‘Voter fraud’ in North Carolina is a fraud

(Photo: Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

By Larry King, NC Newsline
March 23, 2026

Republished by GDN March 25, 2026

Is voter fraud as rampant as folks on the right claim? Well, first let’s define voter fraud: voter fraud occurs when individuals cast ballots despite knowing that they are ineligible to vote, in an attempt to defraud the election system.

Let’s look at the record of voter fraud in North Carolina. The Heritage Foundation (author of Project 2025!) has developed a map showing the number of voter-fraud cases in each state. Data in Table 1 were taken from this website.

Buying votes
In 1986, the FBI operation Project Westvote in western North Carolina resulted in 41 convictions for vote buying. In 2002, in the race for sheriff
of Caldwell County, four people were convicted of paying people $10 to register to vote and $25 to vote for the incumbent sheriff.

Ineligible Voting: Alien
In the 19 years from 2003 through 2022, 36 non-citizens made the false claim of citizenship, then registered and voted.

Ineligible Voting: Felon
In the 8 years from 2012 through 2020, 20 people were convicted of voting before completing their sentences — including any periods of probation, parole, or post-release supervision.

Fraudulent Use of Absentee Ballots
Eight of these nine cases involved people working for political activist McCrae Dowless, who was working for the congressional campaign of Republican Mark Harris in 2018. The individuals would unlawfully collect ballots from voters, falsely claim to have witnessed the voter casting his or her vote, and then mail the ballots in a manner to conceal that the voter had not mailed the ballot. In the ninth case, a woman submitted an absentee ballot for her deceased husband.

Duplicate Voting
In the five years from 2011 thru 2016, seven people voted more than once:
…three voted during early voting and again on election day;
…three voted in multiple states;
…one voted by mail and again on election day.

Elections Overturned Due to Fraud
In 2014 and 2016, municipal elections in Lumberton and Pembroke were overturned and new elections held due to voting irregularities.

False Registration
In 2021 and 2022, two non-citizens tried to register to vote.

So, there have been 123 cases of voter fraud in North Carolina from 1986 to date.

As an aside, one might argue that vote buying, while illegal, is not voter fraud because the voters voted legally – their choice of candidates was influenced by money. But to keep this voter fraud analysis conservative, I kept the 46 cases of vote buying in the data set.

Over the 39 years when these cases occurred, 39 elections were held and 81,677,000 ballots were cast.

The fraud cases were an extremely small percentage of the ballots cast. Total ballots cast and fraud cases, 1986-2025.

Another way to compare ballots to fraud cases is to compare the number of ballots cast per one fraud case. Table 2 shows that 664,041 ballots were cast per one fraud case. As a reference, the population of the City of Raleigh plus the population of the Town of Cary is 662,305. Thus, in a hypothetical situation, if the total population of Raleigh and Cary voted in an election, only one vote would be fraudulent.

Now let’s consider a graphical representation of ballots vs fraud cases. One often hears that North Carolina stretches from Murphy to Manteo. The highway distance between these two cities is 544 miles (Figure 1).

Let’s make those 544 miles represent the 81,677,000 ballots cast. Now, if we started walking from Murphy to Manteo, how far must we walk for the distance to be equivalent to those 123 cases of voter fraud? (Drum roll, please): 4.3 feet. You could take two steps and account for all the fraud cases! Yep, just two steps out of 544 miles and you’ve accounted for 39 years of voter fraud in North Carolina!

That is why voter fraud in North Carolina is a fraud.

Larry King is treasurer for the advisory board of Common Cause N.C.

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