Originally Posted by kane

Do you honestly think something like you describe would happen? Voter fraud at that level would not be able to go unnoticed and there would be serious consequences for such a thing.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, let's not speculate, and look at what actually did happen in Ohio in 2004. It was pretty clear with a few weeks left that the election between Kerry and Bush was going to come down to Ohio. The winner of Ohio would likely win the White House.

For starters, the guy in charge of running the actual election in the state, Ken Blackwell. was also the head of Bush's re-election group in that state and was on record as saying he would do anything it took to deliver Ohio for Bush. To me, that is a massive conflict of interest especially when the state is that important in the election. There were many different things that then went on in that state including people breaking rules, too many voting machines sent to Republican heavy areas and not enough in Democrat heavy areas resulting in lines that were regularly 3-5 hours long. There were also issues where some of the voting machines "malfunctioned." as well as other issues with registering, provisional ballots etc.

The reason for this is that Ohio was a huge prize. Pulling off shady things in order to get a few hundred more votes for your candidate could be the difference between winning and losing the election so the reward is worth the risk. If it were a national election then those few hundred votes likely wouldn't make much of a difference and it certainly wouldn't be worth the risk to get them.