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 Post Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 11:07 am 
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So we had our district council elections last Sunday.(1) The Powers That Be had always maintained their electoral majority by mobilizing senior citizens to vote. They are extremely good at it. They have a seemingly unlimited budget for currying favour with old people by giving out free lunches and outings and cake coupons, and of course, free transportation to the polling station. The government maintains that it's only illegal if the freebies are directly offered as a bribe to vote, so as long as the pro-government party maintains a veneer of plausible deniability ("this free lunch isn't a bribe, it's a community activity"), they get away with it. Many old folk see absolutely nothing wrong with these gifts and feel that they are entitled to them as elders deserving of society's respect. They have little education and even less truck with democratic values such as voting according to one's political opinions. Insofar as they have political opinions, they're along the lines of "society would be fine if everyone kept their head down, made a living, and respected their elders."

This year the Powers That Be stooped to a new low. They rounded up nursing home residents, many of them exhibiting signs of dementia, registered them to vote, bused them to polling stations, and pressed slips of paper into their hands to remind them who they were supposed to vote for in case they forgot during the 20 paces between the polling station door and the voting booth. The government maintains that this is not illegal.

I imagine that this would not fly in sane, normal countries. At least hope it wouldn't. Under your country's laws, how would you go about prosecuting people for manipulating people with dementia into casting votes for a certain candidate. With absentee ballots, how could you even prove if they were fraudulently filled in on behalf of people no longer able to make rational decisions?


(1) The district councils are tiny and largely unimportant local councils - they do minor public works and advise the government on local neighbourhood issues like "we need a shade over our bus stop over here" or "there's a problem with the trash pick-up". Nevertheless, the election was seen as a barometer of public sentiment.

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 Post Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 3:46 am 
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Over here, there's absolutely no law against voting if you have dementia. In order to vote, you need to be registered and 18; in order to register, you need to be at least 16 (yes, you can register well before you can vote), you need to be a South African citizen; and you need a green barcoded ID book (or a few specific alternatives) which is obtainable from the Department of Home Affairs. (Laws preventing people with dementia from voting would be too easily abused to prevent legitimate votes from people who want to vote for the wrong party ("oh, you've expressed a desire to vote for Candidate X? Sorry, sir, that is such a stupid choice that you are clearly suffering from dementia... here, I'll make a note in your file to remove your vote on medical grounds"))

An important difference, however, is that the category of elderly people with dementia isn't really an important voting block here. Sure, if the government wanted to, they could offer free lunches, lots of cakes, and free rides to the polling station to whoever they wanted - but they are not allowed to look over anyone's shoulder inside the polling booth, so the people can stroll in there, and simply vote for whoever they want (and then stroll out, lie if they want to, and get more free cake and a ride home). There just aren't enough easily-led elderly people to make much of a difference to the ANC's 60-something percent majority.

No political party is allowed to obstruct access to any polling booth - but they are allowed to have a little stand outside the booth, with logos and stuff (as long as it doesn't prevent people from getting in). I think they're allowed to hand out free stuff, too, but then they have to hand out the same free stuff to everybody, no matter who they vote for, so nobody does. They're also allowed to put up loads and loads of posters all over *everywhere*, which they do. (It's also - by design - not too difficult or expensive to form a party and get on the lists, which is why we have things like the Soccer Party - I'm not quite sure what they stand for besides more soccer).

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 Post Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 10:38 am 
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If you have dementia but are legally still able to make your own decisions ( like you don't have a custodial guardian assigned) you are allowed to vote. If you are for some reason not able to make your cross yourself, you may ask a trusted person to accompany you in the voting booth. The general idea is, that this is some relative or similiar.

My brother, whos polling station is in a home for elderly people says that he does see elderly people vote with much help from the staff, where the Occam Razor interpretation is, that the staff tries to maximize social democrat votes.

There are other allegations of polling tricks (legal ones and illegal ones) that make it into the media, like some mosque, where the mosque goers had filed their requests for absentee ballots together and people have voiced questions, if they really all filled them out in secret as intended. Lower Austria (and propably some other states) allows you to vote in local elections, not only if you have your primary residence there, but also if you have a secundary residence. There are some houses of minor political functionaries, where a suprising lot of people have secundary residences.

Some years ago, for a local election some mayor was caught requesting absentee ballots for some local people who usually don't vote, to be sent to his residence. That one IIRC got convicted and the election had to be done again.

There are all sort of "impure" ways to attempt to influence voters with less understanding for politics. Dementia people are just the most obvious of theese. Friends and relatives might influence them going as far as emotional blackmail. Parties and their satelite organisations run all sorts of bread and games stuff like festivals and sports clubs and give out aid. Governing parties try more or less subtly to display stuff that comes from the goverment as coming from the governing party. Parties attempt to have at least one candidate for various ethnic groups, who then try to sell the "party X is the party of our ethnic group" preferably in a way that people outside that group see little of it (so people who dislike that demographic group also can vote for party X).

So why does the System still work*?
With rule of law in place, it is difficult to allow some tricks for some factions but deny them to others. If tricks get to blatant the courts might stop them.
No party has all the power on all levels of goverment. If one party rock the boat by being too barefaced about it, the other parties can make a temporal alliance to stop their tricks. Usually politicans are good machiavellists and try to just go that far, that such an alliance does not get established.

We also have the safeguard, that a lot of the election processes is done by comitees, that consist of representants of the candidating parties. So if one party finds some trick, it is likely that the other parties will know about it soon. And while all the vote counters are partial, they are partial for different factions.

* or does not break down entirely, depending on your viewpoint

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 Post Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2015 12:41 am 
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No different than offering free college, free health care, free social services if you vote for the right candidate. I'd call that bribery, but that is perfectly legal here in the US.

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 Post Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2015 2:54 am 
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Jorodryn wrote:
No different than offering free college, free health care, free social services if you vote for the right candidate. I'd call that bribery, but that is perfectly legal here in the US.

Nice attempt at taking a cheap shot at the left as if the right never promises their supporters things (tax breaks! tax breaks! tax breaks!) but that is not even close to being the same thing as directly handing people payments. By your standards no politician should ever promise anything to anyone, then.

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 Post Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2015 3:55 am 
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Here's something that seems relevant.

Tlokwe is a municipality in South Africa - pretty much the south-eastern municipality in the north-west province. It is not a rich municipality (if you're interested in the statistics, you can see them over here).

Just recently (yesterday) there was a Constitutional Court ruling that the September 2013 local elections in Tlokwe were "not free and fair". By which, it seems, certain candidates did not receive important documents in time; some voters who live outside the ward were registered as living in it and bussed in to vote; and there was insufficient time for complaints to be heard.

This article provides some analysis - to quote:

Quote:
Here, the IEC conducted its own investigation, which revealed that over 1,000 people were registered in wards where they did not live, more than 300 could not actually prove that they lived where they were registered, and at least 300 more were registered in the wrong voting district.


Nobody quite seems to know how these people got incorrectly registered, but it's easy to find who benefited - the ANC won that election, and this naturally puts a certain amount of suspicion on them (or at least their local representatives).

So, the results of the election have been overturned, and I understand there's a new election planned soon (in which I have no doubt a lot of people will be watching really closely) - in the meantime, the ANC has lost their majority in Tlokwe...

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 Post Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 12:28 pm 
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Here is my take on the difference between offering policies that benefit some voters and dirty tricks:

Using goverment money (i.e. collected taxes) to fund programs is goverment policy. It might be wise or it might not be wise policy, but in that generality it is fine.

Using party money (that is most likely mostly either tax money, the party got it's hands on somehow, or payments to the party by interest groups, in return for implementing policy they like or a cut from goverment money that is embezzled (at least in the spirit if not the letter)) to fund programs, is most likely an attempt to obfuscate costs to the voters.

In both cases the voters collectivly pay for the programs in one way or an other. But in the second case, it's much less clear how and corruption is easier. So it can be assumed that in the second case, they will in the end pay more.

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 Post Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2015 10:53 pm 
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The obvious problem with paying voters to vote for your party is that it screws up the whole point of elections, which is accountability. The point of an election is that voters choose leaders based on how they promise to run the country/state/municipality. Politicians make promises about what they'll do in office. Those promises may involve giving out free ponies to everyone, and voters must therefore evaluate whether those promises sound like bullhockey. Nobody really expects campaign promises to be completely fulfilled, but if a politician gets into office and does the complete opposite of what he or she promised, then voters can express their displeasure in the next election

But if politicians give out money or prizes before getting elected, then this breaks down. If all voters are so apathetic that they can be bought by a free seafood dinner once every four years, or however long your election cycle is, then once in office, politicians can do whatever the hell they want.

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 Post Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2015 3:32 am 
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I think that this is the reason why ballots are secret; so that people can take their seafood dinner, and nonetheless vote for whichever candidate they want, whether or not he's the one who provided the dinner.

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 Post Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:10 pm 
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Yeah i guess the major checks that keep voter bribery in check are:

1) Secret ballots, so no one can check if the bribes did work.

2) No restrictions for other factions to offer their counterbribes.

3) Media access to people who denounce the bribes.

There actually was some discussion if making selfies in the polling booth with your vote was illegal, since some people did that and posted it on facebook. I don't know if something definite came out of it though. That would not even be a definite proof of your vote by the way, since votes count if it is clear, what the voter wanted to vote for. So instead of making a cross for your choice, you also can cross out all the other choices. Or make crosses everywhere and then write "Thats the real one" with an arrow pointing to one selection.

2) is mostly a concern with campain financing but if you are an autocratic government you also have all sort of ways to do dirty tricks there.

Controlling the media is one of the standard operations of sham democracies. If only one party can make their case publically, then that party will most likely win.

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 Post Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2015 1:27 pm 
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1) Secret ballots, so no one can check if the bribes did work.

Well, this helps but it isn't foolproof. If they're exploiting voters with dementia, secret ballots wouldn't make a difference since the voters barely know what's going on anyway.

And while I'm sure there's people who take bribes and vote for whoever they wanted to anyway, a lot of the elderly folk who accept bribes do so because they think that's how elections are supposed to work and are happy to vote for whoever gives out the best loot. My coworker's mother-in-law is an enthusiastic supporter of the Patriotic Party because of all the swag she gets. She goes to rallies as a rent-a-protester, shouting slogans she barely understands, because hey, free stuff! Her general views are conservative, but it's hard to tell whether she refuses to vote for the other side because she thinks they're uppity troublemakers, or because they have the nerve to expect people to vote for them for free. It's probably all part of the same thing to her.

I've also heard rumours that ballot secrecy is in some cases compromised. Employees of certain large state-owned companies are reportedly told to take a photo of their ballot with their cellphone and send it to their boss. I suppose they could spoil their ballot afterwards, but I wonder how many of them would care enough to do so.

Quote:
2) No restrictions for other factions to offer their counterbribes.

Corrupt systems are rarely even-handed. They're corrupt because someone has a vested interest in staying in power. There's a severe asymmetry of resources. The Patriotic Parties have seemingly unlimited funding, if not directly from the Chinese government (all undisclosed of course), then from generous corporate donors who need to buttkiss the government. The democratic parties are chronically underfunded, relying on small donations from supporters and a few wealthy benefactors who you could count on one hand and have fingers left over.

Quote:
3) Media access to people who denounce the bribes.

Every election, there's media reports of "suspected voter fraud" and "manipulation", but nothing ever comes of it. Plausible deniability goes a long way. Plus, most of the media is owned by the aforementioned corporate donors. They know not to push too far, lest their advertising be pulled.

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 Post Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2015 4:32 pm 
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Voting because of the swag is just a little more enlightened then voting for someone, who insults the right demographic. That i would put under "You have to live with the fact, that also idiots get a vote".

The other ones are indeed a signs of Hong Kongs democracy deficiencies.

With media access, i also assume, one way or an other other parties are prevented from running with "They take tax money to buy swag for their supporters". In working democracies, this makes it more risky to hand out swag too blatantly.

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