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Too many voters
Watch the turnout figures ‒ they can be a big giveaway.
You never get a 98% or 99% turnout in an honest election. You just don't.
Voting is compulsory in Gabon, but it is not enforced; even in Australia where it is enforced, where you can vote by post or online and can be fined for not voting, turnout only reaches 90-95%.
The main reason that a full turnout is practically impossible is that electoral registers, even if they are recently compiled, can rarely be 100% up-to-date.
Even if no-one gets sick or has to travel, people still die. And when a register is updated, new voters are keen to add themselves to the list.
No-one, however, has any great enthusiasm for removing the names of those who have died, and over time the number of these non-existent voters increases.
I once reported on an election in the Niger Delta where some areas had a turnout of more than 120%.
"They're very healthy people round here, and very civic-minded," a local official assured me.
But a turnout of more than 100%, in an area or an individual polling station, is a major red flag and a reason to cancel the result and re-run the election.
And there's this:
A high turnout in specific areas
Even where the turnout is within the bounds of possibility, if the figure is wildly different from the turnout elsewhere, it serves as a warning.
Why would one particular area, or one individual polling station, have a 90% turnout, while most other areas register less than 70%?
Something strange is almost certainly going on, especially if the high turnout is an area which favours one particular candidate or party over another.
Looking at you, Milwaukee. More, a lot more, at the link. Read it now while you can.
2 comments:
And what will he done about it?
Probably nothing.
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