Electoral fraud in the United States

Electoral fraud in the United States is considered by most experts to be extremely rare. In the last half-century, there have been occasional examples of electoral fraud affecting United States elections, mostly on the local level.

Types of fraud include voter impersonation or in-person voter fraud, mail-in or absentee ballot fraud, illegal voting by non-citizens and double voting. All of these are generally considered to be very rare, with some experts stating that mail-in voting is more vulnerable to fraud than voting in-person. Electoral fraud was significantly more prevalent in earlier United States history, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Electoral fraud has long been a significant topic in American political discourse. In recent years, false accusations of electoral fraud have often been linked to the election denial movement in the United States.

Frequency

Electoral fraud is considered by most experts to be extremely rare in the United States, and often accidental when it occurs. Fraud is more likely to occur in and affect the outcome of local elections, where the potential impact of a small number of votes can be greater.

Voter impersonation

Voter impersonation, or in-person voter fraud, is described by experts as extremely rare. Between 1978–2018, no elections were overturned by courts due to voter impersonation fraud.

Rutgers professor Lorraine Minnite has maintained that voter impersonation is illogical from the perspective of the perpetrator due to the high risk and limited upside of casting one vote. If caught, perpetrators of voter impersonation can face up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 for citizens or deportation for non-citizens. Proponents of voter identification laws have argued that it can be difficult to detect voter impersonation if voter ID is not required. University of Virginia law professor Michael D. Gilbert agreed with Minnite in 2014 that theory and evidence suggest voter impersonation "rarely occurs", though agreed with voter ID proponents that "the failure to observe fraud does not mean that no fraud takes place". Gilbert noted that it is difficult for someone to coordinate widespread voter impersonation to steal an election, as even if they paid people to vote in-person for their preferred candidate, they could not confirm whether these people voted the way they were paid to.

ABC News reported in 2012 that only four cases of voter impersonation had led to convictions in Texas over the previous decade. A study released the same year by News21, an Arizona State University reporting project, identified a total of 10 cases of alleged voter impersonation in the United States between 2000 and 2012. Another 2012 study found no evidence that voter impersonation (in the form of people voting under the auspices of a dead voter) occurred in the 2006 Georgia general elections.

In a 2013 study, the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) sent investigators to vote under the names of 63 ineligible voters, who were either deceased, felons or had moved outside New York City. 61 of those investigators were allowed to illegally vote under their assumed identities. One of the two who was not allowed to vote was recognized by the mother of the felon they were impersonating, who worked at the polling place. In five instances, investigators in their 20s or 30s successfully posed as voters age 82 to 94. The DOI report stated that this result, while not large enough to be statistically significant, "indicates vulnerability in the system".

In April 2014, Federal District Court Judge Lynn Adelman ruled in Frank v. Walker that Wisconsin's voter ID law was unconstitutional because "virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin ...". In August 2014, Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt reported in the Washington Post's Wonkblog that he had identified only 31 credible cases of voter impersonation since 2000. The most serious incident identified involved as many as 24 people trying to vote under assumed names in Brooklyn, which would still not have made a significant difference in most American elections. A 2014 study in the Election Law Journal found that about the same percentage of the U.S. population (about 2.5%) admitted to having been abducted by aliens as admitted to committing voter impersonation. In 2016, News21 reviewed cases of possible voter impersonation in five states where politicians had expressed concerns about it. They found 38 successful state prosecutions for voter fraud, none of which were for voter impersonation.

Mail-in ballot fraud

See also: Postal voting in the United States § Reliability of postal ballots

Mail-in ballot fraud is considered quite rare, though some experts consider it more likely to occur than in-person voter fraud. Between 1978–2018, at least fourteen elections were invalidated or overturned by courts due to absentee ballot fraud.

Postal ballots have been the source of "most significant vote-counting disputes in recent decades", according to Edward Foley, director of the Election Law program at Ohio State University. The New York Times wrote in 2012 that according to election administrators, fraud in voting by mail was "far less common than innocent errors" but "vastly more prevalent" than in-person voting fraud. University of Chicago political scientist Anthony Fowler said in 2020 that with mail-in ballots, "it could be easier for someone to fraudulently vote on behalf of someone else or for someone to tamper with ballots" and "one might be more concerned about coercion or vote buying", but that in practice, "voter fraud is very rare, and the risk of widespread fraud is probably very minimal, even with all-mail elections".

Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount, has stated "misconduct in the mail voting process is meaningfully more prevalent than misconduct in the process of voting in person", but that misconduct "still amounts to only a tiny fraction of the ballots cast by mail". Lonna Atkeson, an expert in election administration, said about mail-in voting fraud, "It's really hard to find ... The fact is, we really don't know how much fraud there is ... There aren't millions of fraudulent votes, but there are some." Lorraine Minnite, a professor at Rutgers University says “my sense is that it is not much more frequent than in-person voter fraud, which rarely occurs.” Richard Hasen, a professor at University of California, Irvine School of Law, said in 2020 that "problems are extremely rare in the five states that rely primarily on vote-by-mail."

An analysis by News21 found 491 known cases of absentee ballot fraud between 2000 and 2012. In April 2020, a voter fraud study covering 20 years by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the level of mail-in ballot fraud "exceedingly rare" since it occurs only in "0.00006 percent" of individual votes nationally, and, in one state, "0.000004 percent — about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning in the United States." A 2020 Washington Post analysis of data from three vote-by-mail states (Colorado, Oregon and Washington), with help from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), found that officials had identified just 372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of deceased people out of about 14.6 million mail votes cast in 2016 and 2018.

Ballot harvesting, or third parties collecting and delivering absentee ballots for voters, is legal in some states but illegal or restricted in others.

Non-citizen voting

See also: Non-citizen suffrage in the United States § 21st century

Illegal non-citizen voting is considered extremely rare by most experts. This is due in part to the more severe penalties associated with the practice including deportation, incarceration or fines, as well as the jeopardizing of naturalization efforts.

A Brennan Center for Justice study of 2016 data from 42 jurisdictions found an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million votes cast (or .0001% of all votes cast). A 2024 search of a The Heritage Foundation database that includes a "sampling" of voter fraud cases brought by prosecutors found 85 non-citizen cases listed since 1979, in a period when 2 billion votes were cast. San Francisco State University professor and non-citizen voting expert Ron Hayduk referred to non-citizen voting as a "problem that doesn't exist". In an audit of the 2016 elections, the North Carolina State Board of Elections found that 41 out of 4.8 million total votes were by non-citizens.

In 2012, University of California, Irvine law professor Richard Hasen wrote that "unlike impersonation fraud, noncitizen voting cannot be dismissed as a Republican fantasy", and pointed to a 1996 congressional race in California where a congressional investigation found several hundred non-citizens who had voted. However, he has said that the number of non-citizens voting is "small", "very, very small" and not occurring "in large numbers". Glenn Kessler in The Washington Post stated there was "scattered evidence" of non-citizen voting and little to support the idea that it ever affected the outcome of a major election, but that the scarcity of evidence "does not necessarily prove that the phenomenon does not happen".

The federal form to register a voter requires a unique identification number such as a Social Security or driver's license number, but it does not require proof of citizenship. New voters are only required to check a box attesting that they are a citizen. The process of verifying the citizenship of voters varies by state, and not all states conduct verification. Some prominent Republicans, such as former Federal Election Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky, have said that non-citizen voting is a threat for this reason, though claims of widespread non-citizen voting have been unsupported by evidence. Several Republican-led states have flagged and removed small numbers of purported non-citizens from voter rolls. These processes have been criticized by voting rights organizations for erroneously impacting legal voters, particularly naturalized citizens.

In the 2018 Fish v. Kobach case, where Kansas voters challenged the state's voter identification law, U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson ruled that the law was unconstitutional, in part because Secretary of State Kris Kobach had not shown that illegal non-citizen voting was widespread enough to justify it. She wrote that "at most, 67 noncitizens registered or attempted to register in Kansas over the last 19 years" and concluded that the 67 noncitizen cases were consistent with administrative error.

In 2023, Old Dominion University professor Jesse Richman examined Arizona state voter and DMV files as an expert witness for a court case. Richman said that he found 1,934 registered voters out of more than 4 million whose records indicated they were non-citizens at the time of registration or afterward. He also examined nationwide data from the 2022 Cooperative Election Study, and estimated that half a percent of non-citizens had voted. U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton wrote in her ruling on the case that "the Court found Dr. Richman’s testimony credible and affords his opinions considerable weight." Richman had previously conducted a 2014 study with David Earnest which claimed that 6.4% of noncitizens had voted in 2008 and 2.2% in 2010, though this study was criticized by other researchers, who said that the data set was too small to be useful and that some of it appeared to be misclassified. After the 2016 elections, Richman rebuked Donald Trump's claims that millions of non-citizens had voted.

As of 2024, there is no indication noncitizen voting is happening in significant numbers anywhere in the United States. Election experts say the number of noncitizens voting is infinitesimal and that it is easy to verify.

Double voting

Double voting is considered extremely rare. When someone votes twice within the same state, it is often inadvertent, for example if a voter thinks their absentee ballot will not be delivered in time. As of 2023, the only system that can detect double voting across states is the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which close to half of states participate in.

A 2008 Election Law Journal article found that a number of claims from the early 2000s purporting to have found 'potential double voters' are due in no small part to the 'Birthday problem', or the statistical probability of people sharing the same name and birthday across multiple states. In 2007, the Secretary of State of Washington checked voter signatures to verify whether or not double-voting occurred among people with the same name and birthday, and the check exonerated all but one person.

An American Political Science Review study of voter data from the 2012 presidential election estimated that at most 1 in 4,000 voters illegally cast two ballots, though it noted accounting errors could account for a significant portion, if not all of those numbers. The study found that many apparent double-voters were the result of incorrectly marking someone as having voted. It also concluded that when two voter records share the same name and birthdate, removing the earlier registration could impede approximately 300 legitimate votes for each double vote prevented.

Being registered to vote in multiple states without voting in more than one is allowed. The legal definition of double voting varies between states.

Felony voting

See also: Felony disenfranchisement in the United States

In the United States, depending on the state, a person may have their voting rights suspended or withdrawn due to the conviction of a criminal offense, usually a felony. Felons who cast a ballot in those states often do not know that they were ineligible to vote.

A North Carolina State Board of Elections audit of the 2016 elections found that 441 felons had voted before their right to vote had been restored. 12 of the people on probation for a felony in Alamance County, North Carolina were charged with illegally voting in 2016, though five stated in separate interviews with The New York Times that they had thought they were allowed to vote.

Outdated voter registration

Outdated voter registration has not been linked to voter fraud despite allegations connecting the two.

A 2012 report by the Pew Center on the States based on data collected in 2008, found that over 1.8 million dead people were registered to vote nationwide and over 3 million voters were registered in multiple states but no evidence of fraud that resulted. According to PolitiFact, the study investigated "outdated voter rolls, not fraudulent votes", and made "no mention of noncitizens voting or registering to vote".

Pew researchers found that military personnel were disproportionately affected by voter registration errors. Most often these involved members of the military and their families who were deployed overseas. For example, in 2008 alone, they reported almost "twice as many registration problems" as the general public.In an October 2016 Associated Press fact-check, the author noted these voter registration irregularities left some people concerned that the electoral system was vulnerable to the impersonation of dead voters. However, voter rolls with dead voters are usually due to the states being slow to eliminate dead voters. By 2016, most states had addressed concerns raised by the Pew 2012 report.

A 2004 analysis by The Chicago Tribune that compared voter rolls with Social Security Administration death claims found that more than 181,000 dead voters were on voter rolls across six swing states, including 64,889 in Florida and 50,051 in Michigan. The Tribune wrote that outdated voter registration "is considered cause for concern, especially in states where the presidential election was decided by just a few thousand votes". It noted that new laws to be adopted in 2006 were "designed to fix some of those problems".

Notable cases

19th century

1872 depiction of electoral fraud in Philadelphia.

Electoral fraud was prevalent in the United States during the 19th (and early 20th) century, when safeguards against fraud and electioneering were considerably weaker, and political machines wielded significantly more power. Political parties would produce their own ballots, and as of the mid-19th century, seven states still conducted elections by voice voting. States only began to adopt the secret ballot in the 1880s and 1890s.

Voter fraud was so common that it developed its own vocabulary. "Colonizers" were groups of bought voters who moved en masse between wards. "Floaters" were voters who cast ballots for multiple parties. "Repeaters" were voters who voted multiple times, sometimes in disguise. Cooping was a form of electoral fraud where people were kidnapped, drugged and forced to repeatedly vote, and is notably thought to have contributed to the October 7, 1849 death of Edgar Allan Poe.

Elections in cities such as New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Kansas City were influenced by political machines. The Democratic Tammany Hall machine in New York City, for example, encouraged residents to vote multiple times by shaving their beards, registered voters under fake names, physically intimidated voters and granted citizenship to newly arrived immigrants. According to University of Chicago professor John Mark Hansen, cheating also regularly occurred in suburban and rural areas. Voter fraud and suppression against African-Americans was common in the Jim Crow South.

• In the 1850s Kansas Territory elections, pro-slavery forces seeking to ratify the Lecompton Constitution carried out voter fraud on multiple occasions by importing pro-slavery people from Missouri to cast ballots.
• In the 1876 United States presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, voter fraud was widespread, with South Carolina reporting an impossible 101 percent turnout. Violence and intimidation by Democrats against Black Republican voters also occurred. In four contested states, Republicans and Democrats filed separate tallies favoring their respective candidates. The election was ultimately decided by the Congress-appointed Electoral Commission in favor of Hayes.
• In the 1888 United States presidential election, there was evidence of voter fraud in some states that favored Republican Benjamin Harrison, particularly in his home state of Indiana. Public backlash contributed to the implementation of secret ballots nationwide.
• In the 1888 United States House of Representatives elections in Arkansas, Republican John M. Clayton lost to Democrat Clifton R. Breckinridge after masked men stole a ballot box with a large majority of Clayton votes. Clayton was assassinated the following year while challenging the election, but was posthumously declared the winner.
• In the 1888 United States House of Representatives elections in Maryland, Democrat Barnes Compton was initially elected, but his Republican opponent Sydney E. Mudd contested the election the following year alleging fraud, and the investigating committee ruled in favor of Mudd.
• In the 1892 Alabama gubernatorial election, evidence suggests that Reuben Kolb lost to incumbent Democrat Thomas Goode Jones due to electoral fraud, which included ballot boxes being stolen, votes being swayed by bribery or threats, and counties in the Black Belt announcing results before later changing them. Kolb was not allowed by law to contest the election, and lost a gubernatorial race in 1894 under similar circumstances.

20th century

Electoral fraud led to several convictions in the 20th century, and caused some notable election results to be affected or annulled. This list does not include the 1960 United States presidential election in Illinois, which some but not all historians claim was decided by fraud.

• In the 1905 New York City mayoral election, there was evidence of electoral fraud against William Randolph Hearst linked to the Tammany Hall machine, as well as violence and intimidation against Hearst poll watchers. Hearst lost to Democrat George McClellan by 3,472 votes.
• In the 1948 United States Senate election in Texas, according to a 1990 book by historian Robert A. Caro, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won the election due to electoral fraud, which included county officials casting ballots for absent voters and changing vote tally numbers.
• Between 1968 and 1984, eight primary elections in Brooklyn, New York were marked by repeated fraud according to the findings of a grand jury. The fraud included multiple voting by teams of political workers with fake voter identification cards. Richard Hasen has argued that this fraud, because it involved election officials colluding with one another, could not have been prevented by a voter ID law.
• In the 1982 Illinois elections, there were 62 indictments and 58 convictions for election fraud, many involving precinct captains and election officials. A grand jury concluded that 100,000 fraudulent votes had been cast in Chicago. Authorities found fraud involving vote buying and ballots cast by others in the names of registered voters. The case was prosecuted in November 1982 by U.S. Attorney Dan K. Webb.
• In the 1987 Chicago mayoral election, two reviews conducted by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and an election watchdog group headed by former U.S. Attorney Dan K. Webb found that tens of thousands of ballots were fraudulently cast in the Democratic primary.
• In the 1993 Hialeah, Florida mayoral election, a judge ruled that so many ballots had been cast from a retirement home housing schizophrenics and drug addicts that the election had to be re-run.
• In the 1994 Pennsylvania State Senate elections, a federal judge invalidated a race in Philadelphia after finding that the Democratic candidate, William G. Stinson, had stolen the election through absentee ballot fraud. The fraud involved hundreds of residents being encouraged to vote absentee without a legal justification.
• In the 1996 United States House of Representatives elections in California, an investigation by the House Oversight Committee found that 624 non-citizens had voted in the 46th district race between Bob Dornan and Loretta Sanchez. The race was ultimately decided by 979 votes, so it did not affect the outcome.
• In the 1997 Miami, Florida mayoral election, the result was invalidated by a judge who cited "a pattern of fraudulent, intentional and criminal conduct" in the casting of absentee ballots.

21st century

In the 21st century, there have only been scattered examples of electoral fraud affecting the outcome of elections, and attempts at electoral fraud are notable when they occur at all. This list does not include the disputed 2008 United States Senate election in Minnesota or the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.

• In the 2003 East Chicago, Indiana mayoral election, the Indiana Supreme Court invalidated the Democratic primary citing "a widespread and pervasive pattern" of absentee ballot fraud. Forty-six people, mainly city workers, were found guilty in a wide-ranging conspiracy to purchase votes through the use of absentee ballots.
• In the 2012 United States House of Representatives elections in Florida, Jeffrey Garcia, chief of staff to 26th district incumbent Joe Garcia, was charged with orchestrating an attempt to illegally request nearly 2,000 absentee ballots. Garcia pled guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
• In the 2012 Massachusetts House of Representatives election, Republican candidate Enrico "Jack" Villamaino pled guilty to absentee ballot fraud, after prosecutors found he and his wife had changed more than 280 voters' registrations to make them eligible to vote in the Republican primary, and forged the voters' names on absentee ballot requests.
• In the 2012 Ohio elections, Cincinnati poll worker Melowese Richardson was convicted of voter fraud after using her position to illegally vote twice. She also voted three times between 2008 and 2012 for her sister who was in a coma. Richardson was sentenced to five years in prison in 2013, but was released and put on probation the following year.
• In the 2014 and 2018 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania elections, former Democratic congressman Michael "Ozzie" Myers was found to have bribed election workers to stuff ballot boxes in local races. Myers pled guilty in 2022 and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.
• In the 2018 Michigan elections, Southfield poll worker Sherikia Hawkins pled no contest to misconduct after she was accused of covering up a failure to count 193 absentee ballots. Hawkins resigned in 2022 and was fined $10,000.
• In the 2018 United States House of Representatives elections in North Carolina, Mark Harris won the 9th district Republican primary by 900 votes, but allegations of absentee ballot tampering related to a Harris campaign consultant stopped the North Carolina State Board of Elections from certifying the result. A new election was held in 2019.
• In the 2020 Iowa elections, Sioux City resident Kim Phuong Taylor illegally submitted or caused others to submit dozens of voter registrations, absentee ballot request forms, and absentee ballots containing false information. Taylor did this to help her husband, Jeremy Taylor, who was running for Congress and Woodbury County supervisor. She was sentenced to four months in prison in 2024.
• In the 2023 Bridgeport, Connecticut mayoral election, a judge ordered the Democratic primary to be re-run after ruling that there was enough evidence of ballot stuffing to throw the results into doubt. According to the New York Times, illegal ballot manipulation is not uncommon in Bridgeport elections, and has included apartment residents being pressured to apply for absentee ballots they were not entitled to.

Public perception

A 2016 nationwide poll published in the Washington Post found that 84% of Republicans, 75% of independents and 52% of Democrats believed that a "meaningful amount" of fraud occurred in United States elections. A 2022 poll by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley found that 39% of California voters thought illegal voting was a "major threat" to state elections, and 21% thought it was a "minor threat". A series of Monmouth polls conducted between 2020 and 2023 found that 29%–32% of Americans believed the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.

A June 2021 poll by the Texas Tribune and University of Texas found that 19% of Texas voters think that ineligible people frequently cast ballots. A July 2021 poll published by NPR found that more Americans were concerned about ensuring everyone who wants to vote can cast a ballot (56%) versus ensuring that nobody who is ineligible votes (41%). 90% of Democrats said access was more important versus 75% of Republicans who said stopping ineligible voting was more important.

Perception gap

See also: Election denial movement in the United States § Analysis

Flawed research is one factor that can widen a gap in perception that significant voter fraud has occurred between supporters of the candidate that lost an election and the supporters of a candidate that won. False claims of fraud have lowered overall levels of trust in elections.

Sciences Po academic Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy suggests that political elites, right-wing media organizations and well-funded nonprofits promote the narrative of electoral fraud out of political or financial self-interest that taps into political paranoia that he traces to McCarthyism, the great replacement and the deep state. Jon Schwarz of The Intercept lists examples of false voter fraud claims from Republicans going back decades. The New York Times cites the loosening of content moderation on social media by early 2024 as a driver in beliefs about conspiracy theories including those around election fraud, as well as disinformation by autocracies such as Russia and China.

A 2016 study published in State Politics & Policy Quarterly found that Republicans living in states with voter identification laws were on average more confident in their state's elections than Republicans who did not. However Democrats in states with voter identification laws were less confident in their elections than other Democrats. The study found that this dynamic "was polarized and conditioned by party identification".

Consequences

See also: Democratic backsliding in the United States

"Major threats" for US elections in 2022 according to voters in California

Political violence and threats

See also: Stochastic terrorism

The combination of false claims about electoral fraud and violent, warlike rhetoric has been noted to raise the likelihood of election workers receiving threats, as well as political violence such as the January 6 attacks.

A 2024 Brennan Center survey found 4 in 10 election workers had experienced threats, harassment or abuse. In some cases where poll workers were intimidated, such as Detroit in 2020, poll workers were given additional protections for subsequent elections, including the electronic screening of poll watchers and a greater distance from them.

Voter intimidation

See also: Electoral fraud § Intimidation

While voter intimidation has been relatively rare, it has increased since 2020 with the false claims of fraud and concerted efforts to recruit poll watchers. CNBC cited voter intimidation as a bigger concern for analysts than voter fraud ahead of the 2020 elections after Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to go to the polls and "watch very carefully". According to The Washington Post, voting rights advocates worry that the rhetoric about noncitizen voting could have a 'chilling effect' on Latino citizens and naturalized immigrants exercising their right to vote. In Arizona in 2022, there were instances of people surveilling drop boxes and taking photos of people's license plates.

Overturning election results

See also: Independent state legislature theory

In some cases, the spreading of fraud claims is done to lay the groundwork for overturning election results. The 2020 presidential election saw a number of failed attempts to overturn the results based on unfounded claims of voter fraud by Donald Trump. The 2024 presidential election has seen similar claims, which some experts have warned could be seeds planted in case Trump loses and tries to overturn the result.

Voter turnout

Democrats and voting rights advocates argue that the Republican rhetoric around illegal voting is not a sincere effort to address voter fraud, but is designed to increase turnout of the Republican base.

Donald Trump fraud claims

See also: False or misleading statements by Donald Trump

2016 presidential election

Main article: Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign § Uncertainty over accepting the election results

President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that between 3 and 5 million people cost him the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by voting illegally. He claimed that he narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016 in New Hampshire (and that Senator Kelly Ayotte also lost her bid for re-election in New Hampshire) because thousands of people were illegally bused there from Massachusetts. There is no evidence to support Trump's claims, which the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office determined were unfounded.

CNN reported in January of 2017 that Trump had based his fraud voter claims on information from Gregg Phillips. While members of Trump's cabinet and family were registered to vote in multiple states, this was considered to be oversight, not fraud. In response to Trump's allegations, on February 10, Ellen L. Weintraub, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Commissioner, requested that Trump provide evidence of the "thousands of felony criminal offenses under New Hampshire law". In a CNN interview on February 12, Stephen Miller was unable at that time to support claims of voter fraud as evidence. There is no evidence to support Trump's assertion that there was substantial voter fraud in the 2016 election.

Voter fraud commission (2017)

Main article: Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity

President Trump signing the Executive Order establishing the Voter Fraud Commission

On May 11, 2017, Trump signed an executive order to establish a voter fraud commission to conduct an investigation into voter fraud. He had announced his intention to create the commission on January 25. The commission's chairman was Vice President Mike Pence with Kris Kobach as vice chairman. Kobach, who is the Secretary of State of Kansas, called for stricter voter ID laws in the United States. Kobach claims there is a voter fraud crisis in the United States. Trump's creation of the commission was criticized by voting rights advocates, scholars and experts, and newspaper editorial boards as a pretext for, and prelude to, voter suppression.

In January 2018, Trump abruptly disbanded the commission, which met only twice. The commission found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the United States.

2020 presidential election

See also: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, Post-election lawsuits related to the 2020 United States presidential election, and Republican efforts to restrict voting following the 2020 presidential election

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump indicated in Twitter posts, interviews and speeches that he might refuse to recognize the outcome of the election if he were defeated; Trump falsely suggested that the election would be rigged against him. Trump repeatedly claimed that "the only way" he could lose would be if the election was "rigged" and repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power after the election. Trump also attacked mail-in voting throughout the campaign, falsely claiming that the practice contained high rates of fraud. In September 2020, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, a Trump appointee, testified under oath that the FBI has "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise."

In the lead-up to the election, citing fraud concerns, Republicans filed lawsuits in several states seeking to limit the use of mail-in voting, and prepared to challenge individual mail-in ballots. Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg criticized his party for this in a November 1, 2020 Washington Post op-ed, writing that over the last four decades, "Republicans found only isolated instances of fraud", and that "Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist".

Trump claims of electoral fraud in the run-up to elections.

After most of the major news organizations declared Biden the President-elect on November 7, Trump refused to accept his loss, declaring "this election is far from over" and alleging election fraud without providing evidence. Multiple lawsuits alleging electoral fraud were filed by the Trump campaign, all of which were dismissed as having no merit. Republican officials questioned the legitimacy of the election and aired conspiracy theories regarding various types of alleged fraud. In early 2021, motivated by the claims of widespread voter fraud and the resulting legitimacy crisis among the Republican base, GOP lawmakers in a number of states initiated a push to make voting laws more restrictive.

In December of 2021, the Associated Press released a detailed fact-check which found fewer than 475 instances of voter fraud out of an estimated 25 million votes cast in the six battleground states. They involved both Democrats and Republicans and were almost always caught before the votes were counted. While some seemed intentional, others involved involved clerical error or voter confusion.

2024 presidential election

Richard Hasen wrote that in January of 2024 that, "Trump has been able to manufacture doubt out of absolutely nothing; fraud claims untethered to reality still captivate millions of people looking for an excuse as to why their adored candidate may have lost."

In the 2024 Republican New Hampshire primary, Trump repeated false claims that from other states voted in the primary. According to the New York Times, Trump escalated use of "rigged election" and "election interference" statements in advance of the 2024 election compared to the previous two elections. The statements were described as part of a "heads I win; tails you cheated" rhetorical strategy.

An August 2024 poll found that 17% of Americans are not prepared to accept the outcome of the 2024 election and that two-thirds of Americans do not believe Trump is prepared to accept the outcome. 34% of survey respondents lack confidence that votes will be tallied correctly.

In 2024, the Republican National Committee launched a swing state initiative to mobilize thousands of poll watchers, poll workers and attorneys to act as "election integrity" watchdogs. The party will deploy monitors to observe the election process, create hotlines for poll watchers to report perceived problems and escalate issues through legal action. Critics have argued that these efforts could undermine trust in elections and are targeted on polling places where more Democrats cast their ballots. The 2024 election also saw an increase in volunteers recruited by nonpartisan voter advocacy groups to assist poll workers and voters.

Prevention

Voter ID laws

Main article: Voter identification laws in the United States

Voter ID laws by state, as of April 2022:

  Photo ID required (strict)

  Photo ID requested (non-strict)

  Non-photo ID required (strict)

  Non-photo ID requested (non-strict)

  No ID required to vote

In the United States, voter ID laws (laws requiring identification to vote) have been enacted in 36 states as of 2024 with the stated aim of preventing voter impersonation. They have mostly been introduced by Republican legislators since 2011. Specific forms of ID required vary between states, with some requiring photo identification. Some laws have been struck down in court as an undue burden.

Voter ID requirements are generally popular among Americans, though they are also a divisive issue. Critics of voter ID laws have argued that they depress turnout by lawful voters under the pretense of addressing voter fraud, which is quite rare. Americans who have lower incomes, are younger or transgender are less likely to have an updated ID.

Proof of citizenship

In July 2024, the United States House of Representatives passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would mandate that Americans show proof of citizenship when registering to vote. It is considered unlikely to become law due to opposition from the Democratic Party and a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that deemed it illegal to require additional citizenship documentation in order to register to vote. In August 2024, the Supreme Court allowed Arizona to enforce a law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, pending appeal.

Signature verification

Further information: Postal voting in the United States § Signature verification process

Signature verification is carried out by a majority of states in order to prevent forged paper ballots. According to the Election Administration and Voting Survey, 27.5% of rejected absentee ballots in 2016 and 15.8% of rejected mail-in ballots in 2018 were due to signature mismatches. Tossing ballots due to signature mismatches can depend on the method of signature verification used. As of 2024, 31 states conduct signature verification on returned absentee or mail-in ballots. Nine states do not conduct signature verification, but require the signature of either a witness, two witnesses, or a notary. Ten states and Washington, D.C. neither conduct signature verification nor require a witness signature.

Mississippi is the only state to both conduct signature verification and require a witness signature (in this case, a notary). Four states (Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota and Ohio) additionally require either a copy of the voter’s ID or a voter identification number.

Researchers at Protect Democracy attributed the spike in reject signatures during the 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs to an explosion of misinformation around unfounded claims of mail-in voter fraud after the 2020 election.

Election audits

Further information: Election audit § Current practices in election results auditing in the United States

As of 2024, 48 states conduct some type of post-election audit, which check if the equipment and procedures used to count votes worked properly, and detect discrepancies using a hand count of paper records. The two exceptions are Alabama and New Hampshire, both of which nonetheless piloted different audit types in 2022. The type and scope of audit significantly varies between states.

Voter roll management

Voter roll purges

See also: Voter suppression in the United States § Purging of eligible voters from the rolls

Voter caging is the process of challenging the voter registration status of someone who is registered to vote. It often involves sending that person a postcard to the address on file and removing the voter if they do not respond within a certain time period. The practice can be controversial with some civil rights groups successfully suing some states that target voters of a particular political party or race in such a way as to make it meaningfully impact election outcomes and voter's rights.

Interstate databases

The Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program was a database established in 2005 and run by Kansas that compared voting records across multiple states to prevent double voting. At least 28 states opted into the program, but academics and several states found that it returned high rates of false positives that would disenfranchise legal voters. Some states left as a result. In 2017, the program was put on hold after the Department of Homeland Security discovered security vulnerabilities. In 2019, the program was indefinitely suspended as part of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 2012, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was established with a goal of improving the accuracy of voter rolls through comparisons between states. At its peak, 33 states and the District of Columbia were members. Beginning in 2022, nine Republican-led states left ERIC. States cited complaints about governance issues, including that ERIC mailed newly eligible voters who had not yet registered ahead of federal elections, and that it had become subject to alleged partisan influence. ERIC was the subject of repeated false claims from allies of Donald Trump that it was a voter registration vehicle for Democrats. Several states that left ERIC subsequently created their own partnerships.

Prosecution

According to the New York Times, prosecutions of voter fraud can lead to significantly varied outcomes. Most violations "draw wrist-slaps", while some high-profile prosecutions have produced multiple-year jail terms. Often, prosecutions net people who did not realize they were breaking the law. Prosecutions are exceedingly rare – as of 2022, an average of one and a half people per state per year were charged with voter fraud.

External links

• Electoral fraud article on Ballotpedia
• "Campaign of fear" investigative series by Reuters on election worker intimidation after 2020