How We Know Voter Fraud is Very Rare in U.S. Elections, Explaining the Case of an Ineligible Voter

There are a lot of protections in place when voting whether they are in person or mail-in. It also includes poll worker training and things like signature matching.

There are laws that states must comply with to remove ineligible or dead voters from their rolls. And there are tools like the Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC, that help states share voter data.

“These numbers don’t distinguish between, you know, an allegation that may be incorrect or a situation where someone has voted in good faith incorrectly,” she said.

Clapman said conservative-leaning groups often lump all cases where the voter thought they were eligible along with cases where someone intended to commit fraud.

Clapman said a lot of these cases involve people who at one point lost their voting rights due to a felony conviction. There were 20 formerly imprisoned people in Florida arrested for alleged illegal voting even though they were given voter registration cards, and there was a case in Texas where a woman said she thought she was eligible to vote in the 2016 election.

Sometimes cases are thrown out or faced a harder path through the legal system when they make it to court. This is often the case in cases where ineligible voters cast their vote accidentally, believing they were eligible.

Clapman said that there’s a big discrepancy between how many instances of voter fraud state officials identify and refer for prosecution and the actual reality.

In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced in 2022 his office had found 75 voters who allegedly cast a ballot in the state and another state in 2020. Almost 6 million ballots were cast in Ohio that year.

In a statement, LaRose’s office said they had referred a total of 630 cases to prosecutors “over the course of multiple elections” — while also noting “voter fraud continues to be exceedingly rare” in the state.

Throughout the years, Clapman’s answer has been that this is extremely rare. Sometimes the courts conclude that the evidence just isn’t there when looking at specific evidence.

Source: How we know voter fraud is very rare in U.S. elections

Voter Registration as a Crucible for the Censorship of American Democracy: The Virginia Department of Elections and the Republican National Committee

According to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. Republicans are concerned after many years of Donald Trump questioning the legitimacy of U.S. elections.

Across the country, conservatives have challenged the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The Republican National Committee, newly reconstituted under Trump, has also been involved in efforts to challenge voter rolls before the November election.

“Virginians — and Americans — will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy,” Youngkin said of the Justice Department’s lawsuit.

The Virginia election officials use data from the Department of Motor Vehicles to determine a voter’s citizenship and eligibility. The lawsuit alleges the DMV data can be inaccurate or outdated, but officials have not been taking additional steps to verify a person’s purported noncitizen status before mailing them a notice of canceling their voter eligibility.

The lawsuit says Glenn Youngkin’s order to have daily updates to voter lists is a violation of federal law. The National Voter Registration Act requires a quiet period of 90 days before elections for maintaining voter rolls.

The quiet period restriction was adopted by Congress to prevent eleventh hour efforts that would make it difficult for qualified voters to cast their ballot. The Justice Department will do everything it can to protect the rights of qualified voters who wish to cast a ballot.