Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

Short answer: It's not a widespread problem, but isolated cases do occur — and it remains a politically contentious topic.

What the research consistently shows:

Extensive academic, journalistic, and government studies over the past two decades have found voter fraud to be extremely rare in the U.S. A specialized DOJ unit examined the 2002 and 2004 federal elections and found that 0.00000013 percent of ballots cast were fraudulent.

A comprehensive 2014 study found 31 credible instances of impersonation fraud from 2000 to 2014, out of more than 1 billion ballots cast. Similarly, a study of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases in 50 states between 2000 and 2012 found the level of fraud was infinitesimal compared with the 146 million voters registered over the 12-year period.

Even conservative-leaning sources back this up. The Heritage Foundation's own "Election Fraud Database" — often cited by those concerned about fraud — found 1,561 instances of voter fraud resulting in 1,325 convictions across all 50 states over many years, with only 20 cases brought in 2024. When Brookings analyzed this same Heritage data by state, Pennsylvania's 30-year record showed just 39 cases out of over 100 million votes cast, and Arizona's fraud rate over 25 years was a minuscule .0000845%, with no U.S. election outcome ever altered by ballot fraud.

On the 2020 and 2024 elections specifically:

An Associated Press count of voter fraud cases in the six 2020 battleground states disputed by Trump found fewer than 475 votes combined — less than two-tenths of one percent of Biden's margin — and found no systematic collusion or "rigging," with nearly every case an individual acting alone.

For 2024, isolated incidents were caught and prosecuted through normal safeguards. For example, Nevada detected 303 instances of attempted "double voting" in the 2024 general election, but each person was caught before casting a second vote. A federal case also resulted in a Colombian woman being convicted on federal identity theft and fraud charges, including voting illegally in the 2024 presidential election.

Why the perception gap exists:

Despite this evidence, surveys show substantial public concern about different types of election fraud even as academic reviews and election experts find no evidence of significant systemic fraud in recent national elections. Researchers attribute this partly to politics: claims of widespread fraud have political utility and are amplified by motivated actors, with selective evidence sometimes used to justify policy changes like stricter ID laws or voter roll purges.

Bottom line: The empirical consensus — from DOJ investigations, Brennan Center, Brookings, News21, and even Heritage Foundation's own database — is that voter fraud in the U.S. is real but extraordinarily rare, occurs at rates far too low to have changed any federal election outcome, and existing detection systems (audits, cross-checks, prosecutions) generally catch the cases that do occur. It remains a highly charged political issue, however, with disagreement over how much emphasis and what policy responses (like voter ID laws) this low rate of fraud warrants.