How many of the AP's ~475 potential post‑2020 voter fraud cases led to criminal charges or convictions?
Executive summary
The Associated Press identified fewer than 475 potential instances of post‑2020 voter fraud across six battleground states — a number AP said was too small to affect the election outcome [1]. The sources provided document only a smattering of prosecutions referenced in state reporting and do not give a single, consolidated tally of how many of those AP‑flagged cases led to criminal charges or convictions, so a precise overall number cannot be stated from the material supplied [2] [3].
1. What the AP counted and why it matters
AP reporters compiled fewer than 475 potential cases of voter fraud in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin after months of contacting about 300 local election offices and reviewing post‑election materials — a dataset AP used to show there was no coordinated effort to steal the election and that “virtually every case” appeared to involve individuals acting alone [1] [3].
2. What the reporting shows about referrals, charges and isolated prosecutions
That AP review explicitly noted that many local officials referred some instances to prosecutors or to secretaries of state for further review, and it provides state examples: Wisconsin’s reporting showed five people statewide charged out of nearly 3.3 million ballots cast, and AP noted some cases were forwarded to prosecutors in Georgia and other states for follow‑up [3] [2]. Separate coverage mentioned arrests in Florida tied to apparent double‑voting in a few cases, but these are presented as isolated examples rather than a comprehensive prosecutorial accounting [4].
3. The central gap: no single source lists total prosecutions or convictions from the AP cases
None of the supplied articles offers a consolidated count matching the AP’s ~475 potential cases to a final number of criminal charges or convictions; AP’s reporting focused on cataloguing potential incidents and whether they were referred, not on producing a nationwide prosecutorial outcome list, so an exact conversion of “potential cases → charges/convictions” is not available in the provided sources [2] [1].
4. What can be confidently said from the available evidence
From the material at hand it is defensible to conclude that only a very small fraction of the potential cases identified by AP resulted in criminal charges that were publicly reported — Wisconsin’s five charges and a handful of other local arrests are the concrete prosecutorial examples cited — and that the majority of the AP‑flagged incidents either involved administrative errors, are still under review, or were never charged as crimes according to the reporting [3] [5].
5. Competing narratives and the motives behind them
The AP’s findings were foregrounded to counter claims of a vast, coordinated fraud effort; skeptics and officials sympathetic to former President Trump continued to assert bigger conspiracies, sometimes promising forthcoming reports that would contradict AP [6] [4]. Readers should note both the AP’s methodological aim — exhaustive local reporting and referrals tracking — and the political usefulness of selective prosecutorial anecdotes for actors looking to reinforce or erode public confidence in 2020 results [1] [4].
6. Bottom line and limits of reporting
Bottom line: the supplied reporting shows fewer than 475 potential instances identified by AP and documents only sparse, state‑level prosecutions (Wisconsin’s five charges are one explicit example), but does not provide a complete, cross‑state tally of how many AP‑listed cases ultimately produced criminal charges or convictions; therefore the precise overall number cannot be determined from the sources given [1] [3] [2]. Further precision would require a case‑by‑case follow‑up with state and county prosecutors or a subsequent compilation by AP or another outlet that tracks prosecutorial outcomes for each of the flagged incidents.