Nine convictions for illegal voting against 35 million ballots cast. That is the tally on Ohio’s Crime Statistics dashboard, and it fits what researchers keep finding: proven voter fraud in the United States is very rare.
The Ohio figure matters for its ratio, not its drama. Research finds that fraud, when it happens, is more likely to occur in local elections, where a handful of votes can carry more weight. Cases of illegal voting are also often accidental, because the label of fraud is routinely applied even where nobody intended to break the law. Mail-in fraud turns up more often than in-person fraud, though both are uncommon.
The national picture
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, keeps an incomplete database of prosecuted cases going back to 1979. As of November 2023 it listed 1,465 proven cases over 44 years, an average of 33 a year. In Texas it found 103 confirmed cases between 2005 and 2022, a period in which 107 million ballots were cast, or 0.000096% of the total. Heritage describes the database as a sampling, not a full count.
An earlier project, News21 at Arizona State University, logged 2,068 alleged cases from 2000 to 2012. That works out to about 0.000003 cases per vote cast, and 46 percent of the cases ended in acquittals, dropped charges or a decision not to charge.
California’s 28 defendants
Federal prosecutors announced charges this week against 28 immigrants in California for illegally registering or voting, in what the Trump administration presents as part of a national push to find noncitizen voters. All 28 are lawful permanent residents, meaning green card holders who may stay in the country but may not vote. Twenty-two are accused of voting in at least one election, one as recently as the June primary. Five only registered, and one cast a provisional ballot in 2020.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said federal prosecutors have charged around 113 noncitizens in 20 states over the past two months.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said guilty parties should be held accountable, but called the numbers no proof of a corrupt system. “Twenty-eight out of 23 million registered voters in California is just … a drop in the bucket numerically,” Bonta said. “It’s 0.0001% of all the registered voters, and it makes the point that there is no widespread voter fraud.”
Outside experts agree. UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said that if the Justice Department could prove many more cases, the public would have heard. David Becker, a former DOJ attorney who now leads the Center for Innovation and Election Research, said, “It’s not surprising they’ve found little because it is a small problem.”
The federal claims have also shrunk under scrutiny. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin earlier claimed Nevada had nearly 16,000 noncitizens on its rolls, yet DHS sent the state only 185 names, and Nevada officials confirmed every one was a U.S. citizen. In Los Angeles County, a registrar’s filing found that 38.9% of a 200-name sample drawn from a federal list of 20,000 suspected voters showed birth in the United States.
Sources
- Electoral fraud in the United States
- Federal prosecutors accuse 28 green card holders of illegally registering or voting
- Trump DOJ makes shocking admissions; taken to task for latest allegations of voter fraud | Governor of California
Photo: Miami University Libraries – Digital Collections (No restrictions)
