Besides money and time being major obstacles to overcome, there is a third gorilla in the room that may be even larger, that being proving "fraud". You see, fraud is the "[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right". Fraud is about the state of mind, and proving that is extremely difficult. An easy defense is it was a "mistake" of some sort. I completed the wrong ballot, or he asked me to sign that ballot for him, or I didn't realize I did something wrong and I was doing a friend a favor. The time it would take to pursue a cluster of cases and the difficulty the government has in proving "fraud" / somebody's state of mind, makes such cases fruitless to pursue[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I'm familiar with the concept of proving fraud, the issue is commonly addressed with respect to tax laws. People can submit tax returns with significant inaccuracies year after year, and they can wind up paying penalties and interest for such, but they're almost never convicted of fraud, which would result in even larger adverse consequences [/FONT]
