Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

Voter fraud is widely debated — I'll check the latest data on how common it is in the US.

Voter fraud does occur in the United States, but every major study and investigation has found it to be extremely rare and not at a scale that affects federal election outcomes.

What studies show

Voter fraud is defined as "the intentional corruption of the electoral process by the voter" — such as casting multiple ballots, voting by noncitizens or the impersonation of others at the polls.

Typical categories include voter impersonation and double voting. Studies that estimate the prevalence of these types find that rates are extremely low.

•Microscopic rates: Comprehensive reviews put the rate of voter fraud in federal contests at essentially zero for practical purposes: one well-known Brennan Center analysis estimated fraud rates between roughly 0.0003% and 0.0025% based on decades of data.

•Other analyses put the incidence at effectively zero, with a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study of mail ballots over two decades calling mail-in fraud "exceedingly rare" and reporting rates on the order of 0.00006 percent of votes nationally.

•Depending on the chosen source and timeframe, documented rates range from roughly 0.00000017 percent up through numbers like 0.0000845 percent, all describing fractions of a percent so small they amount to near-zero in practical terms.

Overall experts describe the problem as 'virtually nonexistent', with highlights from nonpartisan research stating:

> There is no evidence for widespread voter fraud in U.S. elections, including in recent national elections.

Recent studies of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections similarly found no evidence of widespread voter fraud after investigating claims of non-citizen voting, voting machine changes, and turnout anomalies.

What databases and investigations found

Even databases compiled to document fraud confirm its rarity:

•The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database records approximately 1,500 proven cases across the United States between 1982 and 2023 — an average of roughly 40 cases per year in a nation where 158 million ballots were cast in 2020 alone.

•More recent tallies of that same database catalog roughly 1,561 instances that produced about 1,325 convictions across many decades, and only 20 cases in 2024. Another summary of the same data noted 1,561 instances resulting in 1,325 convictions, with 20 cases brought in 2024.

•A Brennan Center for Justice review of the Heritage database found claims of almost 1,100 proven instances were grossly exaggerated and devoid of context, concluding: Voter fraud is vanishingly rare, and impersonating a voter at the polls is less common a phenomenon than being struck by lightning.

•On noncitizen voting specifically, the conservative Heritage database contains fewer than 100 total cases of suspected non-citizen voting going back to the year 2000. A Brennan Center review found just 30 potential incidents out of 23.5 million votes in a 2016 review across 42 jurisdictions (0.0001%).

Nonpartisan journalistic investigations reached the same conclusion:

•After the 2020 election, a months'-long analysis by the AP found fewer than 475 cases of potential voter fraud in the six battleground states challenged by Trump. In Arizona alone, which had the highest number of potential fraud cases (198), there were over 3.3 million votes cast.

•An Associated Press review of every potential case in those six states found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election.

Federal election security officials agreed. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a statement calling the 2020 election "the most secure in American history" and noting "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised".

Attorney General William Barr, appointed by President Trump, stated publicly in December 2020: "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election".

Does fraud ever happen?

Yes — isolated cases are investigated and prosecuted every cycle, which is why election officials maintain safeguards such as testing voting systems, cross-state database matching to catch double voters, and laws on double voting in all 50 states.

Examples from 2020-2024 include convictions for double voting, false registration, illegal voting by noncitizens, and in a small number of cases, organized schemes. However, the total number of convictions remains in the dozens per year against more than 150 million ballots cast nationally in a presidential election.

Perception vs. evidence

Polling shows large partisan differences in perceptions of fraud, with messaging by political leaders and the "winner effect" — where voters for the winning candidate have more confidence than voters for the loser — shown to alter public perceptions beyond its demonstrated occurrence.

Bottom line

According to academic studies, federal agencies, and both progressive and conservative databases:

•Fraud exists but is statistically rare — typically measured in the hundred-thousandths to millionths of a percent of votes cast

•No analysis has found evidence of widespread fraud sufficient to change the outcome of a recent presidential election

•The Heritage Foundation's own long-running database and the Brennan Center's analyses both describe fraud as vanishingly rare

For this reason, election experts and federal security officials do not describe voter fraud as a systemic problem in U.S. elections, while continuing to prosecute the small number of individual cases that do occur.

Citations (1)

1mostpolicyinitiative.orgNot yet classified
Voter Fraud
Backs: “Voter fraud is defined as "the intentional corruption of the electoral process by the voter" — such as casting multiple ballots, voting by noncitizens or the impersonation of others at the polls.”