Free and fair elections
The right to vote, and the integrity of the vote, is more important today than ever.
Sometime soon after October 7, 2020, Tracey Kay McKee of Scottsdale, Arizona, mailed in both her ballot and her mother’s ballot for the upcoming election. The problem? Her mother, Mary Arendt, had passed away on October 5, 2020—just days before voting began.
Tracey had illegally filled out her mother’s ballot, signed it, and turned it in.
She later lied to investigators about the whole affair. While echoing her party line and claiming there was rampant voter fraud, Tracey denied committing fraud herself. This was, after all, Maricopa County, Arizona—a hotbed of allegations back in 2020.
But the signatures didn’t lie. She had tried to commit voter fraud.
Ultimately, Tracey was caught and charged with a felony. Along with probation, fines, and other penalties, this stripped her of the right to vote. (The judge debated jail time, too, for her lack of remorse).
That is what happens when people attempt to commit election fraud in the United States. They’re caught. They’re prosecuted. And, especially if they do it on purpose, the penalties can be severe.
Incidence of voter fraud
The good news: Tracey’s story is highly unusual. Election fraud in the United States is extremely rare. The Brookings Institute found that in Arizona, her state:
The percentage of fraudulent votes in Arizona over the last 25 years of elections was a minuscule .0000845%, and no election outcome in the U.S. has ever been altered by ballot fraud.
Let me repeat that. No election outcome in the U.S. has ever been altered by ballot fraud.
Robust research into cases of voter fraud reveals that the actual incidence of illegal voting1 in the US ranges between 0.0003—0.0025 percent. That’s it! This may be, in part, because the United States has decentralized elections, which means every state has its own rules. Moreover, every county2 enacts rules to ensure the integrity of its elections.
Of course, officials across the country collaborate on best practices and election security. Running over 3,000 different elections simultaneously may not be the most efficient way to do a presidential election, but it does make it incredibly difficult to for widespread voter fraud to occur—including anything that would change the results of an election.
In fact, what would it take to change the results? Any fan of detective stories (Nancy Drew or true crime podcasts, anyone?) knows that people must have three things to successfully commit a crime:
Means: The physical capacity or tools to carry out the crime.
Motive: Their incentive—a compelling reason why they did it.
Opportunity: Adequate chance(s) to commit the crime.
Suspicions and allegations are not evidence enough, let’s follow the facts. Put on our detective hats and we realize that unless someone has the trio of means, motive, and opportunity, they simply didn’t commit the crime.
Preventing election fraud
Luckily, our elections officials take their jobs seriously. On Election Day, there will be thousands (tens or hundreds of thousands?) of committed, patriotic Americans hard at work to make elections airtight. That means elected officials, election judges, poll workers, poll watchers, international election observers, and law enforcement—all working towards a common goal of having safe and secure elections.
Well before an election, officials like county clerks work with security experts to create protocols and layers of election security that deny would-be criminals both the means and the opportunity to commit election fraud. We have institutions like the Election Assistance Committee, which works to ensure that each election (each county!) follows strict security practices. Then there’s ERIC, an initiative to prevent people from voting in multiple states.3
Moreover, our strict laws against illegal voting remove the motive—most especially for non-citizen immigrants and asylum seekers. If you’re an immigrant trying to gain legal status in the United States, voting illegally is one of the easiest ways to get caught, deported, and denied citizenship in the future. Few immigrants hoping for a future here would risk that.
Even though there’s little motive for people to vote illegally—and extremely few documented cases of noncitizens voting—this hasn’t stopped allegations of widespread fraud. These allegations have even led to some states removing legitimate American voters from voter rolls. (Can you imagine showing up today to find your name removed?)
Actual voter fraud around the United States
Few people have the means, motive, and opportunity to really commit fraud, and because of the high scrutiny on election results, those who try—like Tracey—are caught. Attempted voter fraud in America usually looks like the following:
A US citizen who believes they are eligible to vote, but isn’t
This was the case with Crystal Mason, a US citizen on supervised release for a federal conviction. Believing that she was eligible to vote, she took the advice of a poll worker to submit a provisional ballot. The penalty was five more years in prison—and her vote was never even counted.
“Throughout the case, Mason has said she had no idea she was ineligible to vote under Texas law and wouldn’t have knowingly risked her freedom.”
In too many of these cases, Americans with a prior conviction were told by authorities that they can vote legally. Confusingly, this depends on where they live, since voting eligibility requirements vary from state to state. You could be legal to vote in Connecticut but ineligible in South Carolina. However, even this “common” type of voter “fraud” is still rare, especially since formerly incarcerated Americans are usually too afraid to try to vote—even if they’re eligible.
A US citizen who tries to vote twice in different states
In theory, this can happens when an eligible US citizen owns property in multiple states, or who recently moved and is trying to vote twice in the same election. There aren’t many examples—I did find a news story of former Trump administration official Matt Mowers, who voted in two states’ Republican primaries in 2016. (He was not convicted, even though this violates federal law).
A US citizen who tries to vote on behalf of a loved one
Remember the story of Tracey? This happens when people submit vote-by-mail ballots on behalf of family members or housemates. And it is easily caught. In Utah County, where I currently live, an elections office worker informed me that almost all attempted voter fraud comes when parents of out-of-town children (ahem, missionaries) try to vote on their behalf. This is still rare, illegal, and caught in the signature-matching process. Those votes aren’t counted. And don’t do it!
In Utah at least, every single signature on a ballot is checked. If officials can’t determine the signature is a “match” with the signatures on record, the ballot must be “cured” by the individual to be counted.
What about the other types of fraud?
There are very, very few confirmed incidences of ballot stuffing or of undocumented citizens attempting to vote. The Heritage Foundation’s database—with every incidence of alleged voter fraud going back to Harry Truman—lists only three cases of noncitizen voting in Texas within the past 4 presidential election cycles. In a giant border state! Not exactly widespread.
Remember: There’s no motive to vote illegally. The means are really difficult, including giving out personal information that undocumented immigrants are loathe to do. And because of robust security, the opportunity isn’t there either.
Most importantly, even eligible voters who attempt to vote multiple times get caught within the many safeguards we use to prevent fraud.
The risk of allegations
This isn’t an exhaustive look at every possible voting-related crime, but it does represent a significant portion. Look up the Heritage Foundation’s rather exhaustive voter fraud database yourself. You may find yourself comforted at how seldom voting crimes are happening.
However, rampant allegations about voter fraud have occasionally, and quite unfortunately, convinced US citizens to try to commit fraud themselves. Remember Tracey’s story? Here’s what the judge had to say about it:
“What we’re hearing is voter fraud is out there,” Lawson told the judge. “And essentially what we’re seeing here is someone who says ‘Well, I’m going to commit voter fraud because it’s a big problem and I’m just going to slide in under the radar. And I’m going to do it because everybody else is doing it and I can get away with it.’
Allegations of voting fraud, it turns out, can lead to attempted fraud. Poor Tracey.
Voter suppression is a form of fraud
Ultimately, there are two ways of committing election fraud (or, if you will, trying to “steal an election”):
Illegal votes. This is what we’ve covered so far: multiple voting, US citizens ineligible to vote, etc.
Keeping eligible voters from participating.
The first is seldom seen in the United States, thankfully. In contrast, voter suppression, which falls under “civil rights” crimes, is almost an American pastime.
Historical suppression includes Jim Crow laws, like poll taxes and literacy tests that illegally kept generations of Black Americans from voting. Suppression can take the form of disinformation campaigns to convince people their votes don’t matter, or by giving them incorrect info on how and where to vote.
It also includes removing eligible voters from rolls before elections—as happened to hundreds of voters in Virginia just this week.
Disenfranchisement for felony convictions alone affects an estimated 4.4 million American citizens. That’s actually down from 2016, when over 6 million Americans legally prevented from voting. For perspective, that’s 2% of all voters in the United States who are unable to vote—as high as 8% of the otherwise-eligible voting population in places like Alabama and Tennessee (where Black Americans are targeted at higher rates). Remember that many elections are decided by under 2%, so this is significant.
Note: This post isn’t specifically about voter suppression. Detailing all the ways eligible Americans have been kept from voting is too long (and disheartening) for today. See Ballotpedia for a summary of voter disenfranchisement tactics, or books like One Person, No Vote for more history.
Improvements to voter security
Elections in the United States are already very secure. But of course, we can still make improvements to ensure continued security (especially physical security stemming from threats of violence) and streamline the process for voters. For starters: Elections offices are often underfunded and need money for more staffing, equipment, and training. It’s worthwhile to shore up our elections by providing all they need.
When someone makes good-faith reports about election concerns, we should listen. We want our leaders to act to prevent fraud. Any elected official or candidate genuinely worried about election fraud should:
Pressure Congress to secure extra funding for election security. Or come up with the funding themselves.
Rely on and invite more third-party and international election observers to verify the election—working with nonpartisan, organizations that observe and certify elections all over the world.
Beef up cybersecurity units to stop America’s enemies from trying to sway elections, and combat disinformation campaigns.
Discourage any election violence, especially near dropboxes and polling places.
Take reports of foreign election meddling seriously.
These efforts are nonpartisan: those with power who to improve the security of our elections can do these. Yet during the past few elections, Congress—particularly those legislators who openly stoke fears of election integrity—have failed to provide additional money to hire and train more poll workers or improve equipment. They claim widespread fraud without any good-faith efforts to try to stop such fraud.
In fact, early in 2020, elections offices around the United States asked for more funding—additional protocols and expanded mail voting were costly additions to their forecasted budgets. Neither the president nor Congress stepped up. So the Chan-Zuckberg Initiative (CZI), a private foundation, decided to fill the gap—and later were blasted for it.
Overall, CZI gave nearly $400 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which in turn funded grants to more than 2,500 elections offices across the country to improve election security. These weren’t partisan grants: any legitimate need was met to make sure that vote centers were adequately staffed with secure equipment. US election officials and international elections observers both noted that these grants were necessary to ensure the integrity of the 2020 US Election—and that they worked.
Let’s keep our elections secure
Knowing the facts makes it harder to be swayed by misinformation. Learn how your election is administered, then trust the results. This can be hands on: take a tour of your local elections office and see all the safeguards for yourself.
Reputable, nonpartisan election observers come to the United States to observe our major elections. As OSCE, an organization that goes around the world to ensure accurate elections, puts it:
“It is of course essential in a democracy that citizens have faith in their electoral system and faith that candidates who obtain the necessary number of votes are duly installed in office.”
“We were impressed by the level of commitment that we saw from these election workers who selflessly fulfilled their duties in the midst of a pandemic to ensure that Americans could exercise their democratic right to choose their leaders.
“Instead of being celebrated, however, in too many instances election officials appear to have borne the brunt of baseless complaints of widespread electoral fraud, leading many to step down. Following a two-year-long campaign of harassment of election workers there now seems to be a shortage in some parts of the country, which poses a new set of challenges for administering elections.”
Accusations and allegations of fraud undermine, not help, our election security. When officials and poll workers testify under oath about certifying accurate results, we should believe them. The rest of us voters should celebrate their tireless efforts: poll workers and other election officials work long hours, often as volunteers or for low pay, just to makes sure we can vote securely. We should protect these patriotic Americans—who, in the past, have often skewed elderly and retired!—not threaten them.
I’ll end with this: How do we know someone is sincere? When they take actions to secure the vote. Let’s be suspicious of any candidate or official who undermines election integrity in their talk, yet fails to do their part to make America’s elections more secure.
As the world’s oldest democracy, safe, accurate, free, and fair elections should be our bread and butter. May we make it so this Election Day and beyond. May God bless America!
Illegal voting is generally not “illegals” or “illegal immigrants” voting, but more often citizens of the United States attempting to vote or tamper with the vote.
County and county equivalent, like “parishes” in Louisiana and “boroughs” in Alaska. Who knew the United States had so much variety?
ERIC is important because the biggest opportunity for fraud is sometimes trying to vote in multiple states. The US doesn’t have nationalized voter registration or rolls. I personally believe this is a miss: having one big, complete list for all Americans would solve both a) the problem of people who should be eligible not being registered to vote and b) the problem of voting in multiple states.