是什么阻止了人们进行选民欺诈？
你听说过可怕的故事：有人投了多张选票，人们以已故亲属的名义投票，邮寄选票被拦截。
选民欺诈确实偶尔会发生。当它发生时，我们往往会听到很多关于它的信息。它也会被抓住并起诉。
据两党现任和前任选举管理人员称，美国多层次的选举程序提供了许多保障措施，使选民欺诈行为通常易于被发现且罕见。
美国的选举是分散的，有数千个独立的投票管辖区。这使得几乎不可能进行大规模的操纵选票操作，从而影响总统竞选——或者大多数其他竞选。
“你可能不会有一个完美的选举系统，”前肯塔基州州务卿、安全选举项目（Secure Elections Project）顾问委员会主席、共和党人特雷·格雷森（Trey Grayson）说。“但是，如果你正在寻找一个你应该有信心的大学，你应该在美国对此感觉良好。”You’ve heard the horror stories: Someone casting multiple ballots, people voting in the name of dead relatives, mail-in ballots being intercepted.
Voter fraud does happen occasionally. When it does, we tend to hear a lot about it. It also gets caught and prosecuted.
The nation’s multilayered election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally detectable and rare, according to current and former election administrators of both parties.
America’s elections are decentralized, with thousands of independent voting jurisdictions. That makes it virtually impossible to pull off a large-scale vote-rigging operation that could tip a presidential race — or most any other race.
“You’re probably not going to have a perfect election system,” said Republican Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky secretary of state and the advisory board chair of the Secure Elections Project. “But if you’re looking for one that you should have confidence in, you should feel good about that here in America.”
是什么阻止了人们进行选民欺诈？多次投票、篡改选票、在您的住所撒谎以在其他地方投票或投别人的票都是可以被处以巨额罚款和监禁的罪行。违反选举法的非美国公民可能被驱逐出境。
对于任何仍然有作弊动机的人来说，美国的选举系统设计有多层保护和透明度，旨在阻止作弊。
对于现场投票，大多数州要么要求选民在投票站提供某种身份证件。其他法案要求选民以其他方式验证他们的身份，例如说明他们的姓名和地址、在投票簿上签名或签署宣誓书。
在圣克鲁斯县（Santa Cruz County）主持选举超过27年的加州议会民主党人盖尔·佩勒林（Gail Pellerin）说，当选举官员用死亡记录和讣告更新选民名单时，试图以最近去世的朋友或家人的名义投票的人可能会被抓到。
她说，那些试图冒充他人的人冒着投票站的人认识那个人的风险，或者这个人以后会试图投自己的票。What’s stopping people from committing voter fraud?
Voting more than once, tampering with ballots, lying about your residence to vote somewhere else or casting someone else’s ballot are crimes that can be punished with hefty fines and prison time. Non-U.S. citizens who break election laws can be deported.
For anyone still motivated to cheat, election systems in the United States are designed with multiple layers of protection and transparency intended to stand in the way.
For in-person voting, most states either require or request voters provide some sort of ID at the polls. Others require voters to verify who they are in another way, such as stating their name and address, signing a poll book or signing an affidavit.
People who try to vote in the name of a recently deceased friend or family member can be caught when election officials update voter lists with death records and obituaries, said Gail Pellerin, a Democratic in the California Assembly who ran elections in Santa Cruz County for more than 27 years.
Those who try to impersonate someone else run the risk that someone at the polls knows that person or that the person will later try to cast their own ballot, she said.
缺席投票有哪些保护措施？对于缺席投票，不同的州有不同的选票验证协议。所有州都需要选民签名。许多州都有进一步的预防措施，例如让两党团队将签名与存档的其他签名进行比较，要求对签名进行公证或要求证人签名。
这意味着，即使选票被错误地发送到某人的过去地址，并且现任居民邮寄了选票，也会有支票提醒选举工作人员注意违规行为。
越来越多的州提供在线或基于文本的选票跟踪工具作为额外的保护层，让选民能够看到他们的选票何时被寄出、退回和计算。
联邦法律要求维护选民名单，选举官员通过多种方法进行维护，从检查州和联邦数据库到与其他州合作跟踪已搬迁的选民。
全国选举官员协会（National Association of Election Officials）项目首席执行官塔米·帕特里克（Tammy Patrick）说，投票箱也有安全协议。
她解释说，这些箱子通常是为了防止手偷选票而设计的，并由摄像头监控，用螺栓固定在地面上，并装有阻燃室，因此如果有人扔进点燃的火柴，它不会毁坏里面的选票。What protections exist for absentee voting?
For absentee voting, different states have different ballot verification protocols. All states require a voter’s signature. Many states have further precautions, such as having bipartisan teams compare the signature with other signatures on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign.
That means even if a ballot is erroneously sent to someone’s past address and the current resident mails it in, there are checks to alert election workers to the foul play.
A growing number of states offer online or text-based ballot tracking tools as an extra layer of protection, allowing voters to see when their ballot has been sent out, returned and counted.
Federal law requires voter list maintenance, and election officials do that through a variety of methods, from checking state and federal databases to collaborating with other states to track voters who have moved.Ballot drop boxes have security protocols, too, said Tammy Patrick, chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials.
She explained the boxes are often designed to stop hands from stealing ballots and are surveilled by camera, bolted to the ground and constructed with fire-retardant chambers, so if someone threw in a lit match, it wouldn’t destroy the ballots inside.
有时，涉嫌选民欺诈并不像看起来那样2020 年大选后，社交媒体上充斥着死者投票、重复投票或毁坏路边成堆选票的说法。
前总统唐纳德·特朗普推动并继续放大这些说法。但其中绝大多数被发现是不真实的。
美联社（Associated Press）的一项调查调查了特朗普所争议的六个战场州中所有可能的选民欺诈案件，发现数百万张选票中只有不到475张。这还不足以改变结果。民主党人乔·拜登 （Joe Biden） 以 311,257 票的总票数赢得了这六个州。
审查还显示，没有串通意图操纵投票。几乎每个案件都是基于个人单独行动以投额外票。在一个案例中，一名男子错误地认为他在假释期间可以投票。在另一起案件中，一名妇女被怀疑为她死去的母亲寄送选票。
前选举官员表示，更多时候，选民欺诈的指控被证明是笔误或误解造成的。
佩勒林说，她记得她所在县的一位政治候选人对许多人在同一地址登记投票表示怀疑。事实证明，选民是住在同一个房子里的修女。
帕特里克说，当她在亚利桑那州马里科帕县（Maricopa County， Arizona）的选举工作时，签名不匹配有时会用手臂骨折或最近的中风来解释。在其他情况下，一位老年人试图投票两次，因为他们忘记了他们已经提交了邮寄选票。
“你真的必须考虑选民的意图，”帕特里克说。“这并不总是直观的。”Sometimes, alleged voter fraud isn’t what it seems
After the 2020 election, social media surged with claims of dead people casting ballots, double voting or destroyed piles of ballots on the side of the road.
Former President Donald Trump promoted and has continued to amplify these claims. But the vast majority of them were found to be untrue.
An Associated Press investigation that explored every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump found there were fewer than 475 out of millions of votes cast. That was not nearly enough to tip the outcome. Democrat Joe Biden won the six states by a combined 311,257 votes.
为什么选民欺诈不太可能影响总统竞选如果说选民欺诈永远不会发生，那就错了。
在一个选举年有数百万张选票，几乎可以肯定会有一些人试图玩弄系统的情况。还有更阴险的努力，例如 2006 年在肯塔基州的选票购买计划。
格雷森说，在那起案件中，选民抱怨并随后进行了调查。然后参与者承认他们做了什么。
他说，这个例子表明，选举官员保持警惕并不断提高安全性以帮助选民感到自信是多么重要。
但是，他说，要让任何这样的计划在更大范围内发挥作用是很困难的。欺诈者将不得不处理每个县选举系统中繁琐的细微差别。他们还必须让很多人对可能随时被官员或观察员发现的犯罪保持沉默。
“选举的这种分散性质本身就是一种威慑，”格雷森说。Why voter fraud is unlikely to affect the presidential race
It would be wrong to suggest that voter fraud never happens.
With millions of votes cast in an election year, it’s almost guaranteed there will be a few cases of someone trying to game the system. There also have been more insidious efforts, such as a vote-buying scheme in 2006 in Kentucky.
In that case, Grayson said, voters complained and an investigation ensued. Then participants admitted what they had done.
He said the example shows how important it is for election officials to stay vigilant and constantly improve security in order to help voters feel confident.
But, he said, it would be hard to make any such scheme work on a larger scale. Fraudsters would have to navigate onerous nuances in each county’s election system. They also would have to keep a large number of people quiet about a crime that could be caught at any moment by officials or observers.
“This decentralized nature of the elections is itself a deterrent,” Grayson said
Read more about how U.S. elections work at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
