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Colorado woman found guilty of voter fraud for casting ballots for late ex-husband and son (apnews.com)

submitted 5 months ago by FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world to c/usa@lemmy.ml

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Elizabeth Ann Davis, 61, was convicted Wednesday of two counts of forgery and one count of impersonating an elector for submitting mail ballots for them in the 2022 general election. Voter fraud is generally rare and detectable since the nation’s election processes provide many safeguards, according to current and former election officials.

Voters are required to put their signature on ballots before returning them.

Davis, a Republican, has previously been convicted of forgery and other offenses in Florida and Colorado, a press release from the office of District Attorney George Brauchler said.

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[–] limer@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 months ago

Americans get voter fraud ( fraud by the voter), but are blind to electoral fraud ( fraud by those running the election or outside people taking advantage of bad practices).

I think voter fraud in America is rare. But electoral fraud has a rich history in the USA going back generations.

Some electoral fraud is easy to understand in history. Like when white landowners in the south,after reconstruction, threw away many black voter’s ballots. Or during the big boss era during the early 1900s where people were paid to vote multiple times or in the wrong districts.

Certainly during the last 30 years electoral fraud by voting machines is the big thing. Using them provide so many ways to change votes: the owners can do it without employees knowing. Admins can log in and flip votes; people with stolen keys can change stuff; hackers can hack.

And this was demonstrated aptly, many times during the 1990s and early 2000s in hacker and tech conferences attended by thousands.

But there started to be a divorce between the reality of the situation and political pundits who claimed things were secure. So, anyone with the actual technical knowledge who knows it’s a bad idea to not use only paper ballots are not listened to by those who think voting is effective for real change.

And I was stumped about this denial until I understood it in socialist terms.