Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election fraud, election manipulation or vote rigging, is illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates, or both. What exactly constitutes electoral fraud varies from country to country. In national elections, successful electoral fraud can have the effect of a coup d’état or corruption of democracy. In a narrow election, a small amount of fraud may be enough to change the result. Even if the outcome is not affected, the revelation of fraud can have a damaging effect, if not punished, as it can reduce voters’ confidence in democracy.
Electorate manipulation, intimidation, vote buying, disinformation, ballot stuffing, misrecording of votes, misuse of proxy votes, destruction or invalidation of ballots, electronic voting machine tampering, voter suppression and voter impersonation are the majority of the scams used to manipulate and control the outcome of elections.