Voter Fraud Is Rare, but Many Americans Believe Their Votes Won’t Be Counted Correctly
It was an explosive claim of possible voter fraud—exactly the sort of thing that former President Donald Trump and conservative pundits have spent years warning Republican voters to fear: more than 50 voters registered to a single address in Erie, Pennsylvania.
“NO ONE lives there,” claimed Cliff Maloney, a Republican canvasser who discovered the alleged fraud, in a post on X that went viral and has racked up over 2.8 million views. “We will not let the Dems count on illegal votes,” he added.
Just one problem: A lot of people do live there. The address in question is a monastery belonging to the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, a group of “nearly 70” nuns who have been based in Erie since the 1850s. The names of the nuns living there match many of those listed as “illegal votes” by Maloney. In a statement responding to Maloney’s post, the group called the claim “blatantly false” and encouraged everyone to be more careful about what they see and read before the election.
“A free republic depends on free and fair elections,” Sister Stephanie Schmidt said in that statement. “It depends equally on a discerning and conscientious citizenry who do not unquestioningly accept the word of anyone who has a social media platform.”
Good advice. Actual, proven instances of mass voter fraud on the scale necessary to shift the outcome of an election—even in a super competitive state like Pennsylvania—are virtually nonexistent, despite seemingly nonstop claims to the contrary.
Voter fraud is a fact of life in any democracy, but it is usually the result of carelessness on the part of single voters or ballot-counters, and there are ample processes in place to identify and correct those mistakes when they occur. After the 2020 election, the Associated Press found 475 instances of possible voter fraud in six states where a combined 25 million ballots were cast. High-profile claims of voter fraud in Arizona, Georgia, and everywhere Rudy Giuliani looked evaporated upon closer inspection.
At a certain point, the lack of evidence for widespread voter fraud ought to make Americans more skeptical of these claims. Instead, it looks like the opposite might be happening.
Just 39 percent of respondents to a recent
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