Survey of 49 states finds virtually no voter fraud in 2016 election

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last updated 19 December 2016

Last month, President-elect Donald Trump argued on Twitter that he would have won the popular vote, not just the Electoral College, if "millions of people who voted illegally" had not cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. That claim was widely ridiculed at the time, but The New York Times actually asked the people who supervised the 2016 general election in all 50 states how many credible reports of fraud they had found. (Kansas did not respond.) The "overwhelming consensus?" The Times says: "Next to none."

Americans cast 137.7 million ballots in the 2016 election. Twenty-six states and Washington, D.C., reported zero credible allegations of fraudulent voting, eight states reported one case each, and a handful of other states said they are still collectively reviewing a couple dozen allegations of suspicious voting. "The findings unambiguously debunk repeated statements" from Trump about millions of fraudulent voters, the Times says, and "refute warnings by Republican governors in Maine and North Carolina that election results could not be trusted."

At the same time, the Times survey did uncover some cases of voter fraud, including a South Carolina woman who voted absentee then again on Election Day just to make sure her vote counted, a person who voted in both Oregon and Idaho, and another who voted twice in Delaware. Then there's at least one case of an unambiguously illegal voter casting his ballot:

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Tennessee is still investigating one allegation of noncitizen voting. And in Oregon, an American citizen registered her noncitizen husband to vote, which he did — until he discovered it was illegal. The man reported his mistake to county election officials, the secretary of state's office said. He asked that his ballot not be counted. [The New York Times]

You can read more about what the survey uncovered (and did not uncover) at The New York Times.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.