I'll examine the research on voter fraud to assess how prevalent it is in the US.
In the United States, voter fraud exists but empirical research consistently finds it is extremely rare relative to votes cast, and not at a scale to affect statewide or national outcomes.
What is considered voter fraud?
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
•The U.S. government defines voter or ballot fraud as one of three broad categories of federal election crimes
Examples defined by the FBI include giving false information when registering to vote, voting when ineligible, and voting more than once or using someone else's name to vote
How common is it? What research shows
> Empirical evidence across decades and multiple methodologies leads to one clear, repeatable conclusion: proven voter fraud is extremely rare relative to the number of votes cast — measured in orders of magnitude of 0.0000X percent — and no rigorous body of research has shown fraud at the scale necessary to flip major U.S. elections
Specific rates cited:
•The Brennan Center for Justice review of elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Another summary of the same 2007 study reported the rate of substantiated instances ranged between 0.00004% and 0.0009%
•A 20-year MIT study concluded mail-in ballot fraud occurred at roughly 0.00006 percent of votes
•Academic researchers have described fraud as "infinitesimally rare and almost never occurs on a scale that would affect an election outcome"
•The consensus from credible research is that the rate of illegal voting is extremely rare, and the incidence of certain types of fraud – such as impersonating another voter – is virtually nonexistent
•One analysis of 84 million votes across 22 states yielded only 14 instances of fraud referred for prosecution — a fraud rate of 0.00000017%
Other databases illustrate the same scale issue:
•A national investigation identified 513 proven voter fraud cases since 2016, representing a small fraction of the 685 million votes cast during that period
•The Heritage Foundation's Election Fraud Database, the most-cited public compilation by a conservative group, contains about 1,500 proven cases since the 1980s. As of December 12, 2025, it contains 1,619 proven instances spanning primarily 1982 through 2025. Another tally lists roughly 1,561 proven instances yielding about 1,325 convictions
•Of those, analyses focused on noncitizen voting find very few cases: an April 2024 Cato Institute review of Heritage's database found 85 irregularities involving noncitizens over the preceding 22 years, while another count found only 77 instances of noncitizen voting between 1999 and 2023
•A Brennan Center examination covering 23.5 million votes found roughly 30 suspected incidents of noncitizen voting, about 0.0001 percent
•A Cato Institute analysis of 500 election fraud cases found that 89% were "minor" violations, such as minor registration errors
Independent reviews also note that many alleged instances are mistakes rather than intentional fraud, often traceable to clerical errors or bad data matching practices.
What about recent high-profile elections?
•Numerous post-election audits and investigations — some led by Republicans — failed to find evidence of widespread fraud in 2020 and similar reviews continued after 2024, with reporting noting "no evidence of widespread fraud" in those probes
•Federal and state courts heard dozens of post-election suits; judges repeatedly dismissed cases for insufficient evidence. Scores of lawsuits challenging the 2020 result were dismissed after evidence review
•University of Chicago research and other academic analyses concluded there was no evidence of systematic voter fraud in 2020
•One national summary found fewer than 475 potentially fraudulent ballots across six battleground states in 2020
That does not mean zero cases were prosecuted. In 2024-2025 the Justice Department announced charges against 16 individuals in connection with illegal voting, unlawful voting by non-citizens and related election-fraud schemes across the country.
Why the debate continues
1.Small numbers can matter locally: In very close local races (city council, school board, sheriff), even a handful of fraudulent votes could theoretically be outcome-determinative, which is why groups like Heritage argue fraud is a "real and pressing issue".
2.Perception vs. reality: Research has unequivocally demonstrated that there is essentially no voter fraud in US elections, but perception persists. A 2016 Washington Post poll found that 46 percent of Americans believe voter fraud occurred frequently in elections, and a national survey found a third of the public thinks there is a great deal of voter fraud.
Scholars note that rhetoric surrounding voter fraud may serve as a greater threat to electoral integrity than the actual prevalence of fraud itself, because beliefs about fraud are linked to less confidence in the electoral process.
Bottom line
•Proven, intentional voter fraud in the U.S. is documented — hundreds to low thousands of cases over decades, out of billions of ballots cast.
•Measured rates are on the order of 0.0003% to 0.0025% in tightly studied elections or even lower (millionths of a percent) in other audits.
•No rigorous body of research has shown fraud at the scale necessary to flip major statewide or presidential elections, and post-2020 audits and court reviews did not substantiate claims of widespread, outcome-changing fraud.
Proponents of stricter integrity measures argue any fraud undermines confidence and should be prevented, while opponents of those measures argue the data show impersonation fraud is more rare than being struck by lightning and warn that restrictive measures could disenfranchise eligible voters.