How to (potentially) rig an election
-A totally fictional, satirical thread-
(Nevertheless pointing to a few election safeguards that may be worth the shot)
1/n

1/ Make sure you have an unaccountable system
Some countries have an almost untrickable system in place, where votes are counted at each poll station (lot of staff involved, but low local burden -no outsourcing needed-) and each poll station result is made public.

(If it's quite likely no one will actually tabulate the results to verify the total, it's still a problem shall anyone want to rig the result as public scrutiny is indeed possible.)
3/n

So make the final results so complicated that no one wants to look at them (an Excel tab with +40 columns to the least) with definitions that no one understand.
Also tell voters it's absolutely normal if results don't add up -because of some forms or software issues.
4/n

The brokered results must not to be published right after the election, but months afterwards
Make sure contesting an election result is very difficult (eg legal challenge needed) even when it's blatantly false
Destroy the ballots ASAP
If you have an electoral watchdog, scrap it

2/ Vote count: How to avoid too much scrutiny
1st step: Make sure vote counts are an Herculean feat : Volunteers who counted from 10 a.m. to 6 a.m. will NOT be motivated to recount from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. if the overall result happens not to match.
6/n

Note that making the counting atrociously long and difficult will make it hard to find volunteers -a true (gagged employee) outsourcing opportunity.
If necessary, group electoral area to make sure there are dozens of thousands votes to count ASAP.
7/n

2nd step: Make the counting officer *legally & personally* liable for any problem even if he/she's not directly responsible, so it's really not in his/her interest to report anything.
Also make sure he/she feels like it's not humanely possible to guarantee there's no mistake.
8/n

3/ Keep the unfriendly voters from voting
A complicated registration system keeping people from knowing for sure if they are registered or not can prove useful. It will be a real burden for public service election staff often having to process the same registration twice.
9/n

Exhausted public service staff will gladly outsource a huge part (at least half) of the registered voters' registration to (eg) a friendly private Oil&Gas&Health company.
Pick one known for previous glitches, like leaking voters data.
Call it normal.
10/n

Make sure there's a clause gagging the public service staff from talking about any problem -to "protect confidence in elections"
Make sure there is 0 control of what such a private company does, by the public or by the electoral watchdog (if you haven't scrapped it yet)
11/n

Shall the public service experience electoral issues, make sure they can terminate the contract when its term comes (not before). Make sure there isn't much concurrence (ideally none at all, or at least not providing the services needed by understaffed/underfunded public service)

Use postal ballots smartly
Some people think that rigging postal ballots require state of the art conspiracy and technology.
It doesn't.
You can either:
A/ Blow up the postal service Trump-style in targeted areas, to keep voters you don't want to vote from doing so by post
13/n

B/ Just don't allow long enough of a delay between the election being announced and the actual election for the ballots to reach the postal voters and come back (then don't forget to blame the public services for not achieving the impossible)
14/n

(Also note that if you stretched the public election services so much they outsourced both registering the voters and sending the ballots to the same -friendly- company, simple statistics would be enough to know what ballots would need to be stalled...
15/n

-but again, that is probably not necessary, just set impossible delays between ballot impression and election deadline. If for whatever reason you'd rather not have voters living far away to vote, this strategy is very efficient. So is mistakenly using the wrong return stamp
16/n

4/ How to avoid suspicion
Make people confident in the (not adding up thus possibly suspect) result by stretching 2 points:
- People involved in election management are honest people (true -given the conditions, the risks and the paycheck -or no paycheck at all-, they're heroes)

- Ballots are hand counted so there is no room for rigging (almost true).
Set a system where the number of ballots in a box is verified, then boxes are mixed and ballots sorted, then hand counted, making sure both totals match.
18/n

Keep quiet about how box results (dozens or hundreds) are tallied to get the overall result (dozens *of* hundreds). Shall the overall total not match somehow, use 1st step of point 2 to call it a night, alright?
(Counting officer is probably OK with not risking being sued anyway)

If someone starts wondering why election results of hand counted elections where "no software is involved" do not match because of "software issues" (ideally built by a friendly company or connected to the Internet?), or says results that do not add up are a problem...
20/n

... Put a few crazy theories about election rigging out there and dismiss the lot as conspiracist nonsense. Refer to it to avoid answering questions.
Trick: If sourced questions on specific points keep being asked, blame questioner for questioning election heroes' honesty.
21/n

Now UK, as it turns out, the fiction I just wrote is (at the exception of the tally software -that is but a theory to explain the unexplained) *not* a fiction as far as your elections are concerned.
22/n

May I kindly suggest you consider the "untrickable system where votes are counted at each poll station (lot of staff involved, but low local burden -no outsourcing needed-), and each poll station result is made public" option?