If Voter Fraud Is ‘Rare,’ Why Isn’t Anyone Auditing Where It Would Actually Occur?

A look at Minnesota’s vouching system, how other democracies verify voters, and the audits no one seems interested in conducting.

For years, Americans have been told the same thing whenever election integrity is raised: voter fraud is rare. The phrase is repeated so often it has hardened into dogma. But rarely does anyone stop to ask a more fundamental question — rare based on what evidence, and gathered how?

In most areas of public life, claims of security are backed by routine testing. Banks conduct audits. Airports run stress tests. Pharmaceutical companies submit to trials. Cybersecurity firms hire hackers to probe their own defenses. Confidence, in these systems, is earned through verification — not asserted through repetition.

Elections, however, appear to be the exception.

This article does not claim that voter fraud is widespread, coordinated, or decisive. It makes no allegation that any recent election outcome is illegitimate. Instead, it asks a narrower — and more uncomfortable — question: Is the system designed to detect fraud if it were to occur?

That question matters because a system that does not meaningfully look for problems cannot credibly assure the public that those problems are rare.

Nowhere is this question more relevant than in states that rely heavily on trust-based mechanisms at the point of voter registration.

Minnesota is one such state.

Minnesota allows Election Day voter registration without traditional photo identification through a process known as vouching. Under this system, a registered voter in the same precinct may attest that they personally know another individual and can confirm that person’s residence. One voter may vouch for up to eight individuals in a single election.

Once vouched for, the individual is registered and permitted to vote that same day.

Supporters describe this as a safeguard against disenfranchisement — a way to ensure that people without documentation, those who have recently moved, or those experiencing housing instability are not excluded from the democratic process. Critics argue that the system relies too heavily on personal attestations in an environment where political incentives are high and verification is limited.

Both perspectives deserve examination. What has largely been missing from the public conversation is a third element: measurement.

If fraud is rare, how do we know? What audits are conducted? What data is examined?And are investigators even looking in the places where abuse, if it existed, would be most difficult to detect?

Those questions are not radical. They are routine — everywhere except in modern election discourse.

To understand why, it helps to step outside the American debate and look at how other democracies approach voter identification, verification, and post-election review.

How Other Democracies Verify Voters

One way to evaluate any election system is to step outside domestic political arguments and ask a simpler question: How do other stable democracies handle voter identification and verification?

The answer is strikingly consistent.

Across much of the developed world, elections are treated as high-trust institutions supported by strong identity verification — not as exercises in personal attestation.

Canada

Canada is often cited as culturally and politically similar to the United States, yet its approach to voting is far more verification-focused.

Canadian voters must present government-issued identification or a combination of documents establishing both identity and residence. While vouching does exist, it is tightly restricted:

• A voucher may vouch for only one person

• Both individuals must live in the same polling division

• The voucher must themselves present valid ID

• Extensive documentation is retained

The assumption is clear: vouching is an exception, not a scalable mechanism.

Germany

Germany uses one of the most secure voter systems in the democratic world.

• Citizens are automatically registered using national population databases

• Voters receive official notification cards

• Government-issued photo ID is required at the polling station

• Voter rolls are continuously updated through civil registries

Trust exists — but it is built on state-maintained identity infrastructure, not interpersonal assurance.

France

France requires voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polling place. There is no equivalent to same-day registration through vouching.

The logic is simple: identity is established before participation. Administrative barriers are addressed upstream, not at the ballot box.

United Kingdom

For years, the UK relied on minimal voter ID. That changed after documented cases of voter impersonation and concerns about roll integrity.

The UK has since implemented voter ID requirements nationwide, including:

• Passport

• Driver’s license

• Approved government documents

The shift was controversial — but telling. Even systems once built on trust moved toward verification once weaknesses were identified.

The Pattern That Emerges

Across these democracies, a pattern is difficult to ignore:

• Identity is verified before or at the point of voting

• Vouching, where allowed, is severely limited

• Voter rolls are actively maintained and audited

• Verification is viewed as a protection of democracy, not a barrier to it

Minnesota’s system stands apart.

Allowing a single voter to vouch for up to eight individuals — without documentary proof presented at the time — is unusual by international standards, particularly in an era when identity verification technology is widely available.

That does not mean Minnesota’s system is corrupt. But it does raise a reasonable question:

If most democracies reduce reliance on personal attestations as elections become more competitive, why does Minnesota expand it?

And perhaps more importantly:

If this system is as secure as claimed, why is there so little interest in auditing it?

Why “Voter Fraud Is Rare” Means Nothing Without Audits

The phrase “voter fraud is rare” is often presented as a conclusion. In reality, it is a claim — and like any serious claim, it depends entirely on how it is measured.

That distinction is rarely explored.

In most reporting, the assertion that fraud is rare is supported by one metric: the number of prosecutions or convictions. But prosecutions do not measure how often something occurs. They measure how often it is found, investigated, and charged.

Those are very different things.

In finance, a lack of fraud convictions would not be taken as proof that fraud does not exist — especially if audits were infrequent or superficial. In cybersecurity, the absence of detected breaches would be meaningless if no penetration testing had been performed. In aviation, a lack of reported failures would inspire confidence only if stress testing had actually occurred.

Elections, however, are treated differently.

Claims of rarity are often made without acknowledging a central problem: many election systems are not designed to detect certain forms of abuse at all.

Minnesota’s vouching system illustrates this clearly.

If a person is improperly vouched for, the resulting ballot:

• Is cast in the correct precinct

• Appears on the voter roll like any other registration

• Is indistinguishable from a lawful vote

There is no technical marker that flags it as unusual. Unless an investigation is specifically designed to examine vouched registrations, the vote blends seamlessly into the total.

In other words, the absence of detected fraud may simply reflect the absence of detection mechanisms.

This is not speculation — it is basic systems analysis.

Election integrity investigations tend to focus on what is easiest to identify:

• Duplicate voting

• Voting by deceased individuals

• Ballots cast in multiple jurisdictions

Those methods catch unsophisticated or accidental errors. They do not detect abuse that occurs at the point of registration through trust-based attestations.

If misuse of vouching were to occur, it would not resemble the crude fraud scenarios often highlighted in headlines. It would not involve fake names, wrong precincts, or obvious violations. It would involve:

• Real people

• Correct locations

• Proper paperwork

• And false statements that are almost never audited after the fact

That is precisely why relying on prosecution statistics to assess rarity is misleading.

To say fraud is rare without examining the systems least capable of detecting it is not a finding — it is an assumption.

And assumptions are not evidence.

If public confidence in elections is truly the goal, then scrutiny should not be limited to the places where fraud is easiest to catch. It should be directed toward the places where it would be hardest to see.

Which raises the next question — the one that is almost never asked:

What would it actually look like to audit this system seriously?

What Real, Targeted Audits Would Look Like (If Anyone Wanted Answers)

Calls for election integrity often collapse into abstract arguments about trust, intent, or partisan motives. But if the goal were genuinely to evaluate the security of trust-based systems like vouching, the path forward would not be mysterious or radical.

It would be technical. Routine. Boring — and effective.

Here is what real scrutiny would actually look like.

1. Randomized Post-Election Audits of Vouched Registrations

Rather than auditing ballots, election officials could audit registrations.

A statistically meaningful sample of voters who registered via vouching could be selected after the election and asked to verify:

• Identity

• Citizenship

• Residency at the time of voting

This would not invalidate votes retroactively or target any political group. It would simply answer a basic question: did the system function as intended?

Such audits are standard practice in other fields. Their absence in elections is conspicuous.

2. Voucher Pattern Analysis

Data already exists that could reveal abuse — if anyone chose to examine it.

For example:

• How often do the same individuals vouch in multiple elections?

• Are there clusters of vouchers tied to specific addresses?

• Do certain precincts exhibit unusually high rates of vouching compared to similar areas?

Pattern analysis does not accuse individuals. It identifies outliers — the very purpose of oversight.

If no anomalies exist, the data would strengthen public confidence. If anomalies do exist, ignoring them does not make them disappear.

3. Citizenship Verification After the Fact

Citizenship is typically self-attested at registration. That may be unavoidable at the polling place — but it is not unavoidable afterward.

Post-election verification using existing government databases could confirm whether vouched registrants met eligibility requirements at the time they voted.

Again, this need not be punitive. It could be anonymized, aggregated, and statistical. The purpose would not be punishment — it would be measurement.

4. Transparency Reports

If vouching is as safe as claimed, election officials should be eager to publish:

• How often it is used

• Where it is used

• What safeguards are in place

• What verification, if any, occurs after Election Day

Confidence grows when systems are transparent. Resistance to transparency invites doubt.

5. Independent Review

Perhaps most importantly, audits should not be conducted solely by institutions invested in defending the system as it exists.

Independent review — bipartisan, academic, or judicial — is a cornerstone of credibility in every other domain. Elections should not be the exception.

None of these measures would suppress votes.

None would prevent lawful participation.

None would alter election outcomes after the fact.

They would simply test a claim that is repeated endlessly — but rarely examined.

Confidence Comes From Inspection, Not Silence

Democracy does not depend on blind trust. It depends on systems strong enough to withstand scrutiny.

If voter fraud is truly rare, then targeted audits would confirm it — and strengthen public faith in the process. If audits reveal weaknesses, then the responsible response would be reform, not denial.

What undermines confidence is not questioning elections.

What undermines confidence is insisting that certain questions must never be asked.

Minnesota’s vouching system may be well-intentioned. It may function exactly as designed. But intent is not security — and design should always be tested against reality.

A system confident in its integrity does not fear inspection.

It invites it.

Editor's Note:

Many Americans did not arrive at their skepticism in a vacuum. Public faith was strained by a series of unprecedented changes — restricted observation during ballot counting, emergency election rules enacted during the COVID pandemic, expanded use of same-day registration and drop boxes, and the rapid deployment of complex voting technologies that few voters fully understand, or see a need for.

When those concerns were met not with transparency, but with blanket assurances that fraud “never happens,” distrust hardened rather than faded.