Rigged machines. Illegal ballot harvesting. Repeat, noncitizen and even dead voters.

Claims of election fraud exploded in 2020 as former President Trump and his allies sought to portray their narrow election loss as something more nefarious. With just a week until Election Day, concern that widespread fraud could tilt the scale is on the rise again.

But pervasive fraud would be difficult to achieve in the United States, thanks to layers of protection embedded in the nation’s election system. When it does occur — rarely — it’s most often caught and prosecuted.

Safeguards prevent widespread fraud

American election fraud, in fact, is “miniscule,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

“It's never affected an election in recent memory. It's amazing that they find the people that have committed fraud because they're so small.”

“It just, frankly, doesn't happen,” she added.

Through an analysis of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s election fraud database, Kamarck determined that the share of reported cases of fraud over the past 13 to 38 years across several key swing states is less than 1 percent.

In Pennsylvania, for example, the Heritage Foundation analyzed 30 years of data, across which 32 elections were held. Just 39 cases of voter fraud were identified — 0.000039% of the more than 100 million ballots cast in those elections.

Any widespread voter fraud is unlikely due to the decentralized nature of American elections.

There are more than 10,000 independent voting jurisdictions in the U.S, according to the........

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