Former Student Gets Year In Prison For College President Election Fraud

Gunkerty Jeb writes, quoting Threatpost: "A former Cal State San Marcos student was sentenced to a year in prison this week for election tampering by using keystroke loggers to grab student credentials and then vote for himself. Matthew Weaver, 22, of Huntington Beach, Calif., stole almost 750 students' identities to try and become president of the San Diego County college's student government. His plan went awry when the school's computer technicians noticed an anomaly in activity and caught Weaver with keystroke loggers as he sat in front of the suspicious computer."

Comments

True Story

[Anonymous Coward]

I did something similar at "Canada's Premiere Undergraduate Experience"

Long story short, one of the people running for Student Union President won my House election the year before. He did so by getting the competition kicked out on technicalities. No, I wasn't running, and No, I wasn't friends with anyone who did. Since every day a poster is up is a "violation" they racked up fast. This guy was going out with the person who's job it is to notify people of potential violations, and they were never warned.

Fast forward two years, and I logged in as every. single. student. from a MacDonalds down the road. Didn't actually vote, just logged in, logged right back out. Then repeated 8k times. Once a student logged in, they had an hour to finish. Since everyone's hour was up at 9AM, almost no one voted.

Somehow, there was still a landslide win. Not only did he have 90% of the votes, he had more votes than there were students in the entire university.

The whole election should have been thrown out. People complained on official forums, topics were deleted as fast as they went up.

It pays to play dirty apparently.

Re:True Story

[ackthpt]

I did something similar at "Canada's Premiere Undergraduate Experience"

Long story short, one of the people running for Student Union President won my House election the year before. He did so by getting the competition kicked out on technicalities. No, I wasn't running, and No, I wasn't friends with anyone who did. Since every day a poster is up is a "violation" they racked up fast. This guy was going out with the person who's job it is to notify people of potential violations, and they were never warned.

Fast forward two years, and I logged in as every. single. student. from a MacDonalds down the road. Didn't actually vote, just logged in, logged right back out. Then repeated 8k times. Once a student logged in, they had an hour to finish. Since everyone's hour was up at 9AM, almost no one voted.

Somehow, there was still a landslide win. Not only did he have 90% of the votes, he had more votes than there were students in the entire university.

The whole election should have been thrown out. People complained on official forums, topics were deleted as fast as they went up.

It pays to play dirty apparently.

Have to be careful when playing dirty. In my elementary school was a fellow running for class president and he was well liked and popular. One of his competitors for the honor (as there really wasn't much to the office) found he had been born outside the US (he was an Aussie by birth) and this revelation -- why it was even considered by the faculty baffled me -- meant the popular student was ineligible. It really broke his heart and seemed incredibly unfair, particularly to classmates. Keep in mind most of us were 12 or younger, but we already had a pretty well developed sense of what is fair and how you deal with weasels who succeed in removing competition by devious means, the weasel was soundly defeated in the vote. So the lesson here isn't that you cannot have your competitor diminished by technicalities or smearing, but you should always have a surrogate do it on the side so you don't get caught for the 'Swiftboating'.

Mixed feelings

[istartedi]

On the one hand, fraud is bad. On the other, student government is usually a joke that deserves to be pranked. At the college level it is, AFAIK, not much better than HS. Our Class President gave a friggin' 15 minute speech at commencement. Holy Crap! That was the only real debacle at graduation. I'll never forget it. That's all I remember about the class president.

Re:Mixed feelings

[91degrees]

the problem is that this job comes with a stipend. Once you actually make money from this sort of thing (even a relatively small amount), it's financial fraud and taken a lot more seriously.

Prison

[ArcadeMan]

He's probably going to prison for accessing the students accounts, not for the election fraud itself.

Re:Plea bargaining

[Hatta]

Pleading guilty avoids certain un-pleasantries.

That's extortion. If someone were bullied by the government out of their right to criticize the government, would you say "Not criticizing the government avoids certain un-pleasantries"?

The whole point of having rights is that the government cannot make your life more unpleasant for exercising them. Getting extra charges tacked on for exercising your right to a trial is no more just than getting extra attention from the IRS for exercising your right to criticize the government.

Re:fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Use your brain. Any effort to require voters to prove their identity in even the most minimal way is fervently opposed by the Dems. The only reason to oppose requiring something as minimal as say, requiring a driver's license to vote is if you are trying to make it easy to commit election fraud.

The Democrat Party is firmly committed ideologically to promoting Statism. Anyone who promotes the creation of an all-powerful government sees politics as a winner-takes-all game and readily adopts a win-by-any-means-necessary attitude toward elections. The Republican Party, in contrast, doesn't have a firm ideology atm although the people who control the RP are trying to change it into a completely Statist party - which is why the RP is losing its base.