Ballot stuffing is the illegal act of one person submitting multiple ballot

Ballot

A ballot is a device used to record choices made by voters. Each voter uses one ballot, and ballots are not shared. In the simplest elections, a ballot may be a simple scrap of paper on which each voter writes in the name of a candidate, but governmental elections use pre-printed to protect the...

s during a vote in which only one ballot per person is permitted. The name originates from the earliest days of this practice in which people literally did stuff more than one ballot in a ballot box at the same time. In a government election

Election

An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...

, this is a form of electoral fraud

Electoral fraud

Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Acts of fraud affect vote counts to bring about an election result, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates or both...

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Detecting ballot-stuffing depends a great deal on how good the record-keeping is. Most election systems match the number of persons showing up to vote with the number of ballots cast, and/or preparing the forms so that they are difficult to fake. A common method still used in small village elections throughout the USA uses two ballot boxes and a single sheet of paper for a ballot. After marking the ballot, the sheet is folded in half, then torn with each part dropped in the corresponding ballot box. The number of marked ballots in one box will equal the number of ballot sheet headers in the other ballot box, thus preventing ballot stuffing. In short, successful ballot-stuffing usually requires the misconduct of genuine registered voters and/or elections personnel.

Ballot-stuffing can be accomplished in a number of ways. Often, a ballot-stuffer casts votes on the behalf of people who did not show up to the polls (known as telegraphing); sometimes, votes are even cast by those who are long dead or fictitious characters in TV shows, books, and movies (known as padding). Both practices are also referred to as personation

Personation

Personation is a term used in law for the specific kind of voter fraud where an individual votes in an election, whilst pretending to be a different elector....

. In earlier societies with little paperwork, dead people were kept "alive" on paper for the purpose of ballot-stuffing. The family of the deceased often helped along, either to assist their party or for money.

Ballot stuffing is possible with one version of the Sequoia

Sequoia Voting Systems

Sequoia Voting Systems was a California-based company that is one of the largest providers of electronic voting systems in the U.S., having offices in Oakland, Denver and New York City. Some of its major competitors were Premier Election Solutions and Election Systems & Software.It was acquired by...

 touchscreen voting machine

Voting machine

Voting machines are the total combination of mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic equipment , that is used to define ballots; to cast and count votes; to report or display election results; and to maintain and produce any audit trail information...

. It has a yellow button on the back side which when pressed allows repeated vote stuffing. By design, pressing the button triggers the emanation of two audible beeps.