A Quick Note On What Constitutes LEGAL vs. NON-LEGAL "Voter Fraud"

 

There have been a few questions as of lates about what constitutes acceptable voter fraud.  You'll note that the first page of the pool encourages you to "vote early and often".  This is in the great tradition of Philadelphia, and most early eastern cities, where political machines would encourage members to visit as many polling places as they possibly could in a day.  There were, however, limiting factors behind this type of fraud, notably:

  1. The ability of said members to get from place to place.  The main obstacle here was in traveling the distances to actually get to the polling places.  A lesser hurdle was overcoming the drunkenness which often times accompanied this pursuit.

  2. Next, there was the fact that you might be recognized if you continued to return to the same place to vote.  A common practice for men was to grow a beard several weeks before election day, then throughout the day shave parts of it off returning to the same polling places.

These are all acceptable means of cheating, as they would occur randomly throughout the system, and would take place on both sides of the fence -- so if one person votes 5 times for Sally Weaver, it is equally as likely that someone else will vote 5 times for Poppy -- thus eliminate both votes.  To translate this to modern times with all our fancy gadgets and know-how, say you have access to 2 computers, and just happen to vote twice, once from each -- completely acceptable

Unacceptable means of voter fraud would include, but are not limited to:

  1. Intimidation, bribery, coercion in getting other people to vote with you, or preventing others from voting (see also See also Street vs. Katz 2004 -- vegetable cheese steak MY ASS!!).

  2. Ballot box tampering (see also Gore vs. Bush 2000) this would include writing executables to stuff the ballot box, and could result in entire companies being blocked from future voting (see also www.roadtospringfield.com)

  3. A combination of 1 & 2 above, where an executable may not be written, but ballot boxes could be stuffed in the tradition of Tammany Hall -- having entire organizations vote en-masse for select candidates

Hopefully this helps to clear everything up -- if not, you know where to reach us -- seinfeld@lakeside-park.com

Thanks -- and hope you continue to enoy the pool!!!