Talk:Electoral fraud in the United States

One-sided perspective of electoral fraud

The article as currently presented takes the perspective that "electoral fraud" occurs when a person is allowed to vote who is not authorized to vote. But the flip side of this is when a person who wants to vote and who is or ought to be eligible to vote, yet the person is denied the opportunity to vote or is otherwise deterred from voting. There is the article Voter suppression in the United States, but "voter fraud" suggests something that shouldn't be allowed to happen (even in the evidently very small numbers with which this occurs), while "voter suppression", which certainly has a much greater effect numerically, plausibly affects a significant fraction of the eligible voting population.

If "electoral fraud" is anything that improperly affects the voting results, then "voter suppression" is just as much a form of electoral fraud as is the case of counting the votes of unauthorized voters. Fabrickator (talk) 02:27, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the current distinction is appropriate because the U.S. government defines “voter fraud” and “civil rights violations” (ie. voter suppression) as two separate categories of election crime. Voter/electoral fraud is also by definition illegal, whereas voter suppression can take both illegal and legal forms. JSwift49 02:44, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Very much agree - and many people consider voter suppression (not to mention election subversion) to be a form of electoral fraud when surveyed. I have been advocating for a definition section and lead that summarizes the entire concept that discusses more than this legal definition used by the FBI - would love a second opinion on it Superb Owl (talk) 04:03, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Voter fraud is a legal term; we should not define it in the lead based on what people perceive it to be, but what the law is. The “Prosecution” section already does that. If we are discussing what people additionally perceive as fraud, that should be limited to the “Public perception” section (which it is). JSwift49 10:54, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I have added the US govt/FBI definition to the lead for clarity. The US govt website says 'voter fraud and voter registration fraud', while the FBI says 'voter/ballot fraud'. Since the FBI list is more comprehensive and specifically mentions registration fraud under 'voter/ballot fraud', I wrote 'voter or ballot fraud'. JSwift49 12:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I think this should be more clearly explained in a definition section after the lead or in the lead itself while also noting the the definition is not a universal constant. The disambiguation at the top is helpful but not sufficient. Superb Owl (talk) 21:29, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I take exception to the idea that the government's definition of these terms is of any particular relevance on Wikipedia. The general expectation is that the election results should reflect the preferences of the electorate, and any systematic aspect of the election which detracts from that may be said to impact the election integrity.

Now we have this case of Iowa (there may be other states with similar lawsuits) in which the ballots of over 2,000 voters were rejected because at some point in the past, they had stated they were not citizens. This could have been from documents going back several years, and these would likely be people who have become citizens in the interim. They are given the opportunity to cast provisional ballots, but must come back with evidence to support their claim of citizenship. IMO, only a small portion of these people are going to be bothered to jump through these hoops to get their lone ballots counted, but as for the determination that their votes should not be counted, I'm not sure if you call that "voter fraud" (the election officials are fraudulently failing to count these votes) or is it "voter suppression" (the election officials have set up additional hoops these people must jump through in order to get their votes counted. So "election irregularity" avoids the need for us to distinguish these two categories that interfere with determining the proper tally of votes. Fabrickator (talk) 22:14, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

You are correct that voter fraud, voter suppression and campaign finance fraud can all lead to elections being unjustly won or lost. However, this article is only about one of those three categories.

The problem is that reliable sources, by and large, do not conflate electoral/voter fraud and voter suppression or treat them as interchangeable. When combined with the U.S. government explicitly distinguishing the two, there is no basis for WP:OR that merges the two categories. Government + secondary source classifications matter in an encyclopedia, and we should not disregard them based on what we personally think is right. JSwift49 00:41, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

For me, as a Vermont election official, "voter fraud" is not a legal term. I went to https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/ and from there to the LexisNexis site, and searched the Vermont statutes for "voter fraud". Nothing was found. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:17, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

“Fraudulent voting” is though and regardless, as a federal category of crime it applies everywhere in the United States. JSwift49 00:44, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

The link https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/17/035/02015 with "vermont" spelled out won't frighten Firefox. The offense described in § 2015 is narrower than has been discussed in this thread. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:04, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, but at the federal level, which affects all states including Vermont, voter/ballot fraud is one of three types of election crime that United States government categorizes. That’s what I meant by it being a legal term: it is a government categorization of a legal issue. State-level laws of course have different terms/nuances. JSwift49 01:24, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

The FBI website cited is just a website, the author of which chose some terms that might or might not have widespread acceptance in the FBI. There isn't a citation to anything more enduring, such as federal legislation. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:13, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

One point of distinction between "voter fraud" and "voter suppression" is that voter fraud is per se a crime, while voter suppression can be a result of complying with the law. Fabrickator (talk) 08:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Added section on vote flipping

Vote flipping (touch screens changing the voter's intended candidate) has been a common claim since 2004, and I felt it deserved mention here. Please take a look when you can. I'm open to it being moved if there is a better position. Thx. Gowser (talk) 15:17, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

It ideally would go in the false or unproven claims category but our article organization doesn't really seem to work. The organization also implies that everything in frequency is not 'false or unproven' even though the majority of claims for all of those categories are false, unproven or exagerrated. Superb Owl (talk) 16:38, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

That was my question exactly, thanks. Gowser (talk) 16:52, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Voting Fraud in a Sad Sack Story

There was voting fraud in a Sad Sack Story, "Senator Sack," that was shown me years ago by a boy who was my cabmate for two years when I was a student at a school called the Ottawa Child Study Centre. In this story, the Sad Sack has apparently been elected Senator, but at the end of the story, General Rockjaw reveals that (I hope I'm writing this correctly):

"It says here the election was proven illegal because too many people jammed the phone lines." Glammazon2 (talk) 18:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Biased tone?

Every other sentence in the article starts with some variation of “this is very rare”.

In my opinion, it negatively impacts the readability of the article.

Compare it to the aviation safety page, which is more or less just the facts without this commentary. 2601:2C6:4000:B040:C4C3:482D:6D10:3D46 (talk) 06:35, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Paying people to vote?

One of the cited sources in this article is a paper titled "Why Busing Voters to the Polling Station is Paying People to Vote". While this phrasing does not appear in the text of the article, it nevertheless risks leaving the reader with the impression that offering someone a ride to the polls could land you in trouble with the law.

The cited paper notes, however, that "the United States courts have historically considered the practice of busing voters to the polling station legally permissible."

Readers of the article who simply notice the existence of the citation without reading through the cited paper may come away with the wrong impression. Fabrickator (talk) 02:03, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about that. It would seem likely that if someone reads the name of a link and suspects that he was inadvertently breaking the law, the next thing he would do would be to check that link and read it in full. And once it's done, the first paragraph of the link is quite clear: it's the opinion of the author, and nothing more. Cambalachero (talk) 16:20, 24 September 2025 (UTC)