'Dead' voters casting their votes? Is there any truth to the claims of voter fraud in the US?

The 2020 US presidential election saw an unprecedented wave of voter fraud claims.

As another election day approaches for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, many of these falsehoods are resurfacing, raising concerns about the accuracy of election processes.

The 2024 voter fraud claims reflect a repeat of 2020

In 2020, then-US President Donald Trump prematurely declared victory on election night, claiming: “We have already won.” This statement came at 2:21 a.m. (local time) on November 4, hours after polls closed and while ballots were still being counted in several states.

That lasted until November 7 The Associated Press declared Joe Biden the projected winner, based on unofficial but clear results. Trump’s statement encouraged widespread falsehoods and suggested that ballots counted after election night were illegal.

In reality, states have procedures that allow vote counting to continue for days after Election Day to ensure accuracy. State election officials, overseen by the National Association of State Election Directors, were clear: The vote counting must be completed, no matter how long it takes.

In many states, final results were delayed due to mail-in and absentee ballots, which took longer to process but were still part of the legal process. Experts expect similar claims to reappear in 2024 as social media amplifies misinformation about delayed results.

A look at the types of claims and how ‘true’ they are

Claims of voting by the deceased and non-citizens

A recurring untruth is that thousands of deceased persons cast their votes. In 2020, posts on

In reality, local election offices routinely update voter rolls using death certificates from state and federal sources to prevent such occurrences. Although there are rare cases of people fraudulently voting on the names of deceased relatives – such as a Republican in
Nevada in 2020 – such incidents are isolated and do not indicate widespread fraud.

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Claims that non-citizens have been lured to vote in US elections are also baseless. Federal law prohibits non-citizens from participating in federal elections. Occasionally, non-citizens end up on the electoral roll due to administrative errors during processes such as obtaining a driver’s license.

For example, the largest instance of voting among non-citizens occurred in 2016
North Carolina, where 19 non-citizens were prosecuted for voter fraud. However, with more than 4.5 million votes cast in the 2016 North Carolina election, these cases were statistically insignificant.

Voting errors and “malfunctions” in the voting machine

Errors during voting or ballot processing are often misinterpreted as intentional fraud.

For example, a small typographical error on some ballots in Palm Beach County,
Florida, listed the candidate as “Tom” Walz instead of Tim Walz. County officials quickly addressed the issue, affecting only 257 out-of-state ballots without affecting the overall count.

Moreover, technical problems at polling stations have led to similar misinterpretations. In 2020, a water leak at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta disrupted counting for two hours but caused no damage to the ballots or machines.

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Social media users falsely claimed that this incident was used to illegally process ballots.
Georgia officials debunked this and clarified that no unauthorized ballots were counted.

The story that voting machines flip votes between candidates is another persistent myth. Despite claims circulating since 2020 that machines are programmed to alter votes, extensive audits and investigations by election officials and outside experts have found no evidence to support these allegations.

Republican Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams wrote on X on November 2: “Gentle reminder that vote switching is fiction.”

Friendly reminder that vote swapping is fiction: https://t.co/aShhB6SRGY

— Michael Adams, KY Secretary of State (@KYSecState) November 2, 2024

Election officials explained that touch screen calibration issues or voter errors can lead to inadvertent selections, which can easily be corrected by reviewing and reprinting ballots.

“Mood dumps” and late-night counting

Another common accusation concerns “ballot dumps” – the idea that large quantities of ballots are mysteriously added overnight to influence election results. Trump’s 2020 tweet claimed: “Last night I led, often solidly, in many key states… Then one by one they began to magically disappear as the surprise ballots were counted.”

In reality, these late results were due to the timing of the processing of mail-in and absentee ballots, which are governed by state law.
pennsylvania, For example, limits the processing of mail-in ballots until Election Day, which extends the counting time. Similar procedures exist in several other states.

These shifts in results often occur in close races because votes from urban centers, which typically lean in favor of Democrats, often arrive later in the counting process. Political science and election experts confirm that there is nothing unusual or illegal about these vote counting timelines.

Is voter fraud practically possible?

One of the overarching narratives of the 2020 election was that massive fraud had changed the outcome.

Claims and social media Images suggested mass manipulation, but experts emphasize that orchestrating fraud at this level is virtually impossible.

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The conservative Heritage Foundation’s database, which tracks voter fraud cases, reports only about 1,300 fraud convictions over multiple election cycles out of billions of votes cast.

For fraud to influence the outcome, thousands of illegal votes must be coordinated across battleground states, forcing hundreds, if not thousands, of people to work together while risking serious penalties.

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With input from authorities

Get the latest updates from the 2024 US elections