We Should Be Celebrating the Success of American Elections

The number of Americans who think voter fraud is real keeps going up. Polls said around 30% of Americans think Joe Biden “stole” the 2020 election. Now, according to a recent poll, 6 of 10 Americans are concerned or very concerned there will be voter fraud this election, including an eye-popping 33% of Democrats.

The myth that fraud alters the outcomes of U.S. elections is, of course, driven by Mr. Trump’s brazen insistence that there were “millions” of illegal votes in 2020, and his propaganda that Biden Administration is letting noncitizens into the country to vote for Kamala Harris.

The response from election officials and voting advocates like myself has been to repeat, ad nauseam, that noncitizen voting and other forms of voting fraud are “exceedingly rare.”

Repeatedly citing these studies in the face of voter fraud falsehoods is as righteous as it is ineffective—which is to say, totally.  We can’t keep telling Americans, “There’s no evidence voter fraud exists, therefore it doesn’t exist” and expect them to agree.

Fortunately, we can do more than just tell voters that elections are safe; we can celebrate just how incredibly successful elections actually are in the U.S. To do that, we should talk more about the comprehensive checks and balances built into our system that ensure only eligible citizens register and vote and innocent mistakes are caught and corrected. 

The first safeguard against noncitizen voting is that we don’t allow someone to just show up and vote—you have to register. To register, you first need a driver’s license number, state identification number, or social security number. Registration forms also require signing under penalty of perjury that you’re a U.S. citizen. All this creates a paper trail, making it almost impossible to cheat at scale without getting caught.

Voting by mail is also secure, despite claims that people are illegally stuffing ballot drop boxes with fraudulent votes. To state the obvious, a vote scrawled on a piece of paper and stuffed into a ballot box isn’t a vote; only official ballots are tabulated. Moreover, each ballot must be sealed inside an official envelope. The envelope has information identifying the voter who submitted it, and officials don’t count a ballot unless there’s a record of that voter requesting a ballot. Again, you can see the many steps required to pull off a fake voting scheme at scale.

Elections aren’t perfect. Mistakes occur, and bad actors sometimes appear. But our system is set up to catch and correct errors, and it has mechanisms to root out bad actors. For example, officials conduct a post-election “canvass” to correct clerical errors, confirm all valid ballots were counted, and reconcile the number of ballots cast with the number of people who voted. If there is evidence of fraud or widespread mistakes, candidates can file an election “contest” in court to adjudicate and resolve those claims.

The best part is that all this is completely transparent. Everything that happens before, during, and after Election Day is open to public observation. Candidates, their representatives, and even voters have the right to watch officials as they test voting equipment, process absentee ballots, check voters’ IDs at the polls, and count votes. Mr. Trump had observers in 2020, meaning if there was any fraud, he would have evidence of it.

That so many American believe claims of fraud despite evidence is a dangerous prospect for our democracy. To fight back, we need to amplify what there is evidence of:  a strong, safe, and resilient U.S. election system that has a 100% chance of exposing mass voter fraud if it ever took place. That’s a story worth celebrating.