How exactly do you outlaw it? By "it" I assuming you meaning cheating.
If it were up to me, I'd enact a law that says "It shall be illegal if, in the course of an election, any existing statute is interpreted in a way that provides an unfair advantage or disadvantage to any political party."
(Obviously, 'legal writing' wasn't one of my success stories, but you get the point).
We don't have to lawyers to understand what is fair and what isn't, although it may be helpful to add a few hundred paragraphs, e.g.,
§(c)(8)(z) If any person wants to contribute money to election operations, it shall be contributed in a way that distributions to counties are made pro-rata on a state-wide basis with respect to the number of voters in the most recent national election. (e.g., Atlanta gets more money than Blue Ridge, but both get the same amount per voter).
Of course, there would have to be an entire string of limitations to prevent getting around the law, but they write that stuff all the time.
My point is there should be some way to bring fairness into it and let courts determine whether something is fair, even if there is no fraud involved.
Fraud is a rare thing because it goes to the defendant's state of mind: Did he intend to commit fraud? That's a really hard thing to prove, what a person was thinking. For example, in 2016 there were 584 actual cases of tax fraud, nationwide. The reason there are so few is that it is so damned hard to prove, even if happens more frequently.
When it comes to voter fraud, the criterian should be fairness. And "stealing" an election is any act that is unfair, since unfairness is effectively "stealing" a vote from someone else.
Besides, you're an honest guy. I'm sure you want to be treated with absolute honesty. I do. |
