Voter Fraud in 2025: What’s Really Going On?

If you’ve followed U.S. elections over the past few years, you’ve probably heard loud claims of “massive voter fraud.” The truth? The evidence just isn’t there.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., actually tracks confirmed cases of election fraud through its public database. As of 2025, they’ve found about 1,500 proven cases since the 1980s. Sounds like a lot, right? But here’s the context: Americans cast hundreds of millions of ballots every year. That means fraud cases are about as rare as finding a winning lottery ticket.

Mail-in Voting: Old News, Not a New Problem

One of the biggest talking points lately has been mail-in or absentee voting. Many critics paint it as new, risky, and open to abuse. But here’s the reality:

• Mail-in voting has been around since the Civil War. Union soldiers mailed in their ballots from the battlefield.
• By the early 1900s, most states had some kind of absentee system.
• California made absentee voting more flexible in the late 1970s, and Oregon started running full vote-by-mail elections in the 1990s.
• By 2020, nearly 30 states offered no-excuse absentee ballots, and five states were already all-mail voting states.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans used mail-in ballots for the first time, leading to record numbers. In 2020, over 65 million people voted by mail—and the system held strong.

But Isn’t Mail-in Voting Risky?

This is the heart of the debate. Opponents argue that because voters aren’t supervised, mail-in ballots are easier to tamper with. They worry about things like:

• People sending in a ballot on behalf of someone else.
• Ballots being intercepted in the mail.
• Voters being pressured at home.

While those fears sound dramatic, the numbers just don’t back them up. Academic studies and government reviews consistently find fraud rates near zero. Yes, there have been a few bad cases—like the 2018 North Carolina congressional race, where operatives collected and tampered with absentee ballots. But those incidents are extremely rare and usually caught quickly.

So, Should We Be Worried?

In short: no. The U.S. election system has its flaws—long lines, outdated machines, confusing rules—but widespread fraud is not one of them. Even when you factor in mail-in voting, the numbers show that cheating is not how elections are decided in this country.

The Bottom Line

Despite the noise, voter fraud remains extraordinarily rare in the United States. Mail-in voting has been around for over 150 years and is not the democracy-killer some make it out to be. So next time you hear claims about “rigged elections,” remember: the data just doesn’t support it.