Both Republicans and Democrats believe midterm election fraud will help their opponents

Voting.
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Americans on both sides of the aisle are worried about meddling in the midterm elections, a new NPR/Marist poll finds, and they're convinced it won't help their party.

Asked which party potential voter fraud would favor in the midterms, 77 percent of Democrats said it would help Republicans, and 67 percent of Republicans said it would favor Democrats. Independents were split, but slightly more (41 to 36 percent, with a 4 percent margin of error throughout the survey) believe the GOP would benefit.

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As NPR notes, there's no evidence of foreign manipulation of U.S. ballots (Russian election interference techniques were more indirect). And many of the very few improper votes that are cast each election are accidental, like the Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for unintentionally violating the law by voting while on probation.

The survey also found a significant split on whether "many votes" will simply not be counted. While most white voters aren't concerned this may happen, a majority of non-white voters think it will.

All told, nearly 4 in 10 Americans say our elections are not fair. The poll was conducted Sept. 5-9 and reached 949 adults over the phone. See the full results here.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.