In our forthcoming book on election fraud, we have a chapter we co-wrote with Rod Kiewiet on “low-tech” election fraud, such as creating disturbances at polling places in areas of high concentration of “bad” voters in order to disrupt or halt voting (thus lowering turnout in one party’s stronghold area). It seems as though the Pakistani intelligence services may have hacked into Rod’s computer and read it.

“Where an opposing candidate is strong in an area, they [supporters of President Pervez Musharraf ] have planned to create a conflict at the polling station, even killing people if necessary, to stop polls at least three to four hours,” [according to a report written by supporters of Bhutto].

The report also accused the government of planning to tamper with ballots and voter lists, intimidate opposition candidates and misuse U.S.-made equipment to monitor communications of opponents.

We never considered the idea of killing people, but low tech election fraud is clearly something that people think is a worthwhile activity.