How common is election fraud in Kentucky?

KENTUCKY (WKYT) – Election day is Tuesday, and the Attorney General’s Office is asking voters to report suspected election fraud.

We spoke with experts to find out how common election fraud is in Kentucky.

“Election fraud used to be a serious problem in the United States over 100 years ago,” said UK political science professor Dr. Stephen Voss. “You literally could have fraudulent votes cast. Votes cast by people who didn’t exist.”

However, these days, Dr. Voss says election fraud is rare, at least at a level that would influence most contests.

“Because it’s just so hard to do if you’re a campaign trying to swing an election your way,” said Dr. Voss. “The steps you’d have to take but the rigamarole you’d have to go through to commit voter fraud enough to tip the election is just too great.”

Despite this, states and counties still take steps to prevent voter fraud.

“One reason there’s so few cases of voter fraud is that most adults today have come up through a system where they knew vote fraud was difficult to do who likely to be penalized and unlikely to swing an election,” said Dr. Voss.

In Fayette County, County Clerk Susan Lamb says they do things by the book and the statute, meaning they have already had to reject several absentee ballots because voters didn’t follow instructions.

“Because in the state statute, if it is not sealed, if that brown envelope is not sealed, you have to reject it. If that tab is torn off of that brown envelope prior to you opening it, you have to reject it. So we’ve got a level of education that we have to get out to the public,” said Lamb.

Having only been in office for a few months, Lamb says she takes this as a sign to work on better educating the public on absentee ballots.

You can report suspected election law violations to the Attorney General’s election fraud hotline by calling 1-800-3-2-8-VOTE.

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