Sirpa Selänne, who received American citizenship and the right to vote, commented on voting practices in Finland and the United States. Iltalehti asked an expert for a comment on the election allegations.
Sirpa Selänne has taken over the headlines with her political comments regarding Finnish and American election practices. In an interview with Helsingin Sanomat’s Monthly Supplement, Selänne said, for example, that development aid paid from tax funds in Finland disappears on the way “into the pockets and administrations of officials all over the world.”
Slänte received US citizenship this year. So they get to vote in the November presidential elections. The backs support the Republicans and have said they will vote for Donald Trump.
Selänne tells you how you can vote from home in the United States by sending a reply envelope in the mail. So no one can check who put the vote on the answer sheet, or how many answer envelopes sent with different names one person fills out. Selänne believes that bad practice enables fraudulent activity and wonders how anyone can trust the results of the US elections.
Iltalehti asked Maria Lindén, a researcher at the Institute of Foreign Policy, about possible election fraud regarding advance and postal voting. Lindén works at the American Center for the Study of Politics and Power.
Widespread deception is not realistic
Lindén, a researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute, does not consider it practically possible that it would be possible to falsify the answer sheet on a large scale or that one person could fill out several of them.
– Even if the voting form could be copied and it could actually be sent in such a way that it would be counted, it is by no means so simple that it would be realistic to think that someone would succeed in it so many times that it would have an impact on the election result.
Although the practices vary between different states, all of them have ways to verify the identity of voters.
– The mechanisms are different in different states, but yes, they always exist, Lindén says.
– The person should find people in whose name he could vote. How do you find an awful lot of real people that you can be sure don’t vote themselves. It would raise suspicions if there were more than one voting form in the name of the same person. I don’t think it’s realistic.
Maria Lindén is a researcher at the Center for the Study of American Politics and Power at the Foreign Policy Institute. Karoliina Vuorenmäki
Talking about election fraud is part of politics
The legal protection of voters in the US elections appears to the researcher to be good overall at the moment.
– The US elections are safe. Concerns about fraud are held in two different camps for two different reasons: Republican supporters believe their party’s long-standing claims of fraud, while Democratic supporters worry about a repeat of the actual 2020 election fraud attempt by Trump and his supporters.
Lindén finds out that Republicans have used the discussion of alleged election fraud as an election weapon even before Donald Trump’s political career.
– The baseless allegations of election fraud exaggerate such dangers as are theoretically possible, but for which there is no evidence in practice that what was described happened on such a scale that it would be relevant in terms of the outcome of the elections.
Minorities
As one of the problems of the elections, Lindén highlights the concern expressed on behalf of minorities that their voices would not be heard fairly.
– That they are in greater danger compared to white Americans, that their vote may not be counted, even if they try to use it.
According to the researcher, the actual election fraud perpetrated by Trump and his supporters is a complex entity that, as one part of the minorities, tries to prevent them from using their vote in various ways.
– Making it difficult for minorities to vote is about discriminatory practices that have been going on for decades, that is, they are not an invention of Trump and his supporters. However, they utilize these practices in a new way as part of a wider election fraud complex.
Lindén points out that the election officials who count the votes cast do not necessarily receive sufficient training or orientation for the job and they exercise power in which votes are accepted and which are not.
– The employees are not necessarily particularly qualified for that task. Different states have different policies for rejecting mail-in votes.
In several states, for example, the signature on the voting form is compared to an existing register, such as the driver’s license register or the signature given during registration.
– It is often the case that there is a signature to which the signature on the ballot is compared. To some extent, it has been possible to show that if the name in the name clarification is one that is typically given to a person of African-American or Latino background, there would be a greater risk that the volunteer workers would reject these votes, says Lindén.
– It is a concern that has been presented
Measures to prevent election fraud seem futile
– In the United States, there are real problems related to structural racism. The extent to which they affect the actual results of the elections has not been consistently studied.
In the United States, there has been criticism that, for example, polling stations may be located in certain residential areas. Many states have also prevented, for example, the importation of several ballots to the polling station, which can make it difficult for indigenous peoples to vote, for example.
In the United States, not everyone may have an ID either, and their requirements differ from state to state. The researcher cites as an example the practice of Texas, where identity can be verified by a permit to possess a handgun, but a student card is not valid.
– For example, disabled people’s benefit organizations have highlighted situations where the use of an assistant in voting has been made difficult or is prohibited, says Lindén.
Overall, the researcher estimates that the discussion about election fraud is more a part of the political game. Lindén questions how important or what effects the laws enacted to prevent election fraud actually have.
– There is no evidence that large-scale fraud has taken place. The United States is so huge and there are so many voters, and in order to be able to commit fraud on such a scale that it would matter in terms of the result, the fraudster would have to get votes horribly falsified, says Lindén.
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