Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

Is Voter Fraud a Problem in the US?

This is a contested political topic, but the empirical research is fairly consistent: actual documented voter fraud is extremely rare, while public belief that fraud is widespread is much more common — creating a significant gap between perception and reality.

What the Research Shows on Actual Fraud

Academic research spanning two decades has been consistent on this point. Research conducted during the past two decades has concluded that there is no evidence of significant election fraud in contemporary American national elections.

Historical rate estimates are minuscule:

Mail-in voting, a frequent target of fraud claims, shows similarly low rates: a recent Brookings analysis found an average total mail voting fraud percentage across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections of only 0.000043%, or about four cases of mail voting fraud out of every 10 million mail votes. A 2020 American Statistical Association study similarly found no evidence that voting by mail increases the risk of voter fraud overall.

Even conservative-leaning sources support this conclusion. The Heritage Foundation — a conservative think tank that actively tracks fraud cases — maintains an "Election Fraud Database" that found 1,561 instances of voter fraud that resulted in 1,325 convictions over roughly 25 years, with 20 cases brought in 2024, with charges ranging from ineligible voting to false registrations, duplicate voting and ineligible voting. When Brookings analyzed this dataset against total votes cast, they noted that in Arizona, that meant around 42.6 million votes cast with only 36 cases of fraud in total.

Non-citizen voting, another frequent claim, has also been studied directly: a 2014 paper concluded that the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is 0.

Most identified cases aren't even intentional fraud. Most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices. Similarly, one expert noted: 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.

The Gap: Perception vs. Reality

Despite this evidence, a large share of Americans believe fraud is common. A 2024 survey of registered voters found that each of these types of election fraud is considered to be common or occasional for a third or more of American registered voters. For example, regarding non-citizen voting specifically, 40% in 2024 believing this is a common occurrence, relative to 39% in 2022.

This perception gap has real consequences. Researchers note that when political elites continue to press false claims of election fraud, millions of American voters may continue to believe that election fraud exists in American national elections, which might affect their confidence in election administration and their willingness to participate in the electoral process. Notably, partisanship correlates strongly with endorsement of types of election fraud, with Republicans consistently more likely to state that types of election fraud are common, even when controlling for a wide variety of other factors.

Bottom Line

The consensus among election-integrity researchers — including studies from both left-leaning (Brennan Center) and right-leaning (Heritage Foundation) sources — is that documented voter fraud occurs at extraordinarily low rates (fractions of a percent) and has not been shown to alter election outcomes. However, belief that fraud is widespread is a significant and separate phenomenon, driven substantially by partisan identity and political rhetoric rather than documented evidence. Whether "voter fraud is a problem" thus depends on what's meant: as an actual threat to election integrity, evidence says no; as a matter of public trust and perception, yes — it is a significant political and social issue.