Early voting in next month’s midterm elections are underway, and the concerns of voter fraud that arose in past elections remain.
Questions of fraud were at their highest following the 2020 presidential election, when former President Donald Trump claimed the election was stolen from him. While there has been no evidence to back up those claims, concerns of fraud continue to play a major factor in this election.
Marjorie Hershey, a professor of Political Science at IU, said voter fraud shouldn’t be a concern because there’s been little evidence in the past 20 to 30 years of fraud that could have changed election results.
“We found that the incidents in the past 20 years of proven voter fraud as opposed to people just saying, ‘Oh, I know that it exists’ is about the same as the number of reports each year of Martians landing in the United States,” Hershey said.
LISTEN TO: Indiana residents are casting their votes as Indiana midterms are rapidly approaching
She said claims of voter fraud diminish the hard work and dedication that poll and election workers do each cycle.
“It’s just such an incredible slur to the hard-working people who work on election day and who work for election offices to continue claiming that this zombie vote fraud exists when in fact it doesn’t,” Hershey said.
Election day is November 8th and instructions for how and when people can vote can be found on Indianapublicmedia.org.
