So what do you do? Do you turn up and give the details for Double_A, vote, then turn around and pretend that you’re now me, for example?
Or do you spend the day travelling around to different polling booths hoping that the person you’ve chosen from that area hasn’t voted yet, or that they nobody will make a fuss when it turns out they’re trying to vote twice?
You get a bus full of old people, tour them around the city and tell them ID data to cast votes. Works like a charm for Putin. Voting without a passport is absurd.
About 70% of the electorate vote nowadays, it has varied higher or lower but never been as low as 50% of eligible voters to even say “half of eligible people don’t vote” let alone “most”
So assuming you have say 20 old people on your fictional bus, even assuming that all of your voter info is correct and everyone is on the register, the chances of all of them being able to cast a second vote without any of them being caught are billions to one.
The idea that millions of people will risk a significant chance of a lengthy prison sentence for their individually tiny extra votes is absurd when any actual attack on election integrity would not happen at the point of “turning up at the polling station and hoping for the best.”
Even if one in a million voters did try and get away with this - which again is a hugely inflated number from anything we get an indication of - if to do so you stop tens of thousands of people from being able to vote at all that still makes the election less democratic overall.
So in your scenario, what happens if the person has already voted, or cast a postal vote? Or what happens when they turn up later? Do you think that they’re just dismissed, or do you think that someone’s going to investigate the fraud?
It isn’t, but that actually isn’t really a problem. The information required to pose and steal a single voter’s vote is pretty easy to come by. But it’s an absolutely terrible way to steal an election, simply because it doesn’t scale well.
While it is relatively simple and probably a low enough risk to steal a single vote, realistically to flip enough votes to guarantee a desired result you would need to do this several hundred or possibly even thousands of times. There are only so many disguises you can use or polling stations you can go to within an election constituency before you get caught. Also, there’s the time constraint involved. You need to do all this in the span of 12-18 hours on a single day. An individual cannot manage this by themselves.
So now you need to scale up your operation, so you enlist a whole bunch of people to split the vote stealing with. Now you have a conspiracy which is a huge risk to discovery, and also likely carries a more harsh punishment should you be discovered. Nobody is going to steal an election this way.
It is much easier to steal an election by targeting a later step of the process, either by compromising the integrity of the ballot boxes via corrupting election officials, or in areas where electronic voting takes place (not the UK) manipulating the tabulation of the votes somehow. In countries where democracy is valued, these steps of the process are hardened quite significantly, with multiple safeguards to prevent tampering.
@Double_A@PunnyName Firstly, we don’t do that.
Secondly we vote where our neighbours are.
Thirdly a double vote has a high chance of being noticed.
Fourthly, there are few polls where ond vote would make a difference. The ones where it would/have get even more interest in advance and afterward.
How is that secure though? I could easily figure out that information for people of my gender and in my age range…
So what do you do? Do you turn up and give the details for Double_A, vote, then turn around and pretend that you’re now me, for example?
Or do you spend the day travelling around to different polling booths hoping that the person you’ve chosen from that area hasn’t voted yet, or that they nobody will make a fuss when it turns out they’re trying to vote twice?
You get a bus full of old people, tour them around the city and tell them ID data to cast votes. Works like a charm for Putin. Voting without a passport is absurd.
It works for Putin because anyone who disobeys him mysteriously falls out of a window.
Again, in this scenario, what happens when the actual voter turns up? You conveniently ignored that part of my post.
Most people don’t vote, that’s not a very realistic scenario.
About 70% of the electorate vote nowadays, it has varied higher or lower but never been as low as 50% of eligible voters to even say “half of eligible people don’t vote” let alone “most”
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8060/CBP-8060.pdf
So assuming you have say 20 old people on your fictional bus, even assuming that all of your voter info is correct and everyone is on the register, the chances of all of them being able to cast a second vote without any of them being caught are billions to one.
The idea that millions of people will risk a significant chance of a lengthy prison sentence for their individually tiny extra votes is absurd when any actual attack on election integrity would not happen at the point of “turning up at the polling station and hoping for the best.”
Even if one in a million voters did try and get away with this - which again is a hugely inflated number from anything we get an indication of - if to do so you stop tens of thousands of people from being able to vote at all that still makes the election less democratic overall.
And yet it happens across the world.
But you think buses full of old people voting in multiple polling stations is?
I mean it happens all the time across the world.
Yes that, but very early so the chance is high that I vote before the real guy.
So in your scenario, what happens if the person has already voted, or cast a postal vote? Or what happens when they turn up later? Do you think that they’re just dismissed, or do you think that someone’s going to investigate the fraud?
You clearly haven’t thought this through.
When they prove they are the real guy you get busted for voter fraud. Congratulations.
And then you commit voter fraud and get the appropriate punishment.
Oh, and what about your own vote? Gonna vote twice? Might not want to do that…
And yet, nobody was doing that and the system was working.
It isn’t, but that actually isn’t really a problem. The information required to pose and steal a single voter’s vote is pretty easy to come by. But it’s an absolutely terrible way to steal an election, simply because it doesn’t scale well.
While it is relatively simple and probably a low enough risk to steal a single vote, realistically to flip enough votes to guarantee a desired result you would need to do this several hundred or possibly even thousands of times. There are only so many disguises you can use or polling stations you can go to within an election constituency before you get caught. Also, there’s the time constraint involved. You need to do all this in the span of 12-18 hours on a single day. An individual cannot manage this by themselves.
So now you need to scale up your operation, so you enlist a whole bunch of people to split the vote stealing with. Now you have a conspiracy which is a huge risk to discovery, and also likely carries a more harsh punishment should you be discovered. Nobody is going to steal an election this way.
It is much easier to steal an election by targeting a later step of the process, either by compromising the integrity of the ballot boxes via corrupting election officials, or in areas where electronic voting takes place (not the UK) manipulating the tabulation of the votes somehow. In countries where democracy is valued, these steps of the process are hardened quite significantly, with multiple safeguards to prevent tampering.
@Double_A @PunnyName Firstly, we don’t do that.
Secondly we vote where our neighbours are.
Thirdly a double vote has a high chance of being noticed.
Fourthly, there are few polls where ond vote would make a difference. The ones where it would/have get even more interest in advance and afterward.