Match the terms with their definitions

1. absentee ballot	A. a vote cast in an election to demonstrate the caster's dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates or refusal of the current political system. It can take different forms: selecting a none of the above (none) or "blank vote" option, if one exists; selecting a vote in favor of a different voting system based on a Condorcet method; voting for a fringe, ineligible, or fictional candidate. Sometimes, a person may use even more uncommon, often illegal, methods. Examples include physical destruction of the ballot (for example, ripping the ballot apart or eating it), asking other people to vote for them, or selling their ballot (for example, putting their vote on auction sites).
2. abstention	B. a poll taken (as by news media) of voters leaving the voting place that is usually used for predicting the winners
3. disenfranchisement	C. the practice that occurs, in elections with more than two candidates, when a voter supports a candidate other than his or her sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome. For example, in a simple plurality election, a voter might sometimes gain a "better" outcome by voting for a less preferred but more generally popular candidate.
4. exit poll	D. a term in election procedure for when a participant in a vote either does not go to vote (on election day) or, in parliamentary procedure, is present during the vote, but does not cast a ballot.
5."None of the Above" vote	E. hacking the software of a voting machine to add malicious code or manipulating its hardware with the purpose of altering vote totals or favoring any candidate, also abusing the administrative access to the machine by election officials that allows individuals to vote multiple times.
6. protest vote/ blank vote/ white vote	F. depriving of the legal right to vote
7. straight-ticket voting/ straight-party voting	G. a ballot option in some jurisdictions or organizations, designed to allow the voter to indicate disapproval of all of the candidates in a voting system. It is based on the principle that consent requires the ability to withhold consent in an election, just as they can by voting no on ballot questions.
8. tactical voting/ strategic voting	H. a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station. Numerous methods have been devised to facilitate this as one way to improve voter turnout, though some countries require that a valid reason, such as infirmity or travel, be given before a voter can participate in it.
9. Tampering with electronic voting machines	I. the practice of voting for candidates of the same party for multiple positions. For example, if a member of the Democratic Party in the United States votes for every candidate for President, Senator, Representative, Governor, state legislators and those running for local government that is a Democrat.

Read the text about election fraud.

· What are the ways of fixing an election? Have you ever come across any violations yourself?

· What measures can be taken to prevent illegal election practices?

3.03.2012 http://www.economist.com/node/21548933

How to steal an election

Electoral fraudsters have become more cunning, but dirty politics is a bigger worry

It was another good day for North Korea's Workers' Party. On July 24th 2011, amid music and gongs, the late Kim Jong Il shuffled past queuing throngs to cast his vote in the country's local elections. Like everyone else, he voted for the ruling party; its 28,116 candidates were all elected unopposed on a 99.97% turnout.

Though such extreme cases are confined to the handful of remaining workers' paradises, crude ballot-rigging is far from extinct. Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the Belarusian autocrat, has even admitted it publicly – he claimed he had ordered the result of the 2006 presidential election to be tweaked downwards in order to avoid an embarrassingly large majority. Of the 70-odd states holding national elections in 2012, Freedom House, a lobby, counts only 40 as full “electoral democracies”.

For the most part, however, technology and the presence of outside observers is complicating the election-rigging business, requiring dodgy politicians to work harder and more cleverly. Most manipulators make only sparing use of blatant election-day frauds, says Sarah Birch of the University of Essex. She compared observer reports of 136 elections held between 1995 and 2006 and found that a more frequent tactic is to alter election laws, often as a means of deterring opposition candidates or gerrymandering unlosable constituencies. (Youssou N'Dour, a famous musician who hoped to stand in Senegal's presidential election on February 26th, was struck from the ballot on a technicality.)

Also more common are attempts to influence the genuine choices of voters –frequently through vote-buying, using state resources in campaigning, and exploiting partisan media. Such subterfuge is harder to detect and less likely to enrage a mob. Public-spirited voters with smartphones can photograph irregularities at polling stations, but not the abuse of campaign-financing rules. “People don't often take to the streets to protest against media bias,” says Ms Birch.

Some fraud masquerades as incompetence. Judith Kelley at Duke University crunched American government reports on more than 1,000 elections held between 1980 and 2004. The most blatant forms of cheating were recorded, on average, in about 40% of polls, but the biggest rise in complaints concerned electoral administration. Too few voting slips, patchy voter lists, and long queues at polling stations distort elections as surely as burnt ballot boxes and bribes. Yet election observers are likely to withhold their worst scoldings if the line between cock-up and corruption is unclear.

Nearly 80% of elections come under scrutiny from at least some sort of international observers, up from less than 30% in 1989, says Susan Hyde of Yale University (see chart). Domestic election observers are also getting more numerous and more professional. Such local monitors are better placed to record pre-election manipulations than small groups from overseas. And more observers on election day (especially those toting smartphones and tablets) make possible more comprehensive fraud-detection techniques, including the “quick count” – an effective but resource-intensive practice which compares results declared at polling stations with those tabulated centrally by election officials.

Blinding the watchers

Now the monitors themselves have become a target for election-riggers. They may face intimidation, sabotage (doors being glued shut, for example, in Russia) or manipulation. In 2007 the Kazakh embassy in Washington tried to pack a mission from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, an international monitoring outfit, with sympathetic staff.

Another dodge is to invite more than one mission. Observers disagree about a third of the time, Ms Kelley says, and some bodies are consistently more lenient than others. Russia, Kenya and Zimbabwe have all exploited these differences. Monitors sent by the Commonwealth of Independent States (a post-Soviet talking shop based in Minsk) have verified scores of elections, including those in Ukraine and Belarus, which were condemned by more established institutions. Credible outfits may boycott the worst-run elections, but such aloofness avails little if less reputable groups attend in their place.

Researchers disinclined or unable to loiter in polling stations are increasingly drawn to statistical means of detecting fraud. A principle now known as Benford's law (though discovered by an autodidact called Simon Newcomb) shows that naturally occurring sets of numbers, such as returns from polling stations, have distinctive patterns that made-up numbers almost never match. Worried vote-riggers may be driven to commission a countermeasure from a friendly mathematician.

With so many possibilities for subtle rigging, it may seem odd that the crude stuff remains so popular. Perhaps election-rigging is a hallmark of ill-run political systems, where corrupt local officials instinctively revert to the malpractice that comes naturally. Or perhaps, since the clever stuff can go wrong, ballot-stuffing is a safety valve. Politicians in shoddy democracies are learning what leaders in real ones have long known – you can fool only some of the people, and only some of the time.

Part 2