The penalty for election fraud should be death.
Hear me out, this is a reasoned opinion.
1. If you steal an election, there is No Upper Limit on how much damage you can do. Communist revolution = UNLIMITED damage.
2. If you steal an election and you win, there's no penalty. Your guy will make sure you're never prosecuted.
3. If you steal an election but you fail, you can go to jail, but if your team wins in 4 years they can let you out.
4. A group can attempt election fraud over and over, and even if some of their members are caught and imprisoned, they just have to get more members and try again until they win. When they win, all of their members can be freed.
5. Stealing an election has unlimited potential upside, and unlimited potential damage, so the only way it can be prevented is by unlimited potential downside (fear of death).
6. This is one of very few cases where public execution is a well reasoned solution.
7. It is obvious that election fraud is not adequately punished, because normal people have a lackadaisical attitude toward it. People who wouldn't say "Hi Jack" in an airport don't mind doing "casual" fraud, like filling out mail-in ballots in a nursing home.
8. If normal people feel that way, then billionaires and organized crime bosses who individually have the ability to overturn elections, have absolutely no reason not to.
9. For even the most hardened mafia boss, there are red lines. They won't rob a bank, they won't traffic nuclear secrets, etc. Election fraud needs to be on this list, because when you steal the election, you rob EVERY bank, and you steal ALL nuclear secrets.
10. I am generally against the death penalty because I do not believe in revenge as policy. But public execution for election fraud is NOT about revenge, it is a loving and caring position based on the national survival imperative of keeping this critical system uncompromised.
11. Those people who die at the gallows for the crime of election fraud, in a way, die for their country. They make the ultimate sacrifice to burn it into the public psyche that We Don't Do That Here.