How Three People Could Throw a State Election in Favor of Their Presidential Candidate

How Three People Could Throw a State Election in Favor of Their Presidential Candidate

Introduction
In this fictional scenario, we follow the coordinated efforts of a high-ranking IT worker, their spouse on the state election board, and another trusted election board member. Together, they exploit vulnerabilities in the state’s election system, databases, and voter rolls to swing a critical presidential election in favor of their chosen candidate. The operation is highly secretive, meticulously planned, and carried out over the course of months, with all participants leveraging their insider positions to manipulate voter data and process fraudulent ballots. By the time the results are counted, they have added over 100,000 fake votes—undetected.

Step 1: The Initial Plan – Targeting Inactive Voters

The operation begins with the IT worker, a trusted state employee with access to the election system and numerous other state databases. Given their role as an administrator in the state’s digital infrastructure, they have clearance to access a variety of sensitive databases including voter registration, tax records, health services, and more.

Goal: To identify inactive or unlikely voters—people who won’t notice or react if their vote is fraudulently cast. The plan focuses on gathering a large list of around 500,000 potential voters, from which they can eventually generate 100,000 fraudulent votes.

Cross-Referencing State Databases

The IT worker starts by pulling information from various state departments:

1. Voter Registration Database: They extract a list of all registered voters in the state. Using voting history records, they filter out voters who haven’t voted in the past several election cycles or who have never voted. These voters are prime targets because they are unlikely to notice any tampering.
2. Department of Revenue Records: They cross-reference voter registration data with tax filings to identify individuals who have relocated to other states but remain registered to vote in the state. This provides a valuable list of voters whose official residence has changed but who are still eligible to vote according to the outdated voter rolls.
3. Death Registries: The IT worker taps into the state death registry to find people who have died in the past several years but have not yet been purged from the voter rolls. These names are especially useful since the deceased obviously won’t be casting their votes.
4. Medicaid and Senior Care Data: The IT worker uses their access to state health systems to find individuals in long-term care facilities, hospice care, or senior living centers. Many of these individuals are incapacitated or otherwise unable to vote but are still registered. Additionally, they look at disability registries to identify individuals with severe medical conditions who are unlikely to participate in the election.
5. Change of Address Data: Using DMV records, they identify people who have updated their addresses but remain registered in their old voting district. These voters may have moved but neglected to update their voter registration, leaving a perfect opportunity to exploit.

Result: After running these queries, the IT worker has amassed a list of roughly 480,000 inactive or vulnerable voters, which will serve as the core of their fraudulent scheme, 20,000 names short of their goal.

Filling the Gap: The IT worker could not come up with 100,000 viable inactive or vulnerable voters, leaving them 20,000 short. To make up for this, they implemented a program to randomly assign additional people to households already identified as having registered voters who had never voted. This added 10,000 new names to the list, but we were still 10,000 names short. Fortunately, the state had recently initiated a Homeless ID Project that allowed homeless individuals to self-identify their names and receive state ID cards, automatically registering them to vote. The IT worker accessed this database and cross-referenced it with the State Housing Authority to find individuals who had not yet applied for state services. This provided the final 10,000 names needed to create the fraudulent ballots.

Step 2: Return-to-Sender Mail Strategy

The next phase involves using the state’s mail system to confirm the list of inactive voters while keeping the entire operation under the radar. This is where Election Official #1, the IT worker’s spouse, steps in to leverage her position on the election board.

Sending Out Election Notification Letters

Under the guise of ensuring that voter records are up to date, Election Official #1 initiates the mail-out of election notification letters to every registered voter in the state. These letters serve as a form of voter roll maintenance but also include a key detail: a return-to-sender request. Any letter that cannot be delivered will be sent back, providing them with confirmation that the voter no longer resides at the listed address or is unreachable.

• Targeted Letters: The letters are sent not only to active voters but also to the inactive and questionable voters identified by the IT worker. The letters are designed to appear legitimate, following standard state election protocols. No one will suspect that these letters are part of a broader manipulation effort.
• Return-to-Sender Process: When these letters bounce back as undeliverable, Election Official #2 (the close ally) ensures that the returned mail is quietly separated from other election mail. The returned letters are discreetly stored in a separate room, away from prying eyes, ensuring they are not processed or recorded in the normal way.

Tracking Undeliverable Mail

Once they start receiving the return-to-sender letters, Election Official #2 carefully matches the returned letters against the IT worker’s original list. They confirm which individuals are deceased, have moved out of state, or are otherwise unlikely to vote. This narrows the list down to approximately 100,000 voters who can now be exploited for the final phase of the plan.

Step 3: Filling Out Prefilled Ballots

Now that the team has confirmed their list of inactive voters, they move on to the next critical step: generating and filling out ballots that will count as legitimate votes in the election.

Generating Prefilled Ballots

With insider knowledge of the state’s ballot printing and mailing systems, the team ensures they have access to blank ballots. These ballots are printed in advance, filled out with votes for their favored candidate, and prepared for submission.

• Ballot Preparation: Using voter information from the state’s voter registration database, they pre-fill ballots with the correct voter details, including names, addresses, and district information. They make sure to mark each ballot with votes for their chosen candidate.
• Signature Matching: One of the biggest challenges in pulling off election fraud is forging signatures. To address this, the IT worker uses their access to digital signature records stored in state systems. They retrieve digitized signatures from DMV records, tax filings, and other government documents, ensuring the signatures on the ballots closely match those on file. For those without digital signatures, they use software that replicates handwritten signatures to mimic the voters’ handwriting style.

Dispersing Ballots

Rather than mailing all the pre-filled ballots from a single location, which could raise suspicion, the team uses multiple drop-off points across the state. They take advantage of:

• Official ballot drop boxes placed in different precincts
• Mailing from various post offices to spread out the volume of prefilled ballots
• Direct mail insertion: In some cases, Election Official #2 ensures that the pre-filled ballots are placed directly into the election mail pipeline, bypassing the need for traditional mail.

Step 4: Handling Returned Ballots and Re-Processing

In addition to pre-filled ballots, the group intercepts official ballots that were mailed out by the state but returned as undeliverable.

Intercepting Returned Ballots

When official ballots are returned due to undeliverable addresses (based on the original return-to-sender list), Election Official #2 steps in again. These ballots are separated from the rest of the election mail, stored in a secure area, and removed from circulation.

• Opening and Filling Ballots: After hours, the team opens the returned ballots, fills them out with votes for their candidate, and reseals them. Since these ballots are legitimate and tied to real voter information, they blend in seamlessly with other ballots.
• Re-Submitting into the System: The manipulated ballots are reinserted into the ballot-counting system after normal working hours. The election officials use their authority to access ballot-processing machines and ensure the fraudulent ballots are included in the final count.

Step 5: Avoiding Detection and Covering Their Tracks

To avoid detection, the group takes multiple precautions throughout the operation:

Spreading Out Fraudulent Votes

One of the most important safeguards is to avoid concentrating fraudulent votes in one area, which would raise suspicion. The group disperses the fraudulent ballots across multiple precincts and districts, keeping the numbers low enough in each area to avoid detection.

Influencing Internal Audits

As insiders within the election system, Election Official #1 and #2 have the ability to influence any potential audits or investigations. If there are any discrepancies, they ensure that any review of return-to-sender ballots is superficial and does not raise further questions.

Destroying Evidence

After the election is complete and the results are certified, the group ensures that all evidence of their manipulation is destroyed. The returned mail, unused ballots, and any paper trails tied to the operation are quietly removed from the system. Additionally, digital logs are altered to erase any traces of tampering with voter data or ballot processing systems.

The Final Result

Through careful planning and execution, this small team of three insiders successfully manipulates the election in favor of their presidential candidate. By targeting 500,000 vulnerable voters, they are able to generate 100,000 fraudulent votes, which are seamlessly blended into the state’s election system. Despite the high stakes and the scale of the operation, their insider access and strategic planning ensure that no red flags are raised, and their candidate wins the state.

The manipulation goes undetected, and the election result is accepted as legitimate. It serves as a powerful reminder of the potential vulnerabilities in the electoral system when trusted insiders are willing to exploit their positions for personal or political gain.

Several other ways could occur; this is only a fictional example of how this reporter believes three people could manipulate the system.