Fair elections need honest rules that protect voting rights and stop voter fraud.
Elections are the cornerstone of democracy, and voters deserve an electoral system with integrity. For the average voter, free and fair elections come down to three things: Every lawful voter must have the right to cast a ballot, every lawful ballot must be properly counted, and every reasonable step to protect against voter fraud.
Defending election integrity starts by accepting the fact that voter fraud occurs. It doesn’t take millions of illegal votes for election fraud to become a problem; in tight elections, even a small handful will do. And as long as elections are the pathway to power, there will be unscrupulous activists or politicians willing to exploit electoral vulnerabilies to advance their own careers or causes. Hundreds of people in recent years have been caught and convicted of all manner of election crimes, and in all likelihood many more have escaped detection. That’s why elections need safeguards—laws and policies that make it possible to detect and deter voter fraud. Otherwise, election mischief may go undetected for years, corrupting and undermining the democratic process, and inviting even more fraud in the future.
Americans recognize the importance of voting, and by wide margins support policies like voter identification laws, protections against absentee ballot fraud, and the maintenance of accurate, up-to-date voter rolls. But these common-sense, nonpartisan judgements are being drowned out by a small number of activists and organizations trying to undo virtually every election protection. To them, even something as mundane as asking voters for an ID is overt about discrimination.
Voters know better, and the Honest Elections Project is here to support the right of every eligible voter to vote in an election that is free, fair, and has the integrity Americans deserve.
