How the United States’ strong, decentralized voting system makes voter fraud rare

Despite false claims by Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 election was stolen from him, voter fraud is extremely rare in the United States. Although it does occur, it is usually discovered thanks to the country’s robust, decentralized voting system.

Voter fraud can include casting multiple ballots, manipulating votes, or using a deceased person’s identity to vote. All of these are crimes that carry significant penalties.

According to election officials from both parties, America’s layered voting processes provide safeguards that make large-scale election manipulation, particularly in presidential elections, nearly impossible.

Because the United States is made up of thousands of independent electoral districts, it is extremely difficult to organize fraud on a scale that could change the outcome of the election.

Different states have different laws, but generally speaking, voting in person is protected by various ID requirements or other verification procedures, while voting by mail is secured by measures such as signature matching and ballot tracking.

Additionally, federal law requires voter lists to be updated regularly to ensure the accuracy of voter rolls.

The accusations made often turn out to be false. Others are due to clerical errors and misunderstandings, such as voters mistakenly casting multiple ballots or signature mismatches due to illness.

The loser screams foul

While Trump sought to prove that voter fraud had cost him the election in several states, investigations in several states found vanishingly few confirmed cases – some of them the work of Trump supporters – and no evidence of coordinated attempts to manipulate the vote itself.

An Associated Press investigation into potential fraud in the six states contested by Trump found fewer than 475 cases identified out of millions of ballots cast.

This number was far too small to influence the election result, as Biden secured victory in all swing states by a total margin of 311,257 votes.

Trump’s legal and political campaign to overturn the election failed. Several of his lawyers were disbarred and hit with massive defamation lawsuits from election technology companies and poll workers who were harassed over their false claims.

The former president himself is facing criminal charges in Georgia after pressuring the secretary of state to “find” enough votes to flip the state his way.