Title: The Misleading Myth of Voter Fraud in American Elections | Scholars Strategy Network
Headings: The Misleading Myth of Voter Fraud in American Elections
The Misleading Myth of Voter Fraud in American Elections
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Lorraine C. Minnite

Content: Fraud by Individual Voters is Almost Nonexistent
The earliest reliable studies of election fraud in the 1920s and 1930s found that individual voters almost never committed fraud on their own. Conspiracies by politicians or election officials were behind most violations. Voter registration laws were put in place to reduce such organized fraud. Today, social scientific research on fraud is difficult because there are no officially compiled national or state statistics. Researchers must painstakingly piece together evidence from news reports, court proceedings, law enforcement agencies, election officials, and interviews with experts and other sources. After ten years of such research, I found that intentional fraud by individual voters is exceedingly rare. Other investigations have reached the same conclusion. Replicating my methodology, 24 journalism students at twelve universities reviewed some 2,000 public records and identified just six cases of voter impersonation between 2000 and 2012. Under Republican President George W. Bush, the U.S. Justice Department searched for voter fraud. But in the first three years of the program, just 26 people were convicted or pled guilty to illegal registration or voting.