image copyrightGetty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would pay a $1 million reward if reporting voting irregularities leads to a conviction.
Ahead of the midterm elections on November 3, President Trump has questioned the credibility of the election, claiming that fraud is "rampant" in mail-in voting and non-citizen voting.
However, several studies have shown that actual voting fraud is extremely rare.
The BBC verification team looked at the election system changes that President Trump has been pushing along with relevant evidence.
How did Trump try to change the mail-in voting system?
President Trump has baselessly claimed for years that mail-in voting leads to widespread election fraud.
However, in this midterm election, Republicans were encouraged to vote by mail. He also revealed that he had voted by mail in the past.
President Trump sought to amend the law to allow mail-in voting only when there are clear reasons such as disability, illness, military service, or travel, but was not successful.
Currently, in most states in the U.S., voting by mail is possible without any special reasons. In the 2024 presidential election, approximately 48 million people voted by mail.
End of TOP News
President Trump signed an executive order in March of this year to push for the United States Postal Service (USPS) to only deliver mail-in ballots to voters on the list of citizens prepared by federal agencies. It also includes provisions requiring each state to use mail-in ballot envelopes of the same standard.
But the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that blocked the Postal Service from enforcing the new rules ahead of the midterm elections. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said election officials had insufficient time to prepare for changes to the system and that applying the new rules to this election was "arbitrary and unreasonable." However, there remains room to re-evaluate the legality of the regulations in the future.
In the United States, mail-in ballot verification regulations vary by state. However, all states match voter information on the ballot with registration records, and most also do signature matching.
What is the evidence for mail-in voting fraud?
According to studies analyzing several elections in the United States, fraud related to mail-in voting was extremely rare.
According to an analysis of the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections by the think tank Brookings Institution, there were an average of 4 cases of fraud per 10 million mail-in ballots.
This report used the database of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that shared political views with President Trump in the past. This data records cases where people were found guilty of election fraud.
When the BBC's verification team looked at the last 20 years of records in the database, there were a total of 325 cases of people found guilty of postal voting fraud.
A 2020 study published by the American Statistical Association (ASA) looked at eight states that send mail-in ballots to all eligible voters. As a result, no evidence was found that voting by mail increases the overall risk of election fraud.
For example, the state of Oregon sent out more than 100 million mail-in ballots from 2000 to 2020, but only 40 cases of fraud were confirmed during the same period.
How did Trump intend to change voter identification rules?
President Trump has claimed that non-citizen voting is widespread. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, he also accused the Democratic Party of trying to bring millions of immigrants into the United States to "vote, vote, vote."
It is illegal for non-citizens to vote in U.S. federal elections. Violations can result in imprisonment or fines and may lead to deportation.
The election bill that President Trump has been pushing to pass through Congress includes a requirement to present a government-issued photo ID before voting. Provisions were also included requiring voters to submit proof of citizenship when registering to vote and to continuously check whether they possess citizenship thereafter.
Critics worry that stricter identification requirements could limit the voting rights of people without a passport or government-issued photo ID.
“Unlike many countries, the United States does not have a national government-issued ID card,” said Jonathan Diaz, a voting rights expert at the Election Legal Center (CLC). “Because even the most common ID, a driver’s license, does not prove immigration status, it will be difficult for most Americans to prove their eligibility to vote using just the ID they have.”
According to a 2023 survey by the progressive think tank Brennan Center for Justice, about 9% (21.3 million people) of voting-age citizens in the U.S. were unable to immediately provide documentation to prove their citizenship.
On the other hand, there are counterarguments that the existing measures to strengthen voter identification did not have any significant effect on voter turnout.
Walter Olson, an election expert at the conservative Cato Institute, said, "Studies analyzing the effectiveness of voter identification laws show that neither conservatives' claims about election fraud nor liberals' warnings about voting rights violations are clearly substantiated."
In the past two years, several states under Republican control have significantly strengthened voter identification requirements. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 21 of the voting restrictions laws enacted after the 2024 presidential election include strengthening requirements for identification or proof of citizenship.
What is the evidence for non-citizen voting?
According to several studies, there were very few confirmed cases of non-citizens voting in past U.S. elections.
From 2005 to 2025, there were a total of 24 cases in which non-citizens were found guilty of voting illegally, according to the Heritage Foundation database.
A 2026 Reuters analysis of non-citizen voting cases filed in federal court also found that 129 people had been criminally indicted over the past 30 years, of which 73 were convicted or pleaded guilty.
Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said, “The fact that it is illegal for non-citizens to vote is itself a powerful deterrent,” and added, “It is very dangerous to actually vote as there are great concerns that immigration status may be problematic.”
“There has never been any evidence that non-citizens voted in large numbers, much less that they voted in any way that would have affected the outcome of the election.”
Who are non-citizens registered on the voter rolls?
President Trump has urged each state to use the federal database 'Systematic Alien Verification System for Verification of Eligibility' to identify voters suspected of being non-citizens and delete them from the voter rolls.
The system contains information on naturalized citizens and non-citizens who have had prior contact with the federal government. It is a system created in the 1980s to determine if you are eligible for government benefits.
Critics have questioned the reliability of using this data to compile voter rolls. This is because information may be out of date or people who have recently acquired citizenship may be classified as non-citizens. However, the Supreme Court lifted the Trump administration's restrictions on the use of such data.
“If the limitations of the federal database are properly understood, it could be a very useful tool for states trying to update their voter rolls,” said Cato Institute’s Olson.
He pointed out, "The idea of mandating information sharing is positive, but it is problematic to force each state to accept this as accurate information when there are still errors and omissions in the data."
It is up to individual states to decide whether to use the SAVE system. However, even in states that recently used this system, only a very small number of voters were suspected of being non-citizens.
According to a survey of Georgia's voter rolls, there were a total of 432 registered voters suspected of being non-citizens over the past 30 years.
Nevada received and investigated the list of 185 registered voters identified by the Department of Homeland Security as non-citizens, but all were confirmed to be U.S. citizens.
The White House pointed out a case in which approximately 6,600 non-citizens were registered to vote between June 2023 and June 2024 due to a software error at the New Jersey State Motor Vehicle Administration. New Jersey state officials said that fewer than 400 of them actually voted, and that all of those registrants have now been removed from the voter rolls.
The U.S. Department of Justice requested that California exclude 20,000 mail-in ballots from counting ahead of the midterm elections, saying there was a high possibility that non-citizens registered. However, the federal appeals court did not accept this.
The Justice Department charged 28 people on the list with illegally registering to vote as non-citizens.
