Cotidianul, June 5th, 2009

Teach yourself electoral fraud

Published on 5 June 2009 at 11:31
Cotidianul, June 5th, 2009

At the 11th hour of the European elections, the Romanian Social Democrats have just put out an “anti-fraud guide”, reports a Cotidianul headline. The paper warns, however, that “this guide can also be a very good source of inspiration for would-be fraudsters”. Designed to put party members on their guard, the manual describes no fewer than 18 different types of electoral fraud. That includes the “Crunch”, a commotion staged to block access to a polling station where another party is ahead in the polls; the “Morning” involves stuffing ballot boxes at dawn with 50-odd pre-stamped ballots; “Baksheesh” entails precisely that, bribing voters to pick the “right” party; and, last but not least, “Stalin”, in which certain ballots are nonchalantly shifted from one pile to another when nobody is looking.

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