Is voter fraud a problem in the US?

Voter Fraud in the US: What the Evidence Shows

The overwhelming consensus from academic research, government investigations, and nonpartisan fact-checkers is that voter fraud is extremely rare — though a persistent gap exists between this evidence and public perception.

What the Research Shows

Overall rates are vanishingly small. The incidence of voter fraud has been studied numerous times, and the consensus from credible research and investigation is that the rate of illegal voting is extremely rare, with certain types of fraud – such as impersonating another voter – being virtually nonexistent. A landmark Brennan Center report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent, concluding it is more likely an American "will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls."

In-person impersonation fraud is essentially nonexistent. A comprehensive News21 analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases in 50 states between 2000 and 2012 found the level of fraud was infinitesimal compared with the 146 million voters registered over the 12-year period, with the analysis finding only 10 cases of voter impersonation. A follow-up study found similarly minimal results: the project found 10 cases of voter impersonation fraud nationwide from 2000–2012, and a follow-up study looking specifically at states where politicians argued fraud was a pernicious problem found zero successful prosecutions for impersonation fraud in five states from 2012–2016.

Mail-in voting fraud is also minimal. Recent Brookings Institution research found that cases of fraud reported during elections in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 estimated there were about four cases of fraud for every 10 million mail ballots cast, on average.

State-by-state data confirms this pattern. Using the conservative Heritage Foundation's own fraud database, analysis found that the share of reported cases of fraud over the past 13 to 38 years across several key swing states is less than 1 percent — in Pennsylvania, 30 years of data across 32 elections found just 39 cases of voter fraud, or 0.000039 percent of the more than 100 million ballots cast. Similarly, in Arizona, over the 25 years covering the bulk of cases cited by Heritage, there were 36 elections held, with around 42.6 million votes cast and only 36 cases of fraud in total.

Non-citizen voting is also rare. Research has found the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is 0, and in Washington state, 15 cases of noncitizen voting have been prosecuted from 1982 through 2025, or about 0.000006% ballots cast.

A Gap Between Perception and Reality

Despite this evidence, public belief in widespread fraud remains persistent. A 2024 survey found that beliefs about non-citizen voting being common have steadily risen since 2016 from 34% to 40%, a 6% increase. More broadly, this issue has been raised so often that roughly 1 in 4 Americans believes that voter fraud is a real problem.

Important Caveats

Bottom Line

The research consensus — across academic studies, government audits, and even conservative-leaning databases like Heritage Foundation's — is that voter fraud exists but occurs at rates so low (typically measured in thousandths or millionths of a percent) that it does not constitute a systemic problem affecting election outcomes. The debate in American politics is less about whether fraud happens at all, and more about how much weight that rare occurrence should carry in shaping voting policy (e.g., voter ID laws, mail-ballot rules).