Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

I'll gather the latest research and data on U.S. voter fraud to answer your question.

In the United States, voter fraud exists but is not considered a widespread or systemic problem for national elections by research, courts and federal election security officials.

> The weight of rigorous academic studies, major news investigations, and official reviews converge: voter fraud exists but is vanishingly rare in absolute and relative terms — orders of magnitude below levels that would flip national elections

What studies find

•Multiple independent analyses put proven voter fraud at effectively zero for practical election outcomes, at tiny fractions of a percent

•Brennan Center for Justice review of elections meticulously studied for fraud found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent . A summary of that work notes the rate of voter impersonation near 0.0003% , making a person more likely to be struck by lightning than to impersonate a voter

•Other compilations illustrate the same scale:

•Massachusetts Institute of Technology study of mail ballots called mail-in fraud "exceedingly rare" at about 0.00006 percent of votes nationally

•Brookings Institution review of Heritage Foundation data found Arizona where fraudulent votes were roughly 0.0000845 percent across decades

•Washington Post found just 31 could be credibly claimed to be the result of voter impersonation out of a billion past votes

•Research has been consistent that voter fraud is infinitesimally rare and almost never occurs on a scale that would affect an election outcome

Claims that voter fraud is widespread have been rated FALSE, with numerous studies, including those funded by Trump, not finding widespread incidents

How many proven cases?

The most cited public compilation is the Heritage Foundation's Election Fraud Database, which catalogs roughly 1,561 instances that produced about 1,325 convictions across many decades . Another description of that database notes a total of 1,561 instances of voter fraud resulting in 1,325 convictions across 40+ years, with just 20 cases brought in 2024

To illustrate scale, Brookings examined Heritage's own data and found for example that in Arizona, Heritage had to search 25 years across 36 elections and over 42 million ballots to find 36 cases of fraud — a rate of 0.0000845 percent

Measured by prosecutions, proven voter-fraud cases number in the low thousands across many decades (roughly 1,400–1,600 in Heritage's compilation), translating to only a handful per year and an almost negligible share of total votes

Federal election security assessments

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said there was "no evidence of any malicious activity" affecting the integrity of the 2024 elections and also said the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history," with no evidence that voting systems deleted, lost or compromised votes

A joint CISA statement after 2020 stated there was "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised"

Where fraud can matter more

Researchers note voter fraud is extremely rare and is often accidental when it occurs, and fraud is more likely to occur in and affect the outcome of local elections, where the potential impact of a small number of votes can be greater

For federal elections, voter fraud is exceedingly uncommon—measured in fractions of a percent and almost never large enough to alter presidential or congressional outcomes—though isolated cases can and do occur and can matter more in close local contests

Bottom line

•Yes — isolated cases of voter fraud do occur, including double voting, absentee ballot fraud, registration fraud and ballot tampering.

•No — by volume of evidence, it is not a widespread problem that decides statewide or national outcomes, though it can affect very close local races.

Debate continues primarily over interpretation, counting methods, and what policy response is proportionate to such a rare risk

Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

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