additional voter ID requirements, and made it illegal to provide those waiting in line with food or water". As states grow more polarized against their perceived "opponents" such as Florida, which recently introduced a new bill, that if passed, could ban the Democratic Party.

 Suffrage

 - Black and Native American Suffrage

The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 guaranteed the right to vote to men of all races, including former slaves. Initially, this resulted in high voter turnout among African-Americans in the South. In the 1880 United States presidential election, a majority of eligible African-American voters cast a ballot in every Southern state except for two. In eight Southern states, Black turnout was equal to or greater than White turnout. At the end of the Reconstruction era, Southern states began implementing policies to suppress Black voters. After 1890, less than 9,000 of Mississippi's 147,000 eligible African-American voters were registered to vote, or about 6%. Louisiana went from 130,000 registered African-American voters in 1896 to 1,342 in 1904 (about a 99% decrease). Between the end of Reconstruction era and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the rights of black voter's were frequently infringed upon.

The decision on Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831 meant that Native people would essentially not have a right to vote, until the passage of the 15th amendment, when certain ground was gained towards enfranchisement. Native Americans gained more ground with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

 - - Poll Taxes

Poll taxes were used to disenfranchise voters, particularly African-Americans and poor whites in the South. Poll taxes started in the 1890s, requiring eligible voters to pay a fee before casting a ballot. Some poor whites were grandfathered in if they had an ancestor who voted before the Civil War era. This meant that they were exempt from paying the tax. Eleven Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia), as well as several outside the South, imposed poll taxes. The poll tax mechanism varied on a state-by-state basis; in Alabama, the poll tax was cumulative, meaning that a man had to pay all poll taxes due from the age of twenty-one onward in order to vote. In other states, poll taxes had to be paid for several years before being eligible to vote. Enforcement of poll tax laws was patchy. Election officials had the discretion whether or not to ask for a voter's poll tax receipt.

The constitutionality of the poll tax was upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1937 Breedlove v. Suttles and again affirmed in 1951 by a federal court in Butler v. Thompson. Poll taxes began to wane in popularity despite judicial affirmations, with five Southern states keeping poll taxes by 1962 (Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia). The poll tax was officially prohibited in 1964 by the Twenty-fourth Amendment.

 - - Literacy Tests

Like poll taxes, literacy tests were primarily used to disenfranchise poor or African-American voters in the South. African-American literacy rates lagged behind White literacy rates until 1940. Literacy tests were applied unevenly: property owners were often exempt, as well as those who would have had the right to vote (or whose ancestors had the right to vote) in 1867, which was before the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. Some states exempted veterans of the Civil War from tests. Literacy tests varied in difficulty, with African-Americans often given more rigorous tests. In Macon County, Alabama in the late 1950s, for example, at least twelve whites who had not finished elementary school passed the literacy test, while several college-educated African-Americans were failed. Literacy tests were prevalent outside the South as well, as they were seen as keeping society's undesirables (the poor, immigrants, or the uninformed) from voting; twenty states still had literacy tests after World War II, including seven Southern states, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. A 1970 Amendment to the Voting Rights Act prohibited the use of literacy tests for determining voting eligibility.

 Women's Suffrage

Momentum for women's suffrage in the United States started in the 1840s. Organizations began in 1869 and eventually merged in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) with Susan B. Anthony as its leading force. Suffragists made several attempts to vote in the early 1870s in hopes to convince the United States Supreme Court to give women the right to vote. The group fought for suffrage on a state-by-state basis. At the turn of the 19th century, Carrie Chapman Catt prioritized leading the two-million-member NAWSA to advocate for a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. After a series of votes in Congress and in state legislatures, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920. The amendment states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

 Youth Suffrage

Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution created a floor where anyone 18 years or older could vote, but giving states and localities the option to extend the franchise by lowering the voting age to even younger citizens.

 Suffrage of the Elderly and Disabled

Suffrage for Americans with disabilities & Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act

 Contemporary

Many laws that made voting more difficult for certain groups of people were overturned or blocked after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 up until the Supreme Court cases Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee in 2021 opened the door for more varieties of voter suppression.

 - Purging of Eligible Voters From the Rolls

 - - Database Matching

In 1998, Florida created the Florida Central Voter File with the stated purpose of combatting vote fraud documented in the 1997 Miami mayoral election. At least 1,100 people (~2x than the margin of victory) were wrongly purged from voter registration lists in Florida ahead of the 2000 election because their names were similar to those of convicted felons, who were not allowed to vote at that time under Florida law. According to the Palm Beach Post, African-Americans accounted for 88% of those removed from the rolls through this effort but were only about 11% of Florida's voters. However, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, nearly 89% of felons convicted in Florida were black at the time; therefore, a purge of convicted felons could be expected to include a disproportionately high number of blacks. The Post added that "a review of state records, internal e-mails of DBT employees and testimony before the civil rights commission and an elections task force showed no evidence that minorities were specifically targeted".

In 2008, more than 98,000 registered Georgia voters were removed from the roll of voters because of discrepancies in computer records of their identification information. Some 4,500 voters had to prove their citizenship to regain their right to vote. Georgia was challenged for requesting more Social Security-based verifications than any other state—about 2 million voters in total. An attorney involved in the lawsuit said that since the letters were mailed within 90 days of the election, Georgia violated federal law. The director of the American Civil Liberty Union's Georgia Voting Rights Project said, "They are systematically using these lists and matching them and using those matches to send these letters out to voters. They're using a systematic purging procedure that's expressly prohibited by federal laws, if people who are properly eligible are getting improperly challenged and purged. Elise Shore, a regional attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), agreed the letters appear to violate two federal laws against voter purging within 90 days of the election. People are being targeted, and people are being told they are non-citizens, including both naturalized citizens and U.S.-born citizens," said Shore. "They're being told they're not eligible to vote, based on information in a database that hasn't been checked and approved by the Department of Justice (DOJ), and that we know has flaws in it." Secretary of State Karen Handel denied that the removal of voters' names was an instance of voter suppression.

 - - Address Confirmation Cards

In 2019, presiding circuit court Judge Paul V. Malloy of Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, removed 234,000 voters from the statewide rolls, ruling that state law compelled him to do so for people flagged as 'having potentially moved' and who didn't respond within 30 days of a mailing sent to the address on file.

 - - Illegal Purges Conducted by Staff

Between November 2015 and early 2016, over 120,000 voters were dropped from rolls in Brooklyn, New York. Officials have stated that the purge was a mistake and that those dropped represented a "broad cross-section" of the electorate. However, a WNYC analysis found that the purge had disproportionately affected majority-Hispanic districts. The board announced that it would reinstate all voters in time for the 2016 congressional primary. The Board of Elections subsequently suspended the Republican appointee connected to the purge, but kept on her Democratic counterpart.

 - Limitations on Early and Absentee Voting

In North Carolina, Republican lawmakers requested data on various voting practices, broken down by race. They then passed laws that restricted voting and registration many ways that disproportionately affected African Americans, including cutting back on early voting. In a 2016 appellate court case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down a law that removed the first week of early voting. The court held that the GOP used the data they gathered to remove the first week of early voting because more African American voters voted during that week, and African American voters were more likely to vote for Democrats. Between 2008 and 2012 in North Carolina, 70% of African American voters voted early. After cuts to early voting, African American turnout in early voting was down by 8.7% (around 66,000 votes) in North Carolina.

As of 2020, Georgia requires absentee voters to provide their own postage for their ballots. On April 8, 2020, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging this rule, claiming it "is tantamount to a poll tax."

 - Voting Procedure Disinformation

Voting procedure disinformation involves giving voters false information about when and how to vote, leading them to fail to cast valid ballots.

For example, in recall elections for the Wisconsin State Senate in 2011, Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group founded in 2004 by brothers Charles and David Koch to support Republican candidates and causes in the United States, sent many Democratic voters a mailing that gave an incorrect deadline for returning absentee ballots. Voters who relied on the deadline in the mailing could have sent in their ballots too late for them to be counted. The organization claimed that it was caused by a typographical error.

Just prior to the 2018 elections, The New York Times warned readers of numerous types of deliberate misinformation, sometimes targeting specific voter demographics. These types of disinformation included false information about casting ballots online by email and by text message, the circulation of doctored photographs in 2016 which claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were arresting voters at polling places and included threatening language meant to intimidate Latino voters, polling place hoaxes, disinformation on remote voting options, suspicious texts, voting machine malfunction rumors, misleading photos and videos, and false voter fraud allegations. The Times added that messages purportedly sent by Trump to voters in Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, and Georgia were actually disseminated from Republican organizations. In 2018, Trump actually spread information about defective machines in a single Utah county, giving the impression that such difficulties were occurring nationwide.

 - Caging Lists

Caging lists have been used by political parties to eliminate potential voters registered with other political parties. A political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable, the mailing organization uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent.

 - Identification Requirements

Some states have imposed photo ID requirements, which critics claim are intended to depress the turnout of minority voters. It has been explored whether or not photo ID laws disproportionately affect non-white voters and those of lower income: 8% of White Americans lack driver's licenses, for example, compared to 25% of African-American citizens. For driver's licenses that are unexpired where the stated address and name exactly match the voter registration record, 16% of White Americans lack a valid license, compared to 27% of Latinos and 37% for African Americans. In July 2016, a federal appeals court found that a 2011 Texas voter ID law discriminated against black and Hispanic voters because only a few types of ID were allowed; for example, military IDs and concealed carry permits were allowed, but state employee photo IDs and university photo IDs were not. In August 2017, an updated version of the same Texas voter ID law was found unconstitutional in federal district court; the district judge indicated that one potential remedy for the discrimination would be to order Texas election-related laws to be pre-cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The court also ruled that the law would force some voters to spend money traveling to a government office to update their identification information; the court compared this provision to a poll tax.

During the 21st century, Wisconsin and North Carolina – states with Republican-controlled governments – passed laws that restrict the ability of people to vote using student ID cards for identification. This is likely motivated by the fact that students tend to be more liberal than the general population.

A 2019 paper by University of Bologna and Harvard Business School economists found that voter ID laws had "no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation." A 2019 study in the journal Electoral Studies found that the implementation of voter ID laws in South Carolina reduced overall turnout but did not have a disparate impact. 2019 studies in Political Science Quarterly and the Atlantic Economic Journal found no evidence that voter ID laws have a disproportionate influence on minorities, while other studies show differently. These claims are contradicted by the "Findings of fact and conclusions of law" in Fish v. Kobach: In that case, Judge Julie Robinson, who had been appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, a Republican, noted that the Kansas Documentary Proof of Citizenship law illegally denied 12.4% of new voter registration applications, over 31,000 US citizens, during the period covered by data considered in that case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States

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 Voter Suppression

Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters through persuasion and organization, activating otherwise inactive voters, or registering new supporters. Voter suppression, instead, attempts to gain an advantage by reducing the turnout of certain voters. Suppression is an anti-democratic tactic associated with authoritarianism. Some argue the term 'voter suppression' downplays the harm done when voices aren't reflected in an election, calling for terms like 'vote destruction' that accounts for the permanence of each vote not being cast.

The tactics of voter suppression range from changes that make voting more confusing or time-intensive, to intimidating or harming prospective voters.

 Examples of Modern Voter Suppression

Making it harder to vote for people who have been given the right, skewing the electorate. This leads to worse outcomes as the wisdom of the crowd generally leads to better decision-making. Suppression does not require intent. Analyzing the turnout of eligible voters provides a common way to study cumulative voter suppression impacts under a particular set of conditions, though other avenues such as election subversion, gerrymandering, and corruption, can't always be captured by voter turnout metrics. Additionally, some of the rules that work to suppress votes can also be used as a pretext for throwing them out, regardless of how trivial or cynical the initial rule is. A 5-year U.S. Justice Department initiative to find voter fraud convicted less than 100 individuals in a country with over 150 million voters (or less than 1 in a million voters).

 - Ballot Design

A half-million Americans had their votes disqualified in 2008 and 2010 due to ballot design issues, including confusing instructions. The order of politicians on the ballot can also give one candidate an edge, while the length of a ballot can overwhelm many voters, pushing them from the electorate for some or all races and increasing the wait times in lines for in-person voters.

 - Corruption

Corruption (legal and otherwise), reduces the influence of every vote by giving more power to wealthy people, special interests and lobbyists, leading to direct or indirect forms of election subversion. This includes buying votes directly or indirectly from voters.

 - Day-of Experience

Requiring people to travel long distances and/or wait in long lines, for example suppresses voter turnout. In contrast, having the option to vote by mail, for example, helps to enfranchise many people, including those who can't get off of work or have difficulty traveling to cast their ballots. 78% of citizens preferred vote-by-mail in one survey. The Cost of Voting Index estimates how much more difficult the voting experience is on average in states around the U.S.

 - Disenfranchisement

The disenfranchisement of voters due to age, citizenship, or criminal record are among the more recent examples of ways that elections can be subverted by changing who is allowed to vote. For example, 16-17 year-olds can't vote in most parts of the world. Some democracies remove voting rights for some long-term prisoners, but the U.S. remains the only democracy to allow many states to bar citizens from voting for life for past criminal offenses (felonies) despite evidence that voting reduces the risk of reoffending (a vestige of Jim Crow laws designed to keep black people from voting). Even when Floridians voted to overturn such an usual policy in 2018, the state legislature passed a law requiring all outstanding fines and fees be paid first before being eligible to vote, amounting to a modern-day poll tax. The debate over who should have a say extends to people on the path towards citizenship among other groups who may not be eligible to vote. Partial or full disenfranchisement of voters, like voter suppression, narrows the decision-makers to those using these autocratic tactics to grow their power.

1996 law banning non-citizens from voting in federal elections. 38 states have at one point allowed non-citizens to vote. Al Gore would've been president had Floridans not banned felons from voting.

 - Duty to Vote

Having voting as optional, for example, weakens the cultural norms around voting by not elevating it to greater importance. Peer pressure and a sense of belonging are powerful incentives to do something collectively. A voting culture can grow with, for example, universal voting, reinforcing how voting is valued, expected and a centerpiece of a place's culture.[6] Australia found that during an election that was optional around gay marriage (unlike most other elections there), voter turnout still reached 80%.

Modern proposals include requiring that every selection have a 'none of the above' option, allow a wide range of valid excuses for not voting including for conscientious objectors and charging a low, non-compounding, non-criminal fee for those who don't vote or select a valid reason.

 - Election Day

Weekend (such as Sunday voting in Australia), also contributes to higher turnout than weekday voting, maybe even more than having Election Day as a federally recognized holiday.

 - Election Frequency

Two round elections (including primary elections), recall elections, and off-year elections are some examples of elections that increase the amount of time and attention required of voters, typically leading to lower turnout among certain types of voters. For example, Japan, Switzerland and the United States have among the lowest turnout rates of developed countries thanks to the federalism that contributes to them having a more complicated political system with more elections.

 - Election Subversion

Some examples of election subversion include denying the legitimacy of elections, disqualifying votes, permitting election insecurity and manipulation, and the intimidation of election officials.

 - Identification

The requirement to have a photo identification in order to vote can disenfranchise many voters especially the young, elderly, lower-income people, recently transitioned individuals, people of color, recently married women and people with disabilities, with one Brennan Center estimate that 11% of Americans did not have the type of photo id recently required by many states. A solution implemented in a number of countries is to automatically send id cards to all its citizens for free. Additionally, the implementation of signature-matching processes, especially for mail-in ballots, can also be done so strictly as to suppress orders of magnitude more votes than the actual fraud that it prevents.

 - Information Warfare

Misinformation, disinformation, and the platforms that incentivized to boost half-truths and lies are forms of information warfare that can be used to confuse, intimidate, or deceive voters. When misinformation and disinformation is amplified by the laundering of foreign money through domestic nonprofit organizations or other allied domestic actors, charges of treason can be brought against these actors for colluding with a foreign power.

Common examples include undermining journalism, academia, political speech and other fundamental exchanges of ideas and information. Free or low-cost sources of information, such as through libraries, schools, nonprofits, public media, or open-source projects (like Wikipedia), have historically supported this key democratic prerequisite. For example, two-thirds of U.S. college students cited a lack of information as a reason for why they didn't vote.

 - Intimidation and/or Violence

Intimidation can result from the presence of cameras or guns at polling places to ballots that may not be secret. Following-through on threats by physically harming or killing people can severely deter voter participation.

 - Party Membership Requirements

Another example where registration can suppress votes is requiring a declared party preference, which is required in closed primaries in the United States for example, dissuading voters who do not want to declare a party preference in order to weigh-in on who represents them. Open primaries allow anyone to vote regardless of party preference or affiliation. In more extreme (of more authoritarian) systems, loyal party membership may be required to have a say, or even basic rights and privileges, in certain political systems.

 - Path Dependence/Tyranny of the Past

The lack of intergenerational equity in policy undermines the ability of voters to pursue self-determination through their democratic processes. For example, the lifetime appointments of judges, or constitutions that are so difficult to change that they do not reflect the values of current voters, show how power allocated in the past can thwart voter power in the present. This kind of lock-in is only helpful if the present is less democratic than the past, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy by simultaneously hampering the democratic innovations and evolutions that could prevent those threats by bolstering ancient architecture with the latest best-practices. Past actions can also create other kinds of path dependence, where power to shape democratic institutions can be slowed down or subverted by decisions made by those who wielded power in the past, regardless of how fairly (democratically) those setting the rules came to power and regardless of the values held by or information available to voters in the present. A relatively tangible example could be a country allowing itself to run up a large national debt that present-day voters did not consent to, shrinking discretionary spending to a fraction of what previous voters were able to spend.

 - Registration/Enrollment

Voter registration (or enrollment) is an extra step in the election process creates extra work for voters, especially those who move often and are new to the system, thereby suppressing their votes. It is the number one reason why citizens in the U.S. don't vote, which is why most democracies automatically enroll their citizens. Same-day registration is another tool to make registration less of a barrier. In addition, the existence of the process itself opens up more opportunities to make the process intentionally difficult or impossible, including aggressive voter roll purges. The Cost of Voting Index quantifies how different voter registration experiences are in states around the U.S.

 - Votes count Differently Between Jurisdictions

All votes should count the same, but unlike in systems with proportional representation, winner-take-all geographic-based representation are especially vulnerable to weakening and wasting certain votes year after year, especially in the U.S. where gerrymandering is still allowed. This phenomenon also suppresses turnout for that and other elections help simultaneously in states that are not competitive, suppressing the popular vote for president in the U.S., for example, while lowering turnout in a host of other contests. In contrast, a parliamentary system typically significantly reduces wasted (suppressed) votes, helping to ensure more vote equality and encouraging greater overall participation.

Ballot referendum can also be a powerful avenue for changing political systems, for example, that are not as responsive to voters due to gerrymandering or other anti-democratic actions and policies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression

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 Electoral fraud

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.

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,[citation needed] protest[5] 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.

 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).[example needed]

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.[citation needed] 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.

Preferential voting systems such as score voting, instant-runoff voting, and single transferable vote are designed to prevent systemic electoral manipulation and political duopoly.

 - Intimidation

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.

Another use of disinformation is to give voters incorrect information about the time or place of polling, thus causing them to miss their chance to vote. As part of the 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal, Elections Canada traced fraudulent phone calls, telling voters that their polling stations had been moved, to a telecommunications company that worked with the Conservative Party.

Similarly in the United States, right-wing political operatives Jacob 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, Ohio Common 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

Vote buying (also referred to as electoral clientelism and patronage politics) occurs when a political party or candidate distributes money or resources to a voter in an upcoming election with the expectation that the voter votes for the actor handing out monetary rewards. 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.

In some parts of the United States in the mid- and late 19th century, members of competing parties would vie, sometimes openly and other times with much greater secrecy, to buy and sell votes. Voters would be compensated with cash or the covering of one's house/tax payment. To keep the practice of vote buying secret, parties would open fully staffed vote-buying shops. Parties would also hire runners, who would go out into the public and find floating voters and bargain with them to vote for their side.

In England, documentation and stories of vote buying and vote selling are also well known. The most famous episodes of vote buying came in 18th century England when two or more rich aristocrats spent whatever money it took to win. The "Spendthrift election" came in Northamptonshire in 1768, when three earls each spent over £100,000 on their favoured candidates.

Voters may be given money or other rewards for voting in a particular way, or not voting. In some jurisdictions, the offer or giving of other rewards is referred to as "electoral treating". Electoral treating remains legal in some jurisdictions, such as in the Seneca Nation of Indians.

 - Targets of Vote Buying

One of the main concerns with vote buying lies in the question of which population or group of voters are most likely to be susceptible to accepting compensation in exchange for their vote. Scholars such as Stokes argue that weakly opposed voters are the best ones to target for vote buying. This means that in a situation in which there are two parties running for office, for example, the voters who are not inclined to vote one way or the other are the best to target.

Other scholars argue that it is people of lower income status who are the best group to target, as they are the most likely to be receptive to monetary or other forms of compensation. This has proven to be the case in both Argentina and Nigeria. Since the wealthy are presumably not in need of money, goods or services, it would require a much larger compensation in order to sway their vote. However, as seen in the case of Argentina for example, citizens who reside within poor communities are in great need of income, or medical services, for example, to feed their families and keep them in good health. With that being said, a much smaller sum of cash or a medical prescription would be of much greater value and thus their political support can be much easier to purchase.

 - Monitoring of Voting

When postal ballots are mailed to voters, the buyer can fill them out or see how they are filled out. Monitoring is harder when ballots are cast secretly at a polling place. In some cases, there have been instances of voter tickets, or monitoring by individuals. Voters seeking to be compensated for their votes would use specially-provided voter ballots, or would fold their ballot in a particular way in order to indicate that they voted for the candidate they were paid to vote for.

If a buyer is able to obtain a blank ballot (by theft, counterfeit, or a legitimate absentee ballot) the buyer can then mark the ballot for their chosen candidates and pay a voter to take the pre-marked ballot to a polling station, exchange it for the blank ballot issued and return the blank ballot to the attacker. This is known as chain voting. It can be controlled in polling places by issuing each ballot with a unique number, which is checked and torn off as the ballot is placed in the ballot box.

Another strategy has been to invoke personalized social norms to make voters honor their contracts at the voting booth. Such social norms could include personal obligation such as moral debts, social obligations to the buyers, or a threat of withholding or ceasing to produce necessary resources. This is made more effective when the rewards are delivered personally by the candidate or someone close to them, in order to create a sense of gratitude on behalf of the voters towards the candidate.

 - Consequences

Scholars have linked several negative consequences to the practice of vote buying. The presence of vote buying in democratic states poses a threat to democracy itself, as it interferes with the ability to rely on a popular vote as a measure of people's support for potential governments' policies. However, according to political scientist Eric Kramon, vote buying is not necessarily detrimental to the quality of democracy; rather, the relationship between vote buying and the quality of democracy is far more nuanced.

Another noted consequence is that the autonomy of voters is undermined. Since getting paid or receiving rewards for their votes generates a form of income that they may need to support themselves or their families, they have no autonomy to cast the vote that they truly want. This is extremely problematic because if it is the most corrupt politicians who are engaging in vote buying, then it is their interests that remain the ones that dictate how the country is going to be run. This, in turn, perpetuates corruption in the system even further creating a cycle.

Thirdly, vote buying can create a dependency of voters on the income or goods that they are receiving for their votes, and can further perpetuate a type of poverty trap. If they are receiving medicine from their communities' broker for example, if this tie is cut off then they may no longer have access to this necessity. It can be true that the broker in that community has no interest or incentive to actually increase the standards of living of the community members, as it is very possible that they are only interested in getting whatever share of the profit they are entitled to for working for the party. Additionally, if the goods or money are coming directly from a candidate, this candidate's only wish is to maintain their power. That being said, they may provide services but their real interest may lie in keeping the voters dependent on the rewards they are providing in order to stay in power.

 Voting Process and Results

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.[citation needed]

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.

Another type of possible 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 elections for candidates. Local elections are determined by single transferable votes; Scottish parliamentary elections by the additional member system; national elections and for the UK Parliament by first-past-the-post.

 - Ballot Stuffing

Transparent ballot box used in Ukraine to prevent election officials from pre-stuffing the box with fake ballots

• A 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.
• 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

/ In Major League Baseball's All Star Game

• Major League Baseball's All-Star Game has had problems with ballot stuffing on occasion.
• 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. 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.

 - 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.
• 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[63] 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.

/ United States

Further information: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election
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.

 - Voter Impersonation

/ United Kingdom

Concerns about voter impersonation have led the UK government to propose the Electoral Integrity Bill. Academic research shows very little evidence of impersonation, however.

/ United States

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.

 - 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

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud

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 Election Subversion

Election subversion typically refers to meddling with the vote counting process (whereas voter suppression seeks to disrupt the vote casting process for those likely to vote for a particular candidate). Electoral fraud is a form of illegal election subversion, whereas this article focuses on loopholes in election law to subvert elections.

 Vote Buying

This tactic for subversion (along with all others) has existed in all parts of the world at one time or another.

 Question or Deny Legitimacy of Election

This tactic to deny unfavorable results weakens the power of the winners through decreasing the number of citizens who find them legitimate, potentially leading to a breakdown in the rule of law as was seen on January 6, 2021 in the United States. These claims can also be used to try to justify the manipulation of election results in the courts or other bodies of power such as legislatures.

 Intimidation & or Replacement of Election Officials

By major candidates calling into question the integrity of elections, the ensuing threats towards election officials has led to hundreds of resignations in the U.S. for example, leading to concerns of understaffing and some vacancies being filled by hyper-partisans interested in election subversion.

 Disqualification of Votes

Rules that make voting more difficult for some, for example, can become a pretext for disqualifying votes, regardless of whether or not it justifies such a radical action. The U.S. Supreme Court heard a case that would pave the way for state legislatures to use pretexts to disqualify votes and send their own electors in lieu of the choice of that states' voters as early as 2024.

 Election Insecurity

The lack of election security and transparency best-practices creates opportunities for compromised election systems/ballots by third-parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_subversion

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 Media Bias Types

The most commonly discussed types of bias occur when the (allegedly partisan) media support or attack a particular political party, candidate,  or ideology.

Based on the findings of Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Stone, they summarize two forms of media bias in the literature driven by different motivations: demand-driven bias and supply-driven bias. Demand-driven bias includes three factors: "reputation", "intrinsic utility from beliefs", and "delegation (or advice)".

For example, in some European countries, female politicians receive fewer mentions in the media than male politicians, due to gender bias in the media.

Other forms of bias include reporting that favors or attacks a particular race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnic group, or person.

 Three Possible Sources of Media Bias:

 - Coverage Bias

When media choose to report only negative news about one party or ideology,

 - Gatekeeping Bias (also known as selectivity[9] or selection bias)

When stories are selected or deselected, sometimes on ideological grounds (see spike). It is sometimes also referred to as agenda bias, when the focus is on political actors and whether they are covered based on their preferred policy issues.

 - Statement Bias (also known as tonality bias or presentation bias)

When media coverage is slanted towards or against particular actors or issues.

 Other Common Forms of Political & Non-political Media Bias Include:

 - Advertising Bias

When stories are selected or slanted to please advertisers.

 - Concision Bias

Tendency to report views that can be summarized succinctly, crowding out more unconventional views that take time to explain.

 - Content Bias

Differential treatment of the parties in political conflicts, where biased news presents only one side of the conflict.

 - Corporate Bias

When stories are selected or slanted to please corporate owners of media.

 - Decision-making Bias

Means that the motivation, frame of mind, or beliefs of the journalists will have an impact on their writing. It is generally pejorative.

 - Distortion Bias

When the fact or reality is distorted or fabricated in the news.

 - Mainstream Bias

Tendency to report what everyone else is reporting, and to avoid stories that will offend anyone.

 - Partisan Bias

Tendency to report to serve particular political party leaning.

 - Sensationalism

Bias in favor of the exceptional over the ordinary, giving the impression that rare events, such as airplane crashes, are more common than common events, such as automobile crashes.

 - Structural Bias

When an actor or issue receives more or less favorable coverage as a result of newsworthiness and media routines, not as the result of ideological decisions (e.g. incumbency bonus).

 - False Balance

When an issue is presented as even-sided, despite disproportionate amounts of evidence.

 - Undue Weight

When a story is given much greater significance or portent than a neutral journalist or editor would give.

 - Speculative Content

When stories focus not on what has occurred, but primarily on what might occur, using words like "could," "might," or "what if," without labeling the article as analysis or opinion.

 - False Timeliness

Implying that an event is a new event, and thus deriving notability, without addressing past events of the same kind.

 - Ventriloquism

When experts or witnesses are quoted in a way that intentionally voices the author's own opinion.

 - Demographic

Also a common form of media bias, caused by factors such as gender, race, and social and economic status.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias