What is the evidence for election fraud during the US 2024 election?
Executive summary
The factual record for the 2024 U.S. presidential election shows isolated, documented instances of alleged or confirmed misconduct — local arrests, state investigations and a handful of legal challenges — but no vetted evidence that widespread fraud altered the national outcome; expert reviews and long-running studies continue to find election fraud in the United States to be rare [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Simultaneously, a torrent of social-media claims, foreign-disinformation activity and partisan amplification blurred the public view, producing many high‑visibility but unsupported allegations that were debunked by fact-checkers and federal officials [6] [7] [8].
1. Isolated criminal cases and state probes: concrete but local
There are clear, documented examples of individual wrongdoing tied to the 2024 cycle: law enforcement in Washington state arrested a building manager who allegedly submitted multiple fraudulent mail‑in ballots that were counted in the general election [1], and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened investigations into 33 potential noncitizen voters after a referral from the Texas secretary of state [2]; those actions represent discrete allegations and prosecutions or probes rather than proof of systemic, nationwide fraud.
2. High‑profile state actions and political overlay
Some state-level enforcement moved into the national spotlight and attracted controversy: Texas authorities under Ken Paxton directed raids of Hispanic campaign volunteers associated with LULAC as part of vote‑harvesting and fraud inquiries, an action that critics saw as politically charged and that reinforced concerns about selective enforcement [9]. Those episodes underscore that some fraud investigations occurred inside a broader partisan fight over elections, complicating their public interpretation [9].
3. Lawsuits and challenges: narrow claims that may prompt discovery but not reversal
Post‑election litigation and watchdog actions progressed in courts — for example, SMART Elections’ SMART Legislation filed a suit over alleged discrepancies in Rockland County that a judge allowed to proceed to discovery — but such cases typically concern localized mechanics or record inconsistencies and, to date, have not produced verified evidence that would overturn statewide or national results [3].
4. Large‑scale claims vs. empirical studies: the bigger picture
Longstanding, nonpartisan research and election‑security experts continue to find that voter fraud is exceedingly rare and that most allegations reduce to errors, isolated crimes or misinformation; the Brennan Center’s synthesis of decades of data and Brookings’ analysis both conclude that fraud instances are minuscule relative to total ballots cast and have not changed outcomes [4] [5]. These studies provide the baseline against which 2024 allegations must be measured.
5. The misinformation ecosystem: viral claims, foreign actors and platform effects
A dominant feature of 2024 was the rapid spread of unverified or false videos and claims across platforms: federal officials and news outlets flagged foreign‑origin viral content purporting to show fraud, while social networks amplified narratives of massive missing votes and machine tampering that fact‑checkers debunked [7] [6] [8]. Independent watchers at Poynter and others documented widespread false claims about vote counting, noncitizen voting and machine malfunctions that flourished online even as they lacked supporting evidence [10].
6. Public belief and political consequences: erosion of trust without proportional evidence
Survey and academic work from 2024 show persistent public concerns about fraud — with partisan differences shaping who finds allegations believable — even as empirical audits and experts report only limited, localized wrongdoing [11]. The political effect has been significant: amplified allegations have driven investigations, strained election offices, and produced legal and security responses despite the absence, so far in publicly available reporting, of evidence that fraud on a scale sufficient to change the presidential result occurred [9] [7].