Voter Fraud in the United States

If you believe Donald Trump, voter fraud in the U.S. is widespread. This, of course, was the (supposed) basis on which he refused to accept the results of the 2020 election, and brought the country to the edge of an armed revolution, e.g., leading thousands of Americans in an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Here’s a piece from the Brennan School of Justice at New York University Law School:

Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth
Sensationalist claims have circulated this election season about the extent of voter fraud, with some politicians going so far as to tell voters to fear that this November’s election will be “rigged.”

Because electoral integrity is one of the elements necessary to making America the greatest democracy in the world, claims like this garner media attention, and frighten and concern voters. But putting rhetoric aside to look at the facts makes clear that 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.

Studies Agree: Impersonation Fraud by Voters Very Rarely Happens

 The Brennan Center’s seminal report on this issue, The Truth About Voter Fraud, found that most
reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or
bad data matching practices. The report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for
voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Given this tiny
incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely, the report noted, that an American
“will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”
 A study published by a Columbia University political scientist tracked incidence rates for voter
fraud for two years, and found that the rare fraud that was reported generally could be traced to
“false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error.”

When I moved from Washington D.C. to California in 1982, I got a new drivers license, then used it to register to vote. I’ve voted every two years since, and no one has asked me to show my ID.