Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

Voter Fraud in the US: What the Evidence Shows

This is a politically charged topic, but there's actually substantial research consensus on the facts. Here's what studies consistently find:

The Short Answer: It Exists, But Is Extremely Rare

Multiple independent studies across decades—spanning academic researchers, government agencies, courts, and even conservative organizations—reach similar conclusions. As one election law expert summarized: "Research has been consistent over time that voter fraud is infinitesimally rare."

What the Data Shows

Scale of the problem: When researchers have dug into specific states and elections, the numbers are tiny. For example, in Arizona, Heritage Foundation data going back 25 years found 36 cases of fraud out of 42,626,379 ballots cast—a rate of about .0000845%, with no election outcome altered by ballot fraud. Similarly, in Pennsylvania, 30 years of data covering over 100 million votes cast turned up only 39 cases of voter fraud.

After the 2020 election: The Associated Press contacted local election officials in six swing states and found 475 potential voter fraud cases—an extraordinarily small percentage of the more than 25 million ballots cast in those states.

Even the Heritage Foundation's database, often cited by those concerned about fraud, actually undercuts the "widespread fraud" narrative when examined closely: it found 1,561 instances of voter fraud that resulted in 1,325 convictions—spread across decades and billions of votes nationwide.

Mail-in voting: Researchers at the Brookings Institution examined cases of fraud reported during elections in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 and estimated there were about four cases of fraud for every 10 million mail ballots cast, on average.

Noncitizen voting: A 2014 paper concluded that "the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is 0." A 2012 study found only 56 alleged cases of non-citizen voting in 12 years nationwide.

Double voting: Double voting—illegally voting twice, either in the same state or different states—is considered extremely rare.

Important Nuances

It's not literally zero: As one expert put it regarding mail voting fraud, "There aren't millions of fraudulent votes, but there are some."

It happens more at the local level: In the last half-century, there have been only scattered examples of electoral fraud affecting the outcomes of US elections, mostly on the local level (school boards, city councils, etc.)—not federal races.

Mail ballots see slightly more fraud than in-person voting, though still minimal: a Loyola Marymount professor noted that misconduct in mail voting is "meaningfully more prevalent" than with voting in person, but that misconduct "still amounts to only a tiny fraction" of mail ballots.

Many "fraud" allegations aren't actually fraud: Groups investigating fraud often lump cases where a voter mistakenly believed they were eligible together with cases of actual intentional fraud—these numbers don't distinguish between an incorrect allegation and someone who voted in good faith incorrectly.

Why the Perception Gap?

Despite this evidence, public perception of widespread fraud remains high in parts of the electorate, largely fueled by unproven claims. In the Trump DOJ election subversion case, prosecutors argued they would prove at trial that Trump invented fraud statistics "from whole cloth." Courts have repeatedly examined these claims: "the answer has overwhelmingly been throughout the years that this is extremely rare... Oftentimes courts, once they look at specific evidence, conclude that the evidence just isn't there."

Bottom Line

Voter fraud is a real but extremely marginal phenomenon in US elections—occurring at rates far too low to have altered any federal election outcome in modern history, though it has occasionally affected small local races. The robust system of safeguards (voter ID requirements, signature verification, bipartisan poll observers, cross-state data-sharing systems like ERIC) helps keep instances rare and typically catches fraud before or shortly after it occurs.