Voting during corporate, organizational, and shareholder votes is a privilege, not a right. With that privilege comes a great deal of responsibility, not only to the organization but to your fellow members, to ensure that your vote is cast in good faith. With both mail ballots and in-person voting, false votes are rare, but when they occur, they are a serious violation of ethics. In some cases, they may even break the law.
False votes occur when a person deliberately attempts to vote, either fraudulently or intending to deceive. There are several ways a voter can do this–let’s walk through some common examples:
For various reasons, a person may have lost their voting privileges and taken it upon themselves to attempt to vote using a false name. Such attempts are typically caught when the false name doesn’t match the voter, member, or shareholder database.
However, in organizations where the person who certifies an election isn’t thorough, a false vote may slip through. For this reason, election certification is a critical process that should be completed with the utmost care and attention to detail.
Similar to the above, this typically involves stealing a person's ballot or coercing another member or shareholder into allowing the ineligible person to vote using the eligible person's ballot. Combating this includes in-person voting, voter verification, and enhanced security measures for online votes.
This is similar to false name voting but can be effective in a show of hands vote. Alternatively, the perpetrator may be a previous shareholder now ineligible, casting a vote in their own name and hoping no one notices the discrepancy.
This is a difficult task, though it has been done in the past, typically in organizations with lax voting security or insufficient oversight. In common parlance, this is known as ‘ballot box stuffing.’
Other cases where this may be seen are instances where votes are cast anonymously, as perpetrators are hard to catch without convincing evidence. Usually, the discrepancy is noticed when the number of votes counted exceeds the number of eligible voters. Though, this, in and of itself, is not evidence of ballot stuffing. Situations in which there are more votes than voters need to be examined carefully.
If it is determined that the ballot box has been ‘stuffed,’ the entire vote may be overturned and conducted again at a future time once security and vote monitoring measures have been enhanced.
What makes a vote false is different from what can make a vote invalid. In many cases, invalid votes result from clerical errors, oversights, or misunderstandings regarding the voting process. This can include missing the voting deadline or forgetting to sign a ballot. These innocent mistakes invalidate a vote and prevent it from being counted.
For a vote to be false, it must be cast maliciously with the intent to deceive. This means that the perpetrator knew what they were doing and that it was against the rules or bylaws. In short, the difference between false and invalid voting is the motivation behind the vote.
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