We were just curious if purposefully extending the length of voting lines at a Polling Station (say by 500 or so diehard volunteers {or hired agents}) to discourage real voters from voting in precincts heavily favoring the opposing candidate would be an illegal strategem to use or would it just be in the nasty dirty trick category???

Seems like it would be a fairly easy technique to use which could even go undetected since a participating agent could simply "give up" his/her place in line when still 10 minutes or so away from the head of the line (and possibly just rejoin it again at the end of the line)...

Yeah, not too easy to catch them unless you are a poll worker and you frequent the hallway outside the voting area and notice the same person twice within, say, 5 hours..... but even then, it could literally be someone that really did give up and come back later... so..... You'd actually have to catch them saying "I give up" and then see them walk directly to the back of the line. And they could get around that by driving away and coming back in 5 minutes. You'd have to have a fantastic memory to realize its the same person, and they could even change shirts/coats....

It would be nice if absentee voting were encouraged by the system as that would tend to minimize the effects of such schemes. Think a good start on this would be to replace the term "Absentee Voter" with "Early Bird Voter" and have the government provide postage paid envelopes for mailing in the ballots (the $1.00 IRS Refund Contribution Option could be a potential source for funding this). GOTV activities should be more focused on having people register as Early Birds throughout the campaign rather than the frantic activity during the closing days (which of course could still occur).

The major advantages to the voting public would be much shorter lines at the polls and, for the Early Birds of course, no hassle getting transportation to the polls & waiting in lines.

The system should also provide positive feedback to the Early Bird voters confirming receipt of their ballot via the voter's designated choice (e.g. secure email, tel., or USPS).

With the advanced state of the hacking art, Early Bird Voting via a secure internet link is probably not in the cards although quite a few folks do the majority of their financial transactions via this mechanism.

I read in a report somewhere on this forum collage students in PA. were being paid to stand in line. ^_^

All you need to do is dimish the number of voting machines in a district that is predominately democratic, even (or maybe that is especially) when the numbers show a dramatic increase in newly registered voters. Less machines and faulty machines will ensure drastically longer lines.

Randi Rhodes has been discussing this since the election. She's brought up a lot of good points, unfortunately my brain can't access them right now, but she has an archive of her previous shows on her website: Randi Rhodes that you can listen to if you are interested.