According to current and former election administrators from both parties, the country's multi-level election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally undetectable and rare.
Elections in America are decentralized, with thousands of independent voting jurisdictions. This makes it virtually impossible to stop a large-scale voter fraud campaign that could upend a presidential race – or any race for that matter.
“We probably won’t have a perfect electoral system,” said the Republican Trey GraysonFormer Kentucky Secretary of State and Chairman of the Secure Election Project Advisory Board. “But if you’re looking for someone you should trust, you should feel good about it in America.”
What is stopping people from voter fraud?
Multiple voting, electoral fraud, Lying about your residence Voting elsewhere or voting for someone else is a crime punishable by heavy fines and imprisonment. Non-U.S. citizens who violate election laws may be deported.
For those still motivated to cheat, election systems in the United States are designed with multiple layers of security and transparency designed to get in the way.
To vote in person, voters are required or required in most states Provide some form of identification in the vote others need Other means of verifying voters' identity, such as stating their name and address, signing a poll book or signing an affidavit.
Those who try to vote in the name of a recently deceased friend or family member could be caught when election authorities update voter rolls with death records and obituaries, he said. Gail PellerinA Democrat in the California Legislature who has run elections in Santa Cruz County for over 27 years.
People who try to impersonate someone else run the risk that someone will meet that person at the polls or that the person will later try to vote on their own, he said.
What protections are there for absentee voting?
For absentee voting, there are different states Different voting verification protocols. All states require voter signatures. Many states have more caveats, such as having bipartisanship Compare the signature with other signatures in the fileA witness is required to authenticate or sign the signature.
This means that even if a ballot is mistakenly sent to someone's previous address and the current resident mails it in, election officials have checks in place to alert them to crime.
A growing number of states offer online or text-based offerings Vote Tracking Tool As an added layer of security, it allows voters to see when their votes were sent, returned and counted.
Federal law Voter list maintenance is required, and election officials do it through a variety of methods, from checking state and federal databases to collaborating with other states to track voters who have moved.
Ballot boxes also have security protocols in place, said Tammy Patrick, executive director of the program at the National Association of Election Officials.
He explained that the boxes are often designed to stop hands from stealing ballots and are monitored by cameras, bolted to the floor and made with fire-resistant chambers, so if someone throws a lit match it will destroy the ballots inside.
Sometimes Alleged Voter Fraud Is Not What It Seems
After the 2020 elections, there have been complaints on social media about people dying voting, double voting or piles of ballots destroyed on the side of the road.
Former president donald trump is active and continuing Expand this claim. But most of them turned out to be false.
An Associated Press investigation that looked at every possible case of voter fraud in six of Trump's contested states found that less than 475 Among millions of votes. It wasn't enough to tip the results. democrat Joe Biden The six states won a combined total of 311,257 votes.
The review also found no conspiracy to rig the vote. In practically all cases Additional voting was based solely on a person's performance. In one case, a man mistakenly thought he could vote while on parole. In another, a woman was suspected of sending a ballot in favor of her dead mother.
Former election officials say that, more often than not, allegations of voter fraud result from an administrative error or misunderstanding.
Pellerin said he remembers when a political candidate in his county raised concerns about there being too many people registered to vote at the same address. It turns out that the devotees were monks who lived in the same house.
Patrick said that when he worked elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, mismatched signatures were sometimes explained by a broken arm or a recent stroke. In other cases, an elderly person tried to vote twice because they forgot that they had already mailed in their ballot.
“You really have to think about voter intent,” Patrick said. “It’s not always intuitive.”
Why voter fraud cannot impact a presidential race
It would be wrong to suggest that voter fraud never happens.
With millions of votes in an election year, there will almost certainly be some cases of someone trying to game the system. There were also more insidious attempts, namely A vote buying plan In 2006 in Kentucky.
In those cases, Grayson said, constituents complained and an investigation was launched. Then the participants admit what they did.
He said the example shows how important it is for election officials to be vigilant and continually improve security to help voters feel confident.
However, he said, it would be difficult to make such a project work on a larger scale. Fraudsters must navigate the difficult nuances of each county's election system. They have to keep a large number of people calm about a crime that could be discovered at any time by agents or observers.
“This decentralized nature of elections is in itself a deterrent,” Grayson said.
