I'll look into recent evidence on how common voter fraud is in the United States.
In the United States, voter fraud is documented but is not considered a widespread or systemic problem by election officials, researchers, and courts.
What studies show - rates are microscopic
Multiple independent reviews conclude the rate is near-zero for practical election outcomes:
•Analyses put voter fraud rates in the range of hundred-thousandths to millionths of a percent depending on method — figures such as ~.0000845% and 0.00000017% are representative examples
•The Brennan Center's report The Truth About Voter Fraud reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. A well-known Brennan Center analysis estimated fraud rates between roughly 0.0003% and 0.0025% based on decades of data
•A comprehensive 2014 study published in The Washington Post found 31 credible instances of impersonation fraud from 2000 to 2014, out of more than 1 billion ballots cast
•Two studies done at Arizona State University found similarly negligible rates. The project found 10 cases of voter impersonation fraud nationwide from 2000–2012 and the follow-up found zero successful prosecutions for impersonation fraud in five states from 2012-2016
> "Research has been consistent over time that voter fraud is infinitesimally rare and almost never occurs on a scale that would affect an election outcome" — Alice Clapman, Brennan Center for Justice, as cited in reviews
Summary across reputable sources is that voter fraud occurs at rates on the order of 0.00000017% to roughly 0.000096% in studied periods, and most experts describe the phenomenon as "extremely rare"
Even databases assembled to prove fraud exists show small numbers
•The conservative Heritage Foundation found just 1,620 cases of election fraud nationwide over more than forty years – an average of only three dozen cases per year across the entire country
•The same Heritage-based research found only 15 cases in Washington state during the same period
•Other compilations of Heritage data cite roughly 1,500 proven instances — spanning decades and all fifty states, across billions of ballots cast
On non-citizen voting specifically, a focal claim in recent debate:
•The Brennan Center found just 30 potential incidents out of 23.5 million votes in a 2016 review across 42 jurisdictions (0.0001%)
•Research cited by the League of Women Voters showing the rate of suspected non-citizens voting is just .0001%, or one ten-thousandth of 1%. By comparison, about 154 million Americans voted in the 2024 election
Government investigations reach the same conclusion:
•After Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach reviewed 84 million votes cast in 22 states, it yielded 14 instances of fraud referred for prosecution, which amounts to a 0.000017 percent fraud rate
•A specialized United States Department of Justice unit formed with the goal of finding instances of federal election fraud examined the 2002 and 2004 federal elections, and were able to prove that 0.00000013 percent of ballots cast were fraudulent
Courts have similarly noted the rarity:
•The Fifth Circuit noted "only two convictions for in-person voter impersonation fraud out of 20 million votes cast in the decade" before Texas passed its law
•The Fourth Circuit noted that North Carolina "failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud"
Federal election security assessments
•The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with state election officials, declared the 2020 election "the most secure in American history," stating there was "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed" votes
•Attorney General William Barr, appointed by Trump, stated in December 2020 that the Department of Justice had not uncovered evidence of voter fraud "on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election."
But fraud does occur in isolated cases
Fraud is not zero. Prosecutors do bring cases each cycle, typically involving:
•double voting, impersonation, false registration, absentee-ballot fraud, or non-citizen voting
Recent examples, reported by DOJ and aggregated databases, include:
•The Justice Department charged five people in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin over alleged illegal voting or fraudulent registration tied to the 2022 and 2024 elections
•Other federal indictments for alien voting and false registration in 2024, such as charges in Pennsylvania for a noncitizen illegally voting in the 2024 election and in Massachusetts for using another person's identity to register and vote
These cases are treated as individual criminal matters and, according to reviews, have not been shown to alter the outcome of federal or statewide elections.
Bottom line
•Voter fraud is real but vanishingly rare and not a systemic problem at a scale that would rig or flip national elections, according to the consistent finding across academic studies, government audits, court findings, and both progressive (Brennan Center) and conservative (Heritage Foundation) databases.
•Most reported incidents are traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices.
Perception often diverges from the data because high-profile allegations receive wide attention while the subsequent investigations that find rates far below one hundredth of a percent receive less attention.