Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

I'll search for current evidence on how extensive voter fraud is in the US.

In the United States, documented voter fraud exists but is widely found to be vanishingly rare and not at a scale to affect outcomes of statewide or national elections.

What the data shows

Multiple academic, government, and non-partisan reviews agree that the rate of proven fraud is microscopic:

•The Brennan Center for Justice report The Truth About Voter Fraud reviewed elections meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. It noted it is more likely an American "will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls."

•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 at Arizona State University found 10 cases of voter impersonation fraud nationwide from 2000-2012, and zero successful prosecutions for impersonation fraud in five states from 2012-2016 where it was alleged to be a pernicious problem.

•Courts and government investigations have reached similar conclusions:

•The Fifth Circuit noted there were "only two convictions for in-person voter impersonation fraud out of 20 million votes cast in the decade" before Texas passed its voter ID law.

•A specialized United States Department of Justice unit examining the 2002 and 2004 federal elections was able to prove that 0.00000013 percent of ballots cast were fraudulent.

•Most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices.

How rare overall?

Summaries across many decades put the rate far below one hundredth of a percent:

•Measured by prosecutions, convictions and sustained findings, 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.

•The Heritage Foundation database, often cited as the most comprehensive conservative compilation, was found by the Brennan Center to contain only 10 cases involving in-person voter-impersonation fraud and only 41 involving noncitizen voting, out of billions of votes cast over nearly 70 years.

•For mail voting specifically, the Brookings Institution 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".

Does fraud happen at all?

Yes, but isolated cases:

•Fraud is not zero. Types that have been documented include double voting, voting by people with felony convictions before rights are restored, false registrations, absentee ballot misconduct by organizers, and rare noncitizen voting. Non-citizen voting and dead-person voting are repeatedly found to be rare and unlikely to change the outcome of an election when audits are completed.

•Large databases show fraud exists at the margins but has not been found to alter modern federal election outcomes. Multiple independent analyses put the incidence at effectively zero for practical election outcomes.

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 said the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history," with no evidence that voting systems deleted, lost or compromised votes.

Audits in battleground states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania confirmed the accuracy of the 2024 results. The FBI and CISA also noted in 2020 that while voter registration information can be purchased or acquired through publicly available sources, the acquisition of this data did not impact the voting process or election results.

Why the perception gap?

•Sensationalist claims have circulated that elections will be "rigged", but reviews from across the political spectrum, academia, courts and federal investigations conclude fraud by voters at the polls is vanishingly rare, and does not happen on a scale even close to that necessary to "rig" an election.

•Concerns about fraud have historically been used to justify restrictive voting measures, including poll taxes and other measures put in place under the guise of stopping voter fraud that wasn't actually occurring.

In summary, election experts, scholars, and federal security officials characterize voter fraud in the U.S. as exceedingly rare — measurable in thousandths or millionths of a percent of votes cast — with occasional isolated cases, but not a widespread or systemic problem that determines election outcomes. Safeguards including voter roll maintenance, signature verification for mail ballots, paper ballot backups, post-election audits, and federal and state prosecutions are cited as reasons for the low rate.

Citations (2)

1brennancenter.orgNonprofits and think tanks
Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth
Backs: “Multiple academic, government, and non-partisan reviews agree that the rate of proven fraud is microscopic: The Brennan Center for Justice report The Truth About Voter Fraud reviewed elections meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.”
2us-inquirer.comNot yet classified
Fact checking Trump speech on election security
Backs: “The Heritage Foundation database, often cited as the most comprehensive conservative compilation, was found by the Brennan Center to contain only 10 cases involving in-person voter-impersonation fraud and only 41 involving noncitizen voting, out of billions of votes cast over nearly 70 years. For mail voting…”