Personation (rather than
''im''personation) is a primarily-
legal term, meaning 'to assume the identity of another person with intent to deceive'. It is often used for the kind of
voter fraud where an individual votes in an
election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
, whilst pretending to be a different elector. It is also used when charging a person who portrays themselves as a police officer.
Personation appears as a crime in the Canadian Criminal Code with the meaning simply of impersonation.
In the U.S., the New York State Penal Law defines the crime of false personation as simply the act of pretending to be another, a Class B misdemeanor; those who assume the identity of another in order to further another crime can be charged with second-degree criminal impersonation, a Class A misdemeanor. Posing as a police officer for any reason, or as a physician in order to forge a prescription or otherwise obtain substances so controlled, is first-degree criminal impersonation, a Class E felony.
Many jurisdictions allow electors to nominate an individual to vote on their behalf, often known as
proxy voting
Proxy voting is a form of voting whereby a member of a decision-making body may delegate their voting power to a representative, to enable a vote in absence. The representative may be another member of the same body, or external. A person so d ...
. Whilst voting with an invalid proxy form could be considered personation, it is usual for an
intent to deceive to be required for such an act to be considered
criminal
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...
.
Personation is an offence in law in England and Wales: see
English criminal law#Forgery, personation and cheating
See also
*
Shi (personator)
The ''shi'' () was a ceremonial " personator" who represented a dead relative during ancient Chinese ancestral sacrifices. In a ''shi'' ceremony, the ancestral spirit supposedly would enter the descendant "corpse" personator, who would eat and dri ...
References
Electoral fraud
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