

The goal ultimately is to defeat the weak candidate in the general election by the leader of the party that the voter truly supports. People who support one party may temporarily join another party (or vote in a crossover way, when permitted) in order to elect a weak candidate for that party's leadership. Ī method of manipulating primary contests and other elections of party leaders are related to this. For instance, Malaysia gave citizenship to immigrants from the neighboring Philippines and Indonesia, together with suffrage, in order for a political party to "dominate" the state of Sabah this controversial process was known as Project IC. Immigration law may also be used to manipulate electoral demography. One example of this was the 1986–1990 Homes for votes scandal in the City of Westminster in England under Shirley Porter. If people eligible for public housing are likely to vote for a particular party, then they can either be concentrated into one area, thus making their votes count for less, or moved into marginal seats, where they may tip the balance towards their preferred party. However, such laws can also be used for demographic manipulation as they tend to disenfranchise those with no fixed address, such as the homeless, travelers, Roma, students (studying full-time away from home), and some casual workers.Īnother strategy is to permanently move people into an electoral district, usually through public housing. Many countries prevent this with rules stipulating that a voter must have lived in an electoral district for a minimum period (for example, six months) in order to be eligible to vote there.

One way of doing this is to move a large number of voters into the electorate prior to an election, for example by temporarily assigning them land or lodging them in flophouses. In many cases, it is possible for authorities to artificially control the composition of an electorate in order to produce a foregone result.

Artificial migration or party membership Deliberate manipulation of election outcomes is widely considered a violation of the principles of democracy. The legality of this type of manipulation varies across jurisdictions.
