News21 undertook a sweeping investigation to determine whether voter fraud is really the threat to democracy that some Republican legislators claim in order to justify voter ID laws that will make it harder for many registered voters to exercise their franchise. Eight months later, the investigators documented just 10 cases of voter impersonation at the polls, the only kind of voter fraud preventable by Voter ID laws:

The specter of widespread election fraud has been the professed reason that 37 state legislatures have passed or considered voter identification laws since 2010. Those claiming that illegal votes threaten free and fair elections generally have cited only anecdotes and individual reports of alleged voter fraud.

As part of the News21 national investigation into voting rights in America, a team of reporters took on the unprecedented task of gathering, organizing and analyzing all reported cases of election fraud in the United States since 2000.

How Big Was the Effort?

Over the course of this seven-month investigation, the News21 team sent out more than 2,000 public-records requests and spent nearly $1,800 on fees for records searches and copies of documents. The team also reviewed nearly 5,000 court documents, official records and media reports. The result is the most extensive collection of U.S. election fraud cases ever compiled.

Check out News21’s extensive “Who Can Vote?” project online.