Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

Short answer: It's extremely rare, but not literally zero — and it's one of the most politically polarizing topics in US politics.

What the research shows:

The overwhelming consensus among academic researchers, courts, government agencies, and election officials — across the political spectrum — is that electoral fraud is very rare in the United States, with mail-in voter fraud occurring more often than in-person voter fraud, and only scattered examples in the last half-century affecting election outcomes, mostly at the local level.

The numbers:

Why it's hard to commit at scale:
There are a few cases of election fraud in every campaign, but it's not systemic, not widespread, generally not organized, and has likely never affected an actual outcome — people often pick on isolated cases and turn it into a systemic pattern, according to Brookings' Darrell West. This is partly due to deterrence: it's a criminal offense to commit ballot fraud, and most people don't want to go to jail, so that's a sufficient deterrent for almost everybody — it's probably a very small number of people who even attempt it.

Important distinction — fraud vs. administrative errors:
Many high-profile "fraud" claims actually turn out to be something else. As Brennan Center's Alice Clapman explains, conservative-leaning groups often lump cases where a voter thought they were eligible together with cases where someone intended to commit fraud — these numbers don't distinguish between an incorrect allegation and a situation where someone voted in good faith incorrectly. Similarly, issues like outdated voter rolls with deceased people still listed are a data-maintenance problem, not fraud — a 2012 report found over 1.8 million dead people were registered to vote nationwide, but the study investigated outdated voter rolls, not fraudulent votes.

The perception gap:
Despite the rarity of actual fraud, public concern remains high. A 2024 nationwide NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found 58% of Americans were concerned about voter fraud in the 2024 presidential election, including 88% of Donald Trump supporters and 29% of Kamala Harris supporters. This gap between perception and documented reality is itself a significant factor shaping election policy debates (like voter ID laws and mail-ballot restrictions).

Bottom line: Voter fraud does occur, but at a scale so small — fractions of a percent of ballots cast — that it has essentially never been shown to change a federal election outcome. The bigger practical "problems" in US elections tend to be administrative (voter roll maintenance, ballot rejections for technicalities, etc.) rather than organized fraud.