=Corrupt Practices at Elections.=—All elections afford some opportunity for corrupt practices and various safeguards are provided against their occurrence. _Personation_ is the offence of voting under a name which is not your own. Voters who have died since the lists were compiled, or who are absent, are sometimes impersonated by men who have no right to vote at all. Vigilance on the part of the election officers helps to prevent personation although the officials can hardly be expected to know everyone who comes to the polls. _Repeating_ is the offence of voting twice at the same election. To do this a voter must first, by fraudulent means, become enrolled as a voter in two or more precincts or districts. _Ballot-box stuffing_ is the practice of putting in the box ballots which have no right to be there. With the Australian ballot the practice is very infrequent. _Ballot-switching_ is the placing of marks on the ballots, surreptitiously, while the ballots are being counted. A dishonest official, with a small piece of lead under his fingernail, has sometimes been able to spoil or to “switch” ballots by marking additional crosses on them during the process of counting. _Intimidation_ is the offence of influencing a voter’s action by threats or wrongful pressure. _Bribery_, of course, is self-explanatory. All these practices involve moral turpitude and are forbidden under severe penalties. They have now become relatively uncommon at American elections.[49] =Absent Voting.=—It frequently happens, in the nature of things, that many voters cannot conveniently be in their home districts on election day. Soldiers and sailors, commercial travelers, railway conductors, engineers and trainmen, fishermen, students in universities are obvious examples. It has been estimated that in Massachusetts the number of voters who are necessarily absent from their homes on election day averages about thirty thousand. Many others, in order to cast their ballots, are put to considerable expense and inconvenience. Now it has seemed desirable, in many of the states, to make some provision whereby those voters may cast their ballots without being actually at the polls on election day. The usual arrangement is that a voter who expects to be absent on election day must apply, some time before the election date, to a designated official for a ballot. This ballot is then marked by the voter and sealed in an envelope. The envelope is attested before a notary public and deposited with an election official who sees that it is counted when other ballots are counted. In some states the blank ballot is sent by mail to absent voters who request it, and after being marked the ballot is returned by mail before the election day. The chief objection to absent voting is that it gives an opportunity for fraud, but in practice this has not proved to be a serious objection.