Heritage makes their full database available, so we were able to look into the cases of voter fraud that they claim represent rampant illegal activity. We began with the five states that have already used universal vote-by-mail systems and thus have one or more elections under their belt. Then we looked at the way Heritage categorizes cases of voter fraud. Most of their categories, such as false voter registration or ballot petition fraud, can occur regardless of whether a state has implemented vote-by-mail. However, we might expect that duplicate voting and fraudulent use of an absentee ballot—both of which typically involve one person voting their own ballot and someone else’s ballot as well—would be easier in vote-by-mail states than in states where the voter would have to physically travel between precincts or from one county to another.
The following table lists the five states that have been using vote-by-mail prior to 2018. We looked at their fraud cases from the Heritage sample to see how many were of a type that vote-by-mail systems might be more vulnerable to and how many votes were affected. Our conclusion, from Heritage’s data: There is surprisingly little voter fraud and not nearly enough to justify blocking vote-by-mail systems in a pandemic….
The above chart refutes the contention that mail-in ballot systems are rife with fraud in several ways. First, note the small number of voter fraud cases overall. Next, note that a subset of those cases involve types of fraud to which mail-in ballot systems would be especially susceptible. Next, look at the time periods covered by these data. In Oregon, the first state to adopt a universal vote-by-mail system, the Heritage researchers had to cover a period of 19 years in order to find 15 cases of voter fraud! Less than one case a year hardly qualifies as rampant voter fraud.
But perhaps the most revealing column is the one listing the number of fraudulent votes attempted by mail. Republicans would have you believe that vote fraud is widespread enough to affect elections. But the fraud uncovered by the Heritage study is inconsequential. What has been uncovered in these five vote-by-mail states is on the individual level and not on an organized level. For instance, Janice Waters of Marysville, Washington, was found guilty of voting a ballot for her son who was a convicted felon and thus not eligible to vote. Jane Kay Balogh, also from Washington, was convicted of registering her dog Duncan to vote at her address and filling out an absentee ballot for him. Waters was sentenced to jail time, later converted to community service; Balogh got a deferred sentence plus community service and had to pay court costs. In Oregon, Terri Louise Kobialka was convicted of filling out a ballot mailed to her apartment in the name of a former roommate. She was fined $500 and ordered to do 120 hours of community service.