How many voter fraud convictions were recorded nationwide in 2024 and which organizations track them?

1. What the headline numbers say — multiple tallies, different scopes

The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database is the most-cited public compilation and it lists roughly 1,561 “proven instances” yielding about 1,325 convictions across its time window, and it reports that 20 new cases were brought in 2024 ^{[1] [2]}; other outlets repeating Heritage’s figures describe “about 1,300 convictions” over decades ^[4]. Local investigative projects and newsrooms using different methodologies reach other totals: Hearst Television’s National Investigative Unit found 410 instances since 2016 that led to criminal conviction or court action ^[3], and earlier Associated Press work covering 2020-era contests identified just under 475 potential cases in six battleground states ^[5].

2. Why tallies differ — definitions, time windows and inclusion rules

Differences arise because trackers define “voter fraud” and “conviction” differently and use varying time spans: Heritage explicitly presents a sampling of “proven instances” across many years and is not an exhaustive list ^[2], while media databases often limit themselves to narrower windows (for example, since 2016) or to incidents leading to prosecutions versus convictions ^{[3] [5]}. Some datasets count multiple defendants in a single scheme as separate convictions; others focus on unique schemes or on cases that affected results, producing divergent headline totals ^{[2] [6]}.

3. Who tracks these cases — conservative, nonpartisan and local actors

Major public trackers include the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database, a conservative think tank product and widely cited source for aggregated instances and convictions ^{[2] [1]}; news organizations and investigative units such as Hearst Television’s National Investigative Unit compile their own databases ^[3]; and fact-checkers and academic or nonprofit groups like the Brennan Center, Brookings researchers and AP reporting analyze and contextualize those numbers while emphasizing methodological limits and rarity ^{[7] [6] [5]}. Each of these actors has different objectives and audiences: Heritage emphasizes documented vulnerabilities ^[2], newsrooms aim to quantify recent prosecutions ^[3], and policy nonprofits stress the low incidence and risk of overstating fraud ^{[7] [8]}.

4. What the independent research consensus says about scale and impact

Scholars and nonprofit analysts broadly conclude that voter fraud is extremely rare and that documented convictions have not meaningfully affected election outcomes; Brookings notes that even Heritage’s comprehensive collection, when parsed, reveals a minuscule rate of fraudulent votes and no proven outcome-changing schemes ^[6], and the Brennan Center’s work similarly labels most alleged fraud as mistakes or isolated incidents ^{[7] [8]}. Associated Press and academic projects likewise found only a few hundred potential or confirmed instances when scrutinizing millions of ballots in targeted reviews ^{[5] [8]}.

5. Limits of available reporting — no single federal ledger for 2024 convictions

There is no centralized federal register that produces an unequivocal nationwide count of voter-fraud convictions for the 2024 calendar year; public figures therefore depend on the scope and selection of each database, and some sources explicitly acknowledge incompleteness or sampling choices ^{[2] [9]}. Because of those methodological gaps, statements claiming a definitive nationwide conviction count for 2024 should be treated as provisional unless tied to a specified dataset and its inclusion rules ^{[2] [1]}.

6. How to read the numbers — skepticism, context and agendas

Numbers alone do not answer whether fraud is systemic: Heritage’s database is heavily relied upon by those warning of vulnerabilities but comes from a conservative institution with a stated goal of documenting proven instances ^[2], while analysts at Brookings, the Brennan Center and mainstream fact-checkers caution that the incidence is tiny relative to ballots cast and that politicized claims routinely overstate risk ^{[6] [7] [4]}. The responsible takeaway from available reporting is that handfuls of prosecutions and convictions occurred in 2024 as captured by trackers (Heritage reports 20 cases that year), but the precise national conviction count for that calendar year depends on which tracker and definition one adopts ^{[1] [2] [3]}.