Limit voters to one polling location. Problem solved.
That's what we do in the US. You are assigned a polling location based on your home address. You can't vote anywhere else. If you try, they turn you away.
You can do a provisional ballot (for people who recently moved, and poll data isn't updated, etc) and they validate your ID/address/etc later.
> That's what we do in the US. You are assigned a polling location based on your home address. You can't vote anywhere else. If you try, they turn you away.
That ain't universally true. Here in Nevada you can vote at any polling station (I think within the same county).
And in Russia, it is. That's why they call it "карусель".
In the United States, it hasn't been. The article you link to doesn't even mention the United States. To do it on a large scale requires cooperation from the people running the election, and the US isn't (yet) that corrupt.
The US system isn't completely robust against it, and perhaps some day it will be a problem. But right now there is no evidence that it is a problem, and all of the attempts to "fix" it are clearly aimed at preventing some people from voting.
Famously, there have been significant issues in the past (see Tammany Hall) but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as widespread as it used to be, and especially not at the national election level. I’m sure that there’s shady stuff happening in local (county) level elections, but that’s of significantly less importance to the rest of the general public
An added point about Tammany Hall is that for much of time it was a relevant political power, the US did not have secret ballots. Arguably, it was the lack of anonymity/secrecy in voting that allowed for the types of election fraud that Tammany Hall and others were known for.
The secret ballot perhaps made a particular type of election fraud, the kind done by dedicated partisans voting multiple times themselves, theoretically easier. But it removed the mechanics that allowed far more prevalent and lucrative election fraud. In the Tammany Hall era, you could buy votes and know that your paid voters actually voted the way you wanted. You could promise that your preferred candidates, if elected, would give rewards only to people who voted for them, and actually follow through with that promise. You could physically prevent people from voting with ballots that weren't yours, rather than trying to rely on demographics.
Interesting. In Canada, for federal elections at least, you're assigned to a specific location and station. You can't vote anywhere else. There's a separate process for mail in ballots to confirm you didn't vote in advanced voting or on election day as well.
You can try voting again at other stations, especially since they don't require ID. You just need the name of somebody assigned to that station, who hasn't already voted. There is a signature check if there is a suspicion, but that's rarely done.
But that's practically never done. The risks are too high, and to have a significant impact would require enough votes to make it certain you'd get caught.
The signature check is actually not uncommon, particularly if the vote is contested or a recount done.
We had a vote thrown out of an election several years ago, the woman died right after the election, the signature on the card looked nothing like hers and was probably done by her daughter.
That said all indications are voter fraud is not any kind of wide spread problem in the United States.
At least in NY, you would have to know the name of someone else assigned to the 2nd polling site, since your name is only on the list of 1 polling location?
This is of course a very high bar to clear, as data such as people's names is highly confidential and almost impossible to get unless you're any one of these 750+ data brokers: https://privacyrights.org/data-brokers
You'd also need a fake ID. And be willing to risk a felony conviction to add a single vote. It just doesn't happen here, despite the GOP trying to prove otherwise for decades.
For what? In my state there's no requirement to show ID. When I first moved here I attempted to show mine at the poll and the poll worker told me to quickly put that away and she didn't want to see it. I'm not even sure it's legal for them to ask for ID here, given her panicked reaction to me trying to show it.
Since then I've voted in this state for around 10 years and it's always the same. I could say I'm whoever I want, and just be given a ballot.
Edit: I don't live in NY either, as the other poster used as an example. ID should be an obvious and necessary requirement, but it isn't in many states.
Yeah, it's inconsistent between states. I'm in VA and an ID is required. Despite being a bleeding heart liberal, I'm ok with that safe-guard (despite much of the left being against the notion). I'd also prefer an actual national ID (not the half-baked RealID programs, which some states still haven't adopted).
It's not really "much of the left" that is against it, just the loudest voices. Pew research says [1 sorry for the ugly URL]
Support for photo ID requirements also remains widespread in both parties. More than nine-in-ten Republicans (95%) and about seven-in-ten Democrats (71%) favor requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.
I am p sure a lot of those that aren't for it aren't for it because of access to said ID is gated behind money (or unreasonably out of the way), which would need to be fixed first.
Without an ID, there's far more than just voting that they're not able to take advantage of. Yet I never hear of anyone having trouble living in this modern world that requires an ID for just about everything.
I'm not from the U.S. but as my country's elections work the same way, I feel compelled to weigh in on this. Here in the UK, you go to your local polling station, you give your name, they check it against the list, then cross you out and hand you a ballot. (This was tweaked in the last few years to require government ID, but the process remains the same. More on that later).
While it's true you could in theory say you were anyone on the list, you'd have to first know you were picking a name that wasn't going to be used, or hadn't already. This is already something of a reach. If someone uses a name that had already been used, or someone turns up later to vote and finds their name crossed out, it's going to set off alarm bells.
On top of the logistical challenges, this is a high-effort endeavour. A single person going to multiple polling stations repeatedly doesn't scale super well. Obviously you can try and do this en masse but the more people are involved the harder it would be to keep secret. If you're trying to rig a local council election with low turnout, it might make a meaningful difference. Does it work if you're trying to swing a congressional race or higher? I see the mentions of carousel voting, and am aware of the likes of Tammany Hall, but these are more of an open secret. What the likes of the GOP are alleging is that there's an invisible epidemic of voter fraud to engineer distrust of the system generally.
Sadly in the UK our long-established voting system was tampered with by the government of the time, who took a leaf from GOP voter intimidation and suppression tactics and mandated government-issued ID at the polls to solve a an almost non-existent issue, leading to tens of thousands of eligible voters being turned away at the polls. Thankfully this moronic and clear abuse of process is likely to be reverse before our next major election, however.
Looks like those were in states that don't require ANY ID to vote, which I find ridiculous, so I guess we agree. I live in VA, we require ID, so the problem shown in NY shouldn't be possible.
And again, you still have to be willing to commit a felony to move the needly by ONE vote, which is not likely to be very common. The risk/reward simply isn't there.
So you go to other stations, duh. It's called "carousel voting" [0], if done on a large, organized scale.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carousel_voting