Debate about election fraud: US government reports only 160 arrests for possible election violations

ap | The US government says it has investigated around 1,600 cases of possible election fraud by non-US citizens since the beginning of President Donald Trump's term in office. 160 people were arrested, said Matthew Millhollin from the US investigative agency Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) on Tuesday (local time). The numbers are well below the hundreds of thousands of cases that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security had previously cited. They also make up only a tiny fraction of the country's more than 211 million actively registered voters.

That underscores what election law experts say is proven fact: Voter fraud, including voting by non-U.S. citizens, is rare. The numbers now published support this assessment, said David Becker from the Center for Election Innovation and Research. Previous investigations in federal states had also only revealed a few cases.

“They have tried to construct evidence of widespread voter turnout by non-U.S. citizens, and every time they do that, even when they are exaggerated, their numbers are incredibly low,” said Becker, a former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer. “They confirm what we have known for years: states are doing an exceptionally good job of keeping non-U.S. citizens off their voter rolls.”

The HSI information covers the period from January 2025 to September 2026. The Justice Department said that since Trump's term began, 70 people have been charged with unlawful voting or registration. The 160 arrests made by HSI, however, were cases that arose from investigations into possible election fraud. Many led to charges for other offenses such as misrepresenting citizenship.

Trump has made the fight against supposedly widespread voter turnout by non-US citizens a priority. He issued two orders and pushed for greater scrutiny of the electoral rolls. Both orders are the subject of legal proceedings.