This post is a summary of a report published in 2010 and three articles. The report was published at https://www.ifes.org/sites/default/files/rlp_electoral_fraud_white_paper_web.pdf. The second summary with the title above was published in 2014 at https://www.zdnet.com/article/fraud-possible-in-brazils-e-voting-system/. The third summary was published in 2018 at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-votingmachines/ahead-of-november-election-old-voting-machines-stir-concerns-among-us-officials-idUSKCN1IW16Z. The fourth was published at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/how-electronic-voting-could-undermine-the-election/497885/
The purpose of this paper is to offer an assessment of electoral fraud from an international comparative perspective with the aim of providing a better understanding of the current nature of electoral fraud around the world. This paper also seek to present a set of strategies and tools that may help the international community to address the problem. The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) is producing this paper to address the rising concern throughout the democracies and governance community about the effects of electoral fraud on developing nations. To date, most work in this field has focused on after-the-fact fraud detection, generally through the reports of international and domestic election observer missions. However, election observation only address part of the fraud problem, which requires a more comprehensive approach of deterrence, detection, and mitigation. The time has come for democracies and governance practitioners to move beyond the generic guidelines provided by electoral observation groups and electoral management bodies (EMB) which cover only the most visible parts of the electoral process. An EMB should institute directed anti-fraud measures that will serve three functions: deter participants from engaging in fraud; allow for the detection of undeterred fraud; and provide for mitigation of the harm by fraud that has escaped both deterrence and detection efforts. Establishing legitimacy and credibility is vital. The effects a electoral fraud can be especially devastating in new democracies since serious fraud is likely to result in instability and an immediate erosion of the new government's tenuous credibility. The term "new democracies" describes both emerging and consolidating multiparty political systems at different stages of development. Clearly, electoral fraud has not become completely irrelevant in older and well-established democracies; but on theoretical and practical grounds, the focus of this paper will be those democracies where electoral fraud is more frequently alleged and darker in its implications. The global expansion of multiparty elections during the last thirty years has brought fraud to the forefront of democratic development. Electoral fraud is the gravest form of electoral malpractice, and should be combated overtly by all those with a satke in democratic development. The amount and severity of the fraud depends on the ability of government, the international community, political parties, media, civil rights advocates, etc. to effectively protect the freedoms and rights of voters and candidates.
Flaws found in the Brazilian eletronic voting system could open up the possibility of fraud as more than 140 million people go to the polls in the elections. E-voting was introduced in Brazil in 1996 as a means to ensure secrecy and accuracy of the elections process, as well as speed the system underpinned by about 530,000 voting machines currently in place enables results to be processed within a matter of minutes within closing of the ballots. However, a public test of the equipment conducted by security and encryption specialists from Unicamp and UNB, two of the top computer science universities in Brazil, suggest that it is possible to easily break the secrecy of the machine and unscramble the order of votes recorded by the device. "Brazilians unconditionally believe the security of the country's electoral authority and processes. The issue is that common citizens actually have no other option because of the lack of independent checks," says Unicamp professor Diego Aranha. Another issue is that the Brazilians machines model, do not produce a physical proof that the vote has been recorded. This means there is a constant danger of large-scale software fraud, as well as other non-technical tampering that could be perpetrated by electoral justice staff and go totally undetected, according to Aranha. The Brazilian Electoral Tribunal (TSE) did not allow new public tests since the faults were discovered by professor Aranha's team in 2012, since the system holes were found, the tribunal said it would not allow further independent tests. In an attempt to introduce more transparency to the voting process in Brazil, Aranha then created a mobile app, that captures information from images sent by users of printed statements from the voting machines with the total vote counts, which are displayed publicly upon closing of the ballots. The professor's medium to long-term goal is to develop a new eletronic voting machine that offers not only a printed proof that the vote has been processed, but also a more robust fraud detection system as well as auditing.
U.S. election officials responsible for managing more than a dozen political races this November share a fear: Outdated voting machines in their districts could undermine confidence in election results that will determine which party controls the U.S. Congress. In 14 of the 40 most competitive political races, Americans will cast ballots on voting machines that do not provide a paper trail to audit voters' intentions if a close election is questioned, according to a Reuters analysis of data from six states and the Verified Voting Founding, a non-political group concerned about verifiable elections. These include races in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Kansas and Kentucky. Most of these states and local election officials interviewed by Reuters said they worry about bad actors hacking the older eletronic voting machines to alter ballots, and then being unable to verify the results because there will be no paper trail. But the officials worry most about voters losing trust in elections, because officials would not be able to visibly demonstrate that the tally was indeed accurate. "Voter confidence is a really big thing, and it is the battle I worry about losing," said Pennsylvania's elections commissioner, Jonathan Marks. His state has four of the country's most contested elections, all of them in counties that use the older machines. Most election officials interviewed by Reuters said they neither have the time nor the money to install voting machines that have a verifiable paper backup in time for the 2018 election. Officials believe paper is the best way to verify disputed election results because it can be physically examined and counted. Voting machines are generally not connected to the internet and therefore are difficult to hack. Many states switched to eletronic voting machines after paper ballot disputes cast a pall over George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore in 2000. But with cybersecurity a nascent concern at the time, securing machines against potential hackers was largely an afterhought. Last fall, Virginia became the only state since the 2016 election to replace all of its touchscreen machines after its board of elections decertified them. The state acted after hackers at the annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas demonstrated how they could quickly break into eletronic machines, including some of the models used in Virginia's elections. Other states ordered their counties to upgrade, but they were delayed by lack of money and the difficult logistic of procuring new equipment. For most part, the Def Con hackers discovered vulnerabilities by physically accessing voting machines. Earlier this year, Congress appropriated $380 million to upgrade election systems across the country, but state officials say the amount is both too little and comes too far for them to buy new machines for the 2018 election.
It is 2016: What possible reason is there to vote on paper? When we use touchscreen to communicate, work, and shop, why can´t we use similar technology to vote? A handful of states, and many precincts in other states, have already made the switch to voting systems that are fully digital, leaving no paper trail at all. But this is despite the fact that computer-security experts think electronic voting is a very, very bad idea. For years, security researchers and academics have urged elections officials to hold off on adopting eletronic voting systems, worrying that they are not nearly secure enough to reliably carry out their vital role in American democracy. Their claims have been backed up by repeated demonstrations of the systems' fragility. When the District of Columbia tested an eletronic voting system in 2010, a professor from the University of Michigan took it over from more than 500 miles away to show its weaknesses; with actual physical access to a voting machine, the same professor showed that a hacker who has access to a machine before election day could modify its programming, and he did so, without even leaving a mark on the machine's tamper-evident seals. Paper ballots are harder to fudge than votes stored in bits and bytes: A manual recount can help assuage fears of a rigged election. Even voting machines that spit out a voters' choices on a piece of paper before submitting them are verifiable. But machines that record votes without providing a physical receipt are not easy to audit if accusations of fraud begin to fly.
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