Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

Is voter fraud a significant issue in the US? I'll gather recent research and statistics to assess how widespread it is.

In the United States, voter fraud exists but research consistently finds it is very rare and not at a scale that changes statewide outcomes.

What Research Shows

> Documented voter fraud in the United States is real but vanishingly rare — incident rates between 0.0003% and 0.0025% across studied contests, and no major academic study, court ruling, or official investigation has found evidence of fraud at a scale sufficient to change a statewide election outcome.

Key findings:

•The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University examined elections for voter impersonation fraud and found incident rates ranging from just 0.0003% to 0.0025%. That is approximately 3 to 25 incidents per million votes.

•In another Brennan Center review of the 2016 election across 42 jurisdictions counting approximately 23.5 million votes, election officials referred only about 30 suspected incidents of noncitizen voting. That represents approximately 0.00013% of the ballots cast in those jurisdictions.

•A Brennan Center review of 84 million votes in 22 states yielded 14 instances referred for prosecution, with other syntheses calculating rates as low as 0.00000017% in that sample.

•Analyses of mail-ballot fraud similarly show extremely low rates. A 20-year MIT study concluded mail-in ballot fraud occurred at roughly 0.00006 percent of votes.

•Brookings' review of Heritage Foundation data found, for example, that in Arizona across 36 elections and 42.6 million ballots there were 36 documented cases—about 0.0000845% of ballots.

What Databases of Proven Cases Show

Even organizations motivated to find fraud document very small numbers relative to total votes cast:

•The Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database, maintained by a conservative think tank, lists about 1,350 proven instances of voter fraud across decades of U.S. elections—a period during which roughly one billion ballots have been cast.

•As of December 2025, the Heritage database listed 1,619 cases from 1982 to 2025. That is about 7 for every 10 million ballots cast in federal general elections alone.

•Other counts put the Heritage database at roughly 1,285–1,561 proven instances across multiple decades.

The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reported finding no evidence of malicious activity that materially affected the security or integrity of the nation's election infrastructure following the 2024 election, in which Americans cast more than 158 million ballots.

Post-2020 court record: More than sixty lawsuits challenged the 2020 presidential results and courts — including those with Trump-appointed judges — dismissed virtually all of them for lack of evidence.

What Counts as Voter Fraud?

In the United States, electoral fraud, or voter fraud, involves illegal voting in or manipulation of elections. Types include voter impersonation or in-person voter fraud, mail-in or absentee ballot fraud, illegal voting by noncitizens, and double voting.

Experts distinguish:

•Voter impersonation - someone voting pretending to be someone else. Research shows this is extraordinarily rare.

•Registration fraud - false information on registration forms, which is not the same as casting and counting a fake ballot.

•Absentee/mail ballot fraud - has produced the most documented cases of organized fraud, including the 2018 North Carolina 9th Congressional District case, where a political operative was convicted of collecting and tampering with absentee ballots, leading to the entire election being voided and rerun.

•Administrative errors - common and routinely cited as fraud evidence, such as outdated voter rolls with deceased voters not yet purged, which do not equal fraud.

Does Fraud Still Happen?

Yes — isolated cases are investigated and prosecuted, and do not indicate systemic fraud:

•In 2025, the Justice Department announced it charged 28 noncitizens in California with felony election crimes, including illegally registering to vote.

•Other individual prosecutions since 2020 include double voting, voting in the name of a deceased person, and fraudulent absentee ballot use, cataloged in the Heritage database and federal announcements.

Supporters of stricter election-security laws argue that even small numbers of fraudulent votes are a problem and that vulnerabilities, particularly with mail ballots and registration list maintenance, should be addressed. Critics argue that restrictive measures based on rare fraud can risk excluding eligible voters.

Bottom Line

The academic consensus, including studies from both nonpartisan and conservative sources, is that unlawful voting is uncommon, election officials use extensive safeguards including paper records and audits, and errors and misconduct can be investigated through established procedures. The available evidence does not support the sweeping allegation that American elections are systematically rigged by undocumented immigrants, deceased voters, or massive numbers of fraudulent mail ballots, but it does support continued attention to election security, accurate voter rolls, and enforcement of election laws.

Citations (2)

1projectplaybook.comNot yet classified
DAY 2 - FRAUD CLAIMS AND EVIDENCE: WHAT THE RESEARCH ACTUALLY SHOWS
Backs: “In the United States, voter fraud exists but research consistently finds it is very rare and not at a scale that changes statewide outcomes. What Research Shows. Documented voter fraud in the United States is real but vanishingly rare — incident rates between 0.0003% and 0.0025% across studied contests, and no major…”
2trautinjurylaw.comNot yet classified
Is the American Election System Rigged? What the Facts Show
Backs: “Documented voter fraud in the United States is real but vanishingly rare — incident rates between 0.0003% and 0.0025% across studied contests, and no major academic study, court ruling, or official investigation has found evidence of fraud at a scale sufficient to change a statewide election outcome. Key findings: The…”