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A Guide for Leading Community Discussions

Understanding American Elections and Why They Are Trustworthy

Background and Purpose 

Our system of elections is a critical component of American democracy and efforts to cast doubt on their security and accuracy pose a grave systemic threat to our form of government. This is particularly ironic given the reality that American elections are among the most reliably accurate in the world and have never been more secure than they are today. While systems like voting should be subject to continuous improvement, all Americans should be reassured by the widespread agreement of officials and independent experts alike on the facts about our elections—presented and explained below. When viewed in light of the facts, sensational claims of election fraud can be seen for what they are: uniformed if not deliberate misinformation to cast doubt and dissention for partisan gain.

The reality is that many people around the world look to American elections as models of freedom, fairness, and verified accuracy. While other countries’ elections can at times be more unstable, the American system has always held firm due to its systems of checks and balances.  After an election, various people or a political party might challenge the results, which they have every right to do.  But our system requires that a challenge be based on facts and on the law.  One can’t simply say someone won when the proof shows otherwise.  During this era of attacks on our electoral system, we’ll get through by working to improve procedures where needed and by taking the time to learn how American elections work and why they are trustworthy. It is time to choose truth over clickbait, proof over accusations, people over politics, and country over party.  

This Guide is intended to help you do just that, by providing you with facts that you can use in talks in your community and with your neighbors and friends about American elections – how they really work and why they can be trusted.

American Elections – The Facts

Fact No. 1:  American elections are quite well-run.  While voting fraud has been shown in rare individual cases, the effect is infinitesimal and incapable of swaying election results. 

All the various studies that have been conducted over the last 10 years have shown that there are only trivial amounts of fraud in our elections.  For example, the Brennan Center for Public Justice did a study of 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election.  The election officials in those places flagged only about 30 incidents of suspected unauthorized voting out of a total of 23.5 million votes, or approximately one out of every one million votes.  Similarly, the Heritage Foundation, a Washington D.C. based think tank, maintains a database on its website that highlights a total of only approximately 1,500 “proven instances of voting fraud” over the last twenty years.  In November 2020 shortly after the Presidential election, the top Federal government officials responsible for election security issued a joint statement that the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history.”  They went on to state that citizens should “have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections.”  

Fact No. 2:  American elections are well engineered to prevent hacking.

America’s election systems have extensive safeguards to prevent hacking (defined as targeted attacks on potential weaknesses of a system to affect the result or render it inoperable or to change the results).  Every state and local jurisdiction utilizes common-sense procedures and tools to safeguard the voting process. Commonly used procedures include using locks, tamper-evident seals, security cameras, system-testing before and after elections, audits, and physical and cybersecurity access controls. Given these measures, and the dispersed local regulation of our country’s voting systems, it would be almost impossible for systems to be breached on a scale to affect federal or state results.  Nevertheless, a number of ultimately debunked theories arose after the 2020 election falsely claiming, among other allegations, that the voting machine systems used were somehow manipulated to give fraudulent results.  None of these theories have been proven and post-election audits, such as the one conducted by the Arizona legislature, failed to uncover any security or other breaches of the systems. See, e.g., “Exposing new lies about Arizona’s sham election audit is never old news”, AZ Central. 

Fact No. 3:  Illegal immigrants and noncitizens cannot and do not vote in federal elections.

Despite considerable research, there have been no studies that have found illegal immigrants or other noncitizens voting in any statistically significant numbers.  Only citizens are permitted to register and vote in American elections, other than in a handful of very local elections (e.g., in San Francisco a non-citizen resident of the city of legal voting age who is the parent or legal guardian of a child living in the San Francisco Unified School District is entitled to vote for members of the District’s Board of Education).  If anything, the studies have shown that non-citizen voting is exceedingly rare (e.g.,  in 2016 across 42 jurisdictions involving 23.5 million votes there were only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting.)

If you step back and think about it, it’s easy to see why noncitizen voting is practically non-existent.  First, there are extensive identity-checking procedures used by election officials to prevent noncitizens from voting.  Second, it is a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.  Along with a possible criminal conviction, there is also the very real likelihood of deportation if someone is caught voting illegally.  These penalties act as very strong deterrents to noncitizen voting.  In 2022, an audit in Georgia found that 1,634 noncitizens had tried to register to vote over a 25-year period but that none of those individuals were successful in registering, let alone voting. Indeed, a recent Ohio audit found 138 voters suspected of being noncitizens on the state’s election rolls out of about eight million total voters (0.002%). 

Fact No. 4:  Voting rolls are regularly updated to ensure accuracy, and do not contain significant numbers of dead people.

States and local governments use a variety of methods to maintain and update their voter registration records frequently to ensure accuracy.  Election officials regularly check death records. In many states, vital statistics agencies also send them monthly lists of people who have died, which the officials then use to update their voter registration files accordingly.  Election clerks may also check for voter deaths through other means, such as coordinating with motor vehicle departments to track canceled driver’s licenses, searching for published obituaries or processing letters from the deceased person’s estate.  When Arizona’s attorney general investigated claims that 282 dead people’s ballots were cast in 2020, he found just one case was substantiated. When Republican lawmakers in Michigan investigated a list of over 200 supposedly dead voters in Wayne County, they found just two.

While there are undoubtedly occasional mistakes in voting rolls, state and local governments work diligently to make sure that they are as up-to-date and accurate as possible. Most states are subject to the requirements of the National Voter Registration Act (often referred to as the “Motor Voter Act”), which specifies the types of procedures that state and local officials must undertake to maintain the accuracy of their voter rolls.  Among the activities undertaken to keep voting records up to date are comparing voter rolls to Social Security records and obituary notices and using a database maintained by the Election Registration Information Center (“ERIC”) that allows multi-state sharing of voter registration information to ensure that a voter isn’t registered to vote in two states.  

In sum, voter rolls are regularly culled to remove deceased voters, never mind that there are additional safeguards in place to prevent the type of illegal voter impersonation that would be required to make this a real problem.

Fact No. 5:  Mail in voting is secure and highly resistant to fraud.

Mail in voting is not some new method of voting.  As a matter of fact, mail in voting has been in use since the 1860’s when it helped 150,000 soldiers cast ballots during the Civil War.  Mail ballot fraud is exceedingly rare in part because states have systems and processes in place to prevent forgery, theft and voter fraud. These processes often include imprinting bar codes on the ballots and return envelopes, manually comparing signatures to samples stored in online databases, conducting postelection audits and using specialized paper and other ballot features to detect counterfeiting.  These systems apply to both absentee ballots and mail-in ballots.  Between 2000 and 2012, the total number of cases concerning mail in ballot fraud was just 491 — during a period in which literally billions of votes were cast.

Fact No. 6:  Changes in vote totals the evening of Election Day or during the next several days occur because of how votes come in and are counted, not because of fraud.

There are a variety of reasons why the lead may change as the vote counting progresses, none of which are evidence of fraud.  In many elections, especially where the pre-election polling shows an especially close race, the lead may change due to a number of legitimate reasons.  Sometimes, a certain city or neighborhood that heavily favors one candidate over the other may be especially slow in counting its ballots.  In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, state law prohibits the pre-processing of mail-in ballots prior to Election Day (i.e., the ballots can’t be opened, checked for validity (i.e. confirm that the voter is registered and hasn’t already voted by some other method), have their signatures verified, etc.) which can lead to delays in counting mail in ballots on Election Day.  Having to undertake the pre-processing of all mail in ballots on Election Day not only slows down reporting of vote counts, it can also dramatically alter the race if mail-in balloting skews toward a particular candidate.  Similarly, valid mail-in ballots received after Election Day may affect the race.  Sometimes, these shifts in vote totals are called the “red mirage” or the “blue shift” because in some races Republicans vote more heavily on Election Day on voting machines and Democrats tend to vote more by mail-in ballots, which are often not counted until after Election Day which can have early results end up being a “mirage” once all the votes are counted.

Fact No. 7:  Media outlets do not call the outcome of an election, only election officials do.

News networks often make predictions based on incomplete information or using statistical prediction models.  Their predictions aren’t certified election results.  It can often take several days (and in some cases, weeks) for all validly cast ballots to be counted.  Media outlets sometimes make predictions based on results from a small percentage of voting precincts.  In doing so, they will use statistical models that try to interpolate and predict final results based on the incomplete data available.  While they are often cautious about making predictions in close races, they can make mistakes.  The most famous historical example (albeit from long before the use of computer models) is the 1948 Presidential election in which many newspaper outlets printed headlines incorrectly predicting that

Harry Truman would lose his reelection bid.  More recently in 2000, some networks called the Presidential race, only to reverse themselves when the actual votes were counted.  Most national networks are now quite cautious and, therefore, fairly accurate at predicting the final results, but an incorrect prediction is not evidence of voting fraud.

Fact No. 8:  Poll workers and election officials are your neighbors and fellow citizens, and not political operatives or foreign actors.

The people involved in election administration are your neighbors and American citizens.  Generally, each state and local jurisdiction has specific requirements about who can serve as poll workers or election administrators, which usually include that the person must be a U.S. citizen (or a legal permanent resident), registered to vote and a resident of the particular jurisdiction in which they are serving as a poll worker.  

Fact No. 9:  Local election officials follow pre-existing rules that are in place well before an election is held.

There are a significant number of rules and regulations in place that govern the election process in every jurisdiction.  Most of these rules are in place well in advance of elections and are subject to challenge in court prior to the election.  Regardless of whether they agree with the results, local election officials are bound to follow a precise set of rules regarding the administration of elections.  There are a host of safeguards in place to ensure that such rules are followed, including having partisan poll observers present and able to challenge any conduct they believe violates the existing rules.

Fact No. 10:  When it comes to elections, it is better to be accurate than fast.

As Americans, we have become accustomed to things being delivered quickly, whether it is fast food or streaming of your favorite show when you want it.  With respect to our elections, however, we need to understand that it is way better to be accurate than fast.  Election workers have a high-profile job that comes with a lot of stress.  We need to give them the time to be accurate in determining the outcome of an election.  Just as we would prefer a surgeon who took his or her time and got the operation done right to one determined to set a speed record for the procedure, we should look for the same in our election officials.  

Fact No. 11:  Teams of people from both political parties work together at every step of the  voting, counting and reporting process.

From checking voter eligibility to confirming the accuracy of the results from each voting location, to securely transporting ballots and other materials, to serving as independent observers, both political parties are involved. These observers are sometimes called “poll watchers” – which should not be confused with “poll workers.”  Poll workers undergo rigorous training to learn how to run an election polling site and understand election laws, procedures, and ethical standards and have each committed to remain impartial and to treat all voters equally.  “Poll watchers” on the other hand, are individuals who are permitted to observe steps in the election process and can also be and often are appointed by political parties and candidates to observe elections on their behalf.  Each state has its own rules on the participation of poll watchers, but each party is granted identical access and opportunity to have its representatives observe and monitor the vote-counting process.  These partisan observers may also register objections if they believe that the pre-established procedures are not being followed or that there is an advantage being provided to one party. An overview of the procedures governing poll watchers in the swing states can be found here.

Fact No. 12:  Ballots are counted using machines that are rigorously tested for accuracy and security both before and after an election.

While voting machines and their accuracy have been the subject of many spurious claims and litigation over the last couple of election cycles, vote-counting machines incorporate multiple layers of security to prevent fraud.  In addition, state and local jurisdictions use a variety of testing and certification procedures both before and after elections to ensure that the machines work as accurately as possible (although the actual processes and systems vary due to the decentralized nature of election administration in the country).  

Fact No. 13:  Votes cast by machine are backed up by paper ballots.

Over 95% percent of all votes cast during the 2024 election will have a paper record, whether filled out by hand or printed by a machine for the voter to review before casting their ballot. This is largely due to states and local jurisdictions replacing antiquated paperless voting machines, often with the help of federal funding. The existence of a paper record further assures the accuracy of the count and also enables a hand recount if necessary.

Fact No. 14:  Teams of election officials go through a meticulous list of steps to verify election  counts before reporting them.

Election officials follow a list of prescribed steps in verifying an election outcome.  Depending on the specific jurisdiction, votes may be cast in a number of different ways (e.g., in-person or by mail) and each voting method requires a different set of procedures to verify the validity of the ballot.  For example, for mail-in ballots the election officials begin by verifying that the voter is registered and hasn’t already voted through some other method and that the returned ballot is in order (which includes verifying that the signature on the ballot envelope matches the signature on file).  This precision and care takes place throughout the process.  Near the end of the counting and verification process, election officials may conduct audits to make sure the results are right before they are made official.  In very close elections, they may conduct recounts (including hand recounts) following their state’s law on close elections.

Fact No. 15:  Pre-election polls run by media organizations are projections made at a moment in time based on contacting a limited number of people and then making extrapolations from that. They often do not reflect reality on Election Day.

It is important to remember exactly what data pre-election polls are collecting as well as the limitations associated with poll taking.  Polling firms use statistical sampling methods to choose what they believe is a representative cross-section of the electorate.  A variety of factors, such as the size of the sample, the assumptions made in making sampling decisions and the method of contacting participants, may all affect the validity of the results.  At the end of the day, a poll is only able to measure the reported preferences of the selected participants on the particular day the poll is taken.  Voter preference may change due to a number of reasons prior to the actual Election Day.  Voter turnout may be positively or negatively affected due to weather or other reasons.  Accordingly, polls are rarely completely predictive of the actual election outcome.

Fact No. 16:  The “certification” of an election is simply an election official confirming the vote  count in their jurisdiction.  Accordingly, it is referred to as a “ministerial act” that must be performed.    

While the “certification” process may differ slightly amongst the states, all states tend to carry out the process in a similar way.  As soon as the polls close, election officials and poll workers begin the process of tabulating the results.  This process involves combining all of the electronically-read votes (i.e., the readouts of ballots that were machine scanned and the votes cast directly into an electronic voting machine) into a total. This total includes all in-person votes as well as votes cast by mail-in ballots in accordance with the state’s laws.

Once this tabulation is complete, the certification process begins. The first step in this process is called a “canvass” and usually takes place a week or two after election day. During the canvass, local election officials verify the electronically tabulated total of votes for their jurisdiction as well as incorporate into the total the votes cast on any ballots that were not included in the electronically-read count (e.g., counting provisional ballots after the election official has confirmed the voter’s eligibility to vote in the election).

Once the canvass is finished, the local officials must then “certify,” or confirm the completeness and accuracy of the vote totals for their jurisdiction by the date set by state law.  For statewide or national races, these certified results are then delivered to the officials responsible for the state’s statewide canvass. These officials then aggregate the certified results from each local jurisdiction and formally certify the winner of each race, again by a specific date set by state statute.  Throughout this process, the certification framework does not provide election officials with discretion to refuse to certify the results. Their role is generally limited to examining the face of the ballots and returns (such as resolving errors in how a voter marked a ballot or in confirming a provisional ballot).

As these local election officials have a  mandatory duty to certify the results without any investigation into the election itself, their “certification” is often defined as a “ministerial duty” which means it does not involve individual discretion.  In the event an election official refuses to certify their results, every state has an enforcement mechanism of some kind, either a statutory remedy or general mandamus remedy.  Some states also impose civil or criminal penalties on officials who intentionally refuse to certify results.

Certification is then the starting point for challenges to the election which also must be made pursuant to the state’s election code.  If you think about it, before certification no one knows the results against which they are making a claim and there isn’t even an official result to be challenged.   If there are questions about any suspected fraud or misconduct in the election, all those issues are left to state-designated administrative or judicial tribunals that hear election disputes and almost always occur after the certification process. Another way to think about it is the individuals who certify an election are like the scorekeepers at a football game who keep track of the score and time remaining but leave it to the referees on the field to determine infractions of the rules.  Similarly, certifiers keep track of the vote counts but leave the investigation into and potential remedies for infraction of the rules to the state designated administrative or judicial tribunals. 

Fact No. 17:  You can get involved personally to see the process before an election if you would like to.

Most jurisdictions rely on citizen volunteers to help in every step of the vote-counting process.  The United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent, bipartisan commission devoted to helping individuals participate in the voting process, provides a wide variety of educational materials about the voting process on its website.  The website also contains a tool to help individuals find out how to become a poll worker in their state or county. Anyone interested in being a poll worker can also visit ambar.org/vote to learn more.

At the End of the Day, Remember:

  • There are many professional, experienced people who run the process.
  • People from both parties are involved.
  • There are multiple checks and balances.
  • There are numerous safeguards built into the system.
  • Ballots are counted electronically but can be confirmed by hand counts.

Facilitator’s Notes   

If someone in your audience raises a specific claim about elections not being secure or fair (whether covered by the above list or not), rather than dismiss it, you should acknowledge that if true the claim would be a reason to be concerned.  Validating a person’s concern is often the first step in getting them to listen to you and engage in further conversation.  To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln: 

To  expect an individual not to meet denunciation with denunciation and anathema with anathema, is to expect a reversal of human nature.  Dictate to a man’s judgment, command his action, or mark him to be despised and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart.

Many of the individuals who believe some of these erroneous claims do use media literacy and critical thinking skills to draw false conclusions based on the information they’re being served. The questions to get them thinking about is the accuracy of that information -- where is it coming from and what are the source’s interest or biases as it relates to that material? Are there other credible sources that confirm or cast doubt on the claim?  Is there a way that they can confirm the truth of the claim on their own?”

Just as with any other issue in your life where you want to really find the right answer and not be misled (whether it is seeking information and how to fix an issue with your car or to understand a health issue a family member may be facing), it is important to conduct a wide search and draw your own conclusions.  You can also refer them to the resources listed below as ways to check the validity of any such claims they hear.

Another possible way to engage with people’s doubts about elections based on what they’ve heard and read is by way of analogy. For example, one could ask, “You trust your life savings to the security of the banking system, and your family’s health to our system of food safety: shouldn’t you have the same degree of confidence in our election systems?” From there, the discussion could center on the role of non-partisan professionals and independent watchdogs that oversee elections, similar to what is done in our other systems of importance such as banking and food safety.

Additional Resources:

Election Security Rumor vs. Reality, by the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency

#TrustedInfo2024, by the National Association of Secretaries of State (this site has links to factbased sites run by all 50 Secretaries of State)

Voter FAQs, by the United States Election Assistance Commission (this site has links to information on a variety of topics ranging from how elections are administered to the security of voting equipment)

Countering Lies About the 2020 Presidential Election, by United States Democracy Center

Fact Checking Resources, by the Campaign Legal Center

Facts Matter - The Truth About Vermont Elections, by the Vermont Secretary of State (covers more than just Vermont issues)

Mythbuster Archive -- Listen to Reality Not Rumors, by the North Carolina Board of Elections