Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

Is U.S. voter fraud a significant problem? I'll pull the latest evidence and studies to separate fact from claim.

In the United States, voter fraud exists but is not considered a widespread or systemic problem that regularly affects election outcomes.

What the evidence shows

Multiple independent studies and reviews over decades have found fraud rates to be vanishingly small:

Researchers summarize the consensus as:

> "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"

And:

> The empirical problem in American elections is not widespread fraudulent voting.

How rare is it in practice?

Investigations and audits repeatedly find only a small number of cases among millions of ballots:

Courts have reached similar conclusions, noting for example only two convictions for in-person voter impersonation fraud out of 20 million votes cast in Texas in the decade before Texas passed its voter ID law, and a Fourth Circuit finding that North Carolina failed to identify even a single individual charged with in-person voter fraud.

What counts as "voter fraud"?

Voter fraud is typically defined as intentional corruption of the electoral process by the voter and is a subset of electoral fraud.

Types of fraud include voter impersonation or in-person voter fraud, mail-in or absentee ballot fraud, illegal voting by noncitizens, and double voting.

Typical categories of voter fraud claims include:

This is distinct from broader election fraud / electoral fraud which refers to concerted attempts to unlawfully alter the results of an election, such as by election officials changing a ballot tally or engaging in other corrupt behavior.

What about databases of proven cases?

The Heritage Foundation's election fraud database is frequently cited. Analyses of that database note it undermines claims of widespread recent fraud:

> Among the examples in the Heritage document are a case from 1948 and a case from 1972. Only 105 of its 749 cases came from within the past five years.

> In reviewing billions of votes cast, the Heritage Foundation identified just 10 cases involving in-person impersonation fraud

Federal assessments of election security

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has consistently stated that it found no evidence of foreign interference that altered the outcomes of the 2020 or 2024 presidential elections.

On November 12, 2020, CISA issued a statement calling the 2020 election "the most secure in American history" and noting "[t]here is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

Election experts and multiple investigations have also concluded that documented cases of non-citizen voting and mail-in ballot fraud are rare and insufficient to affect election results.

Why does perception differ from evidence?

Polling shows there has been little evidence of systematic voter fraud, yet a third of the public thinks there is a great deal of voter fraud in U.S. elections, and about 4 in 10 say there is some fraud.

Researchers point to a big gap between rhetoric and reality, noting dramatic claims by state officials about voter fraud but investigations across the political spectrum have yielded very, very small instances of actual prosecutions.

Many alleged cases turn out upon review to be clerical errors, bad data matching practices, or voters who voted accidentally in good faith believing they were eligible — such as people with prior felony convictions confused about restoration of voting rights — rather than intentional fraud.

Safeguards

States are required to routinely remove ineligible or deceased voters from their rolls and use tools like the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) to share voter data. Other protections include signature matching, drop box surveillance, poll worker training, chain-of-custody logs, and post-election audits.

Officials also note that states have very effective protections in place to prevent and detect voter fraud and that the penalty for voter fraud is enormous.

Bottom line: Documented voter fraud in the United States occurs at rates measured in hundred-thousandths to millionths of a percent, is described as extremely rare by nonpartisan researchers, courts, and federal security agencies, and has not been shown to occur at a scale that would "rig" statewide or national elections. Isolated cases do occur and are prosecuted, but they do not support claims of widespread, systematic voter fraud.