Fraud is rarely
Several posts spreading this claim feature a video in which a woman explains that mail-in ballots in Washington state are intended to help authorities invalidate Republican votes – a claim AFP has refuted.
For years, unfounded claims have been made that postal voting Voters Fraud has become more prevalent online, leading to threats, harassment and intimidation against state election officials and local election workers. AFP has debunked numerous allegations that poll workers and mail carriers committed misconduct in past US elections.
According to experts, the risk of electoral fraud is minimal.
“When it happens, it happens more often with mail-in ballots,” said Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles (archived here), in a statement published on August 13, 2024. e-mail“But it’s still quite rare and almost always limited to small, local elections.”
The Brennan Center for Justice and the Voting Rights Project have also found that while mail-in voting is slightly more vulnerable to fraud than in-person voting, actual violations remain. negligible (archived here and here).
“There are numerous safeguards in place to ensure a fair vote count,” said Hasen.
Minnesota has several safety measures for Elections, such as requiring two judges from different political parties to carry out sensitive tasks in polling stations (archived here). In addition, state law states that anyone “who marks a voter’s ballot unless legally authorized to do so and directed by the voter, or who informs anyone other than the voter how the ballot was marked, is guilty of a gross misdemeanor” (archived here).
Voters can track the status of their absentee or mail-in ballots on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s website.
For more AFP reporting on misinformation about US politics, click here.
