For the past three years, the corporate press and numerous officials in the Biden White House have asserted there is no evidence widespread voter fraud occurred during the 2020 presidential election. Some have even gone so far as to call it the “most secure” election in U.S. history.
However, a poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports — a survey I wrote with a team of experts at the Heartland Institute and discussed last week on Tucker Carlson’s show — not only calls into question that often-repeated claim, it shows the opposite could have been true. According to its findings, voter fraud, especially fraud related to mail-in ballots, may have been common in the 2020 election. This conclusion isn’t based on questionable allegations but on voters’ own responses to the poll questions.
The Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey, which was conducted from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6, asked likely voters who cast ballots in 2020 questions about fraudulent activities, without telling them such actions were a form of voter fraud. The results were stunning. One in five people who voted by mail admitted to engaging in at least one kind of potential voter fraud, seriously calling into question the security of widespread mail-in balloting.
For example, one question asked, “During the 2020 election, did you cast a mail-in ballot in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident?” Such an action nearly always constitutes fraud. Incredibly, 17 percent of voters said “yes.”
Another question asked if “a friend or family member” filled out a respondent’s ballot, “in part or in full,” on behalf of the respondent, which is illegal in some states. Nineteen percent of mail-in voters who responded to the survey answered “yes.”
Even more remarkably, 21 percent of respondents admitted to filling out a ballot for someone they know, such as a spouse or child, and 17 percent confessed to signing a ballot or ballot envelope “on behalf of a friend or family member, with or without his or her permission” — both potential forms of illegal voting.
Taken together, these results strongly indicate fraud and illegal voting heavily affected mail-in balloting in the 2020 election. Even if a fraction of the people admitting wrongdoing here are actually guilty, that would still equal the electoral margin for 2020.
It’s an incredibly important finding since that contest involved more mail-in ballots than any other election in U.S. history. Election officials report that of 159 million ballots cast in 2020, more than 68 million were submitted by mail, about 43 percent of the total. In addition, as the MIT Election Data and Science Lab noted, “the dramatic increase in the raw number of absentee ballots cast was accompanied by a significant decrease in the overall absentee rejection rate for the country: from 0.96 percent in 2016 to 0.79 percent in 2020.”
If the recent Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey is accurate and one in five ballots were, in fact, fraudulent, that would suggest greater than 13 million ballots should not have been counted nationwide in 2020. That’s far more than the margin of victory for President Biden in the popular vote, about 7 million.
As troubling as these findings are, however, additional questions in the Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey suggest voter fraud and illegal voting may have been even worse than the one-in-five figure suggests. For instance, 8 percent of all respondents — not just those who voted by mail — said they were offered “pay” or “reward” in return for voting.
Equally disturbing, 10 percent of voters said “a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance” admitted to them that he or she “cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence.” Eleven percent said that “a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance” admitted to filling out someone else’s ballot.
These questions could indicate far more fraud occurred than anyone previously thought.
It’s also worth remembering that presidents are not elected by a national popular vote but through the Electoral College. The three states in which Trump and Biden were closest — Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — were all decided by fewer than 21,000 votes.
Biden narrowly won each of those contests, but if he had lost those three states, he wouldn’t have reached the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to win the presidency. Instead, the Electoral College vote would have been a tie, pushing the decision to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. With such razor-thin margins and the results of the recent Heartland/Rasmussen voter fraud survey in mind, it’s hard not to wonder how big of an effect fraud truly had on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
But regardless of how much fraud occurred, one thing is absolutely certain: States must take appropriate legislative action to protect the integrity of the next presidential election so that all Americans can be confident that the winner of the 2024 campaign will capture the White House fair and square.
There is already substantial evidence that voter fraud could play a significant role in 2024. Another survey conducted in March and April by the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen shows that 28 percent of likely voters now say they would commit at least one form of illegal voting during the 2024 election, “if given the opportunity.” Interestingly, respondents’ willingness to commit fraud was similar among Republicans, Democrats, and independents.
There is some good news, however. The threat of voter fraud can be limited dramatically by changing mail-in ballot rules. Voters who are physically able to cast their ballots in person should be required to do so, or they should be mandated to have their ballot signature notarized, significantly reducing opportunities for fraud. Lawmakers could fund public programs to increase access to free notaries for those who need them.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, just three states require notaries for mail-in ballots — Mississippi, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Only nine additional states mandate that a voter obtain one or more non-notary witness signatures when casting a ballot by mail. Most states require neither a witness nor a notary to verify signatures.
Lawmakers must ensure widespread voter fraud does not happen in future elections. That can only occur if mail-in voting systems are radically improved. Time is running out for legislators to fix these major threats to American self-government.
