Election fraud and voter fraud allegations have been a big concern this election season. Donald Trump keeps bringing up his worries that the election is going to be “rigged,” and some take his concerns seriously while others think the worries are blown far out of proportion. The concerns range from election fraud, to voter fraud, to voter suppression. The concerns aren’t new. Election Justice USA issued a report in July that voting issues might have cost Bernie Sanders up to 184 delegates. Later emails released by WikiLeaks showed the DNC was biased in favor of Hillary Clinton, with one official even handing over debate questions to her campaign ahead of time. These reports combined could indicate that the primary might have gone differently if it hadn’t been for the internal bias and voting issues.

Despite this, however, elections can generally be trusted. Since 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote and George Bush won the electoral vote and “hanging chads” were a huge controversy, there hasn’t been a big debate surrounding general election results since. Candidates typically accept the results, believing they are an honest representation of the population’s vote. But the problems that plagued this election season’s primary are spilling over, creating concerns today. These concerns, however, shouldn’t stop anyone from voting.

The issues of voter suppression, voter fraud, and election fraud are all different. Voter suppression occurs when officials or rules make it harder for people to vote. Election fraud is the illegal interference in the election process itself. Voter fraud occurs when people who shouldn’t vote do, such as being bused in or when dead people “vote.” It’s important to note that just because an allegation of fraud is made doesn’t mean that fraud actually happened. Some concerns about voter flipping during early voting, for example, have come back indicating machine malfunctions happened but not actual attempts at fraud. But how can you tell which concerns are valid and which aren’t? This article is going to list the major concerns shared during early voting and during the primaries, on a state-by-state basis, along with explanations that have been given about the concerns.

Voter irregularity concerns aren’t new. Even Barack Obama worried about it in 2008:

And Hillary Clinton’s campaign worried that Obama’s campaign had contributed to it during the 2008 primaries. In an email released by WikiLeaks, John Podesta, her campaign manager, wrote in May 2015:

They are reliving the 08 caucuses where they believe the Obama forces flooded the caucuses with ineligible voters. They want to organize lawyers for caucus protection, election protection and to raise hard $. They are not just Colorado focused and have good contacts in the region.”

With this in mind, it’s helpful to keep an eye on reported irregularities and research their possible causes. (Skip to the end of this article for a detailed explanation about voting machine concerns.)

Below is a list of the states where election fraud, voter fraud, and voter suppression concerns have been shared, with an examination of how legitimate these concerns may or may not be, along with some historical cases that have been noted in certain states. If you hear about any reports that aren’t listed here, please let us know in the comments below. Then bookmark this article and return to it on election day. We’ll be sharing a list of voter irregularity concerns on election day itself, updating the list throughout the day. We’ll add a link to that new article in this story on November 8.

Arizona Election Fraud & Voter Suppression Worries

Arizona has been rife with problems, ranging from voter suppression to election fraud complaints. During the March primary, some people had to wait five hours in line to vote because so many polling locations had been closed. Between 2012 and 2016, 70 percent of polling places in Maricopa county had been shut down. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, federal approval wasn’t needed to reduce those locations, The Nation reported. Bernie Sanders held a press conference in San Diego, California, where he referred to the five-hour wait as a disgrace.

The results in the Arizona election were close. According to AZCentral, Hillary Clinton got 57.63 percent of the vote and a total of 41 delegates, while Sanders got 39.94 percent of the vote and a total of 26 delegates. Greg Stanton, Mayor of Phoenix, even requested a federal investigation into misconduct allegations. He wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, which you can read here.

Arizona was also the center of many complaints and concerns during the Democratic primary regarding changed voter registrations. A long list of stories about people who couldn’t vote in Arizona can be found on this thread on Reddit. Stories include one commenter whose brother registered Democrat two days before the deadline and received an email verification that he was registered as Democrat. But when he got to the poll, he was told he had no registered affiliation and had to vote provisional. Another Arizona story came from a Redditor whose fiancee couldn’t vote. (You can read the story here.) They both registered Democrat on the same day and got their voter identification cards on the same day. They showed up to vote and he was able to vote, but his fiancee was told she was Independent. As she dropped in her provisional ballot, one person working at the polling station said, “We’ll see if this is even counted.” They finally got hold of the Secretary of State and were told that she was, indeed, registered as a Democrat the whole time.

John Brakey, co-founder of AUDIT-AZ, filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County that accused election officials of misconduct. The lawsuit also demanded a partial recounting of ballots, the Phoenix New Times reported. Brakey said the voter suppression problems could have cost as many as 150,000 people in Maricopa County that right to vote, both in the Democratic and Republican primaries. Brakey told the Phoenix New Times:

…A consistent theme is that people are complaining that their voter-registration record was either obliterated or changed from ‘Democrat’ to something else… We have strong reason to suspect something went wrong with the voter-registration data.”

You can read more about the issues in the Arizona primary in the article below:

California Election Fraud & Voter Suppression Reports

One concern in California, Fox News reported, involves voter fraud and non-citizens’ registering and voting illegally. Fox noted that in early November, resident Jerry Mosna found two stacks of 2016 ballots on his mailbox in San Pedro. All 83 ballots were addressed to different people, all with the address of his elderly neighbor who lived alone. They Los Angeles County Registrar said they’d investigate, but preliminarily believed it was an isolated error causing the wrong address to be listed.

Voters reported problems during the Democratic primaries too, mostly surrounding voter registrations being mysteriously changed. For example, one person on Reddit shared that their mom had received a Republican primary ballot in the mail. After checking online, they discovered that her status, which was previously Democrat, had been changed to Republican. This was just one of many concerns expressed in the state. Another concern was that non-partisan voters had received no-party-preference ballots that didn’t let them vote int he presidential primary. A lawsuit was even filed seeking to extend voter registration all the way to the June 7 primary because of some of these concerns.

California was a vital state because it was Bernie Sanders’ last chance to gain enough votes to overtake Hillary Clinton for the Democratic primary nomination, or at least keep things so close that the nomination would have to be decided at the Democratic National Convention by superdelegates. However, members of the media admitted that they planned to call the election for Clinton hours before the polls in California were even going to close:

MSNBC admits: "We'll SUPPRESS VOTING to help CLINTON on June 7th" | Bernie SandersNetworks will Falsely Call Election for Clinton on June 7Th | Bernie Sanders 2016-05-24T21:10:59.000Z

Multiple TV networks admitted that at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on June 7, three hours before polls in California even closed, they planned to report that Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic nomination. This was noted in the video above on MSNBC.

You can read more about the issues experienced during the California primary in the articles below:

Connecticut Voter Irregularities

Connecticut has been connected with quite a few voter irregularity questions. In 2014, State Rep. Christina Ayala was charged with 19 felony counts for voting early and more than once, The Washington Times reported. In 2015, voter fraud questions surfaced in Bridgeport, which has happened many times before, News 8 reported. There were questions about candidates’ mishandling elderly residents’ mail-in ballots, for example.

Connecticut was also the source of many voter registration concerns during the Democratic primary. In Connecticut, a Redditor shared that he changed his party registration to Democrat last fall, but later he was listed as unaffiliated. These baffling voter registration problems seemed to be widespread.

Delaware Voter Irregularities

The Inquisitr reported in April 2016 that votes for Bernie Sanders in the primary were disappearing. At first, Sanders was ahead of Clinton in Sussex County, with 6,247 votes. But later, he lost nearly 2/3 of those reported votes, having only 2,383. Later, his total climbed to 5,630, still fewer than originally reported. Some voters were concerned about these results and found them suspicious.

Florida Early Voting Concerns & Election Fraud Reports

Stories about voter irregularities in Florida during early voting have been the source of many rumors, but weren’t confirmed. The post above has been passed all over Facebook and Reddit, talking about how a St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections office tried to trick a woman’s elderly dad into voting for Hillary Clinton. The post said that a staff member told him to fill in a circle next to Clinton’s name on his absentee ballot. His daughter was with him and asked why her dad couldn’t vote for Trump. The person quickly said that he could, if he really wanted to do so. After some investigating, we found the story shared frequently on Facebook, naming the person who wrote it as “Sheila O’Sullivan.” The original post, however, can’t be found or may not be public, thus it’s impossible to verify it it’s real or just an Internet rumor.

In March 2016, a Florida mayor in Eatonville was indicted on election fraud charges, CBS News reported. He allegedly used intimidation and manipulation to get votes for a municipal election.

Georgia Vote Flipping & Voter Fraud Concerns

Vote flipping issues were also reported in Georgia. But in this case, the issues showed votes for Hillary Clinton flipping to Donald Trump. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that one particular voting machine that had been used by 20 people was removed after the problem was reported. Attorney David B. Dove said the problem wasn’t related to “flipping voters,” but was occurring because the county hadn’t conducted proper accuracy testing with the unit. The voter who reported the problem said that he touched a button for his vote, but then the “X” went onto the wrong box on the ballot.

Meanwhile, in 2014, the Georgia Election Board held an emergency meeting to discuss a registration group that was accused of voter fraud, CBS 46 reported. Some of the group’s voter applications had forged signatures, after gathering more than 85,000 new voters. A group called “True the Vote” later reported that 15 counties in Georgie reported possible voter registration fraud connected to these voter registration efforts.

Illinois Voter Fraud Reports

In Illinois, records are showing that deceased residents are voting beyond the grave, CBS 2 Chicago reported. A woman who died in 1998 voted 12 years later. A man who died in 1994 has voted six times since. And a man who died in 1993 voted 11 times since his death. CBS 2 discovered these and other incidents after merging Chicago Board of Election voter histories with a Social Security death master file. In all, 119 deceased people had voted 229 times in Chicago. A city election board spokesman said these were likely clerical errors.

Meanwhile, the Daily Kos reported that in the April primary, an audit by the Chicago Board of Elections to check voting machine performance ended up erasing 21 votes for Bernie and adding 49 votes for Clinton in order to match the machine count. The switch flipped the win in the precinct from Sanders to Clinton. Other observers said they had seen similar behavior on the part of Board of Elections employees.

Indiana Voter Fraud Investigations

Voter fraud investigations are underway in Indiana, although it’s unclear at this time if voter fraud occurred or if the problems are just clerical errors, Fox News reported. Thousands of registration records were flagged due to changes that were made to them, but officials said that they might have been changed simply to correct names or birth dates.

Prior to this year, other issues have been reported. In 2013, a Democrat official and three others were sentenced to prison for ballot fraud in the Obama-Clinton primary, Fox News reported. The group had faked hundreds names and signatures on Obama and Clinton presidential petitions to place them on the ballot. And in 2008, more than 2,000 voter registration forms filed by a liberal activist group ended up being fake, CNN reported. The group, ACORN, also faced allegations in Nevada and other states. The signatures appeared identical and included names of dead people and even the name of a fast-food restaurant, Jimmy Johns.

Two years ago, the Independent Journal Review reported that two voters discovered their voting machines reporting their votes incorrectly, recording their Republican votes as Democrat votes. The problems were with touchscreen machines and were described as calibration errors, similar to what’s been seen in early voting this year too. This video describes the problem:

Voting Error at Moline Public LibraryI voted in Moline on Monday October 27. I had heard about the machines having issues on TV, but I was shocked when it started happening to me!! Check out this story on KWQC http://www.kwqc.com/story/26888030/claims-of-voting-machine-issues-in-rock-island-county 2014-10-28T15:09:34.000Z

Iowa Voter Fraud Arrest

Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2016

A voting fraud incident was reported in Iowa, but it might not be what you’d expect. According to The Washington Post, Terri Lynn Rote was arrested on suspicion that she voted for Donald Trump twice. She was charged with election misconduct, a Class D felony, and was released after posting $5,000 bond. She said she voted twice on the “spur-of-the-moment” because she was worried her first vote would be changed to Hillary Clinton. “The polls are rigged,” she said. Two other people were reported to the police on suspicion of voter fraud, based on suspicions that they voted in person at early-voting locations and cast ballots by mail.

Kentucky Voter Irregularities

@staceycomfort @PositivelyJoan IKR! Hillary jumped by nearly the exact lead Bernie got in recount in Pike County. pic.twitter.com/LOBG2Z0jrx — GEM (@gerri_elise) May 18, 2016

In Kentucky, Bernie Sanders supporters noticed votes mysteriously disappearing during the Kentucky primary. The primary ended up being so close that delegates were split evenly between Sanders and Clinton and Sanders requested a partial recount.

Sanders’ supporters noticed that he mysteriously lost 2,000 to 5,000 votes during the primary. The exact time this happened varied depending on which source you were watching. On The Guardian, between 6:25 and 6:30 p.m., his vote count changed from 210,228 to 205,576. Mary Penn shared that CNN reported Fayette County had machine problems which accounted for some of the voting changes. But on the Reddit live thread for the Kentucky primary, Sanders supporters noticed that Pike County votes just disappeared completely at one point. Sanders had been leading by a huge margin at that point. You can read more about the issue in the story below:

Maine Voter Irregularities

Possible irregularities in voting in Maine caused the Maine GOP to post a special article about it on their website in November 2015. After a special election in Sanford, a recount revealed that Democratic State Senator John Tuttle had voted in the special election, despite being ineligible to vote in that district, the Maine GOP reported. This wasn’t Maine’s first incident. The press release went on to state that years earlier, a former Democratic House Speaker’s aide was caught breaking into ballot recount rooms and tampering with the ballots. It turned out that card readers in Pike County had malfunctioned, Inquisitr reported. Votes in the county were completely erased and all of the data was wiped, leaving the totals at zero. When the votes returned, the reported count was down by 20 percent and Clinton’s results were ahead of Sanders’.

Maryland Voter Fraud Concerns

In May, Maryland state officials moved to decertify the election results in Baltimore’s primary. The number of ballots cast on April 26 amounted to hundreds more than the number of voters who were checked in at polling places, The Washington Post reported. There were also 80 provisional ballots that weren’t considered at all. The article stated that such discrepancies aren’t unusual, but the size prompted the state to intervene. One possible source of the discrepancy might have been provisional votes scanned early.

More disturbing allegations were brought up in 2014. An article by the Washington Post in 2014 showed that tens of thousands of voters had registered in both Virginia and Maryland, and many may have crossed state lines and voted twice.

Massachussets Voting Concerns

President Clinton walking into Newton Free Library on Super Tuesday '16! pic.twitter.com/7fiqgJ6qVD — Newton Free Library (@NewtonFreeLib) March 1, 2016

During the Democratic primaries, there were rumors that Bill Clinton may have actually violated voting laws, Boston Magazine reported. Bill Clinton was spotted in several polling locations during the primary voting. Clinton took a photo with at least one voter and told another voter to “pull the lever for Hillary.” He also went inside the polling location and purchased coffee and shook hands with poll workers. However, voting regulations in the state said that no one should solicit votes or promote a party within 150 feet of a polling location. The state later said that Clinton did not break any election laws.

Mississippi Voter Fraud

In April 2011, Lessadolla Sowers, an NAACP official, was convicted on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots, the Daily Caller reported. She was sentenced to five years in prison. She voted in the names of six people, plus four dead people.

Nevada Voter & Election Fraud Reports

Nevada has been the center of many voting irregularity allegations, ranging all the way back to the primaries. Most recently, some voters complained that their early votes for president were being “flipped” by the voting machines. Local officials said this was likely from user error.

But during the primary, issues were very severe, culminating in a Nevada State Democratic Convention that made national news. A motion was made for a delegate recount, but the chair, Roberta Lange, overruled the motion without waiting for the “nay” votes. Part of the issues arose when Bernie Sanders delegates were denied their delegate status. Later, false reports circulated in the news that Sanders delegates had become violent, and these reports were later confirmed to be inaccurate. You can read all about it below:

New York Voter & Election Fraud Allegations

New York was “ground zero” in many respects for election fraud concerns during the Democrat primaries, including the purging of more than 100,000 Democrats from the New York voter rolls and major concerns from voters that their voter registrations were being changed.Since New York was a closed primary, this stopped many from voting in the primary at all. The photo above was shared by Shelly Berry on Facebook, who was positive that her signature on her voter registration was forged. She said registration was switched from Democrat to unaffiliated and she was told the change was made in 2012. She had the agent at the board of elections office print out the 2012 form and compare it to another form on file that she knew she had filled out. The handwriting was distinctly different, as you can see in the photo above.

One election official was booted out for an error that contributed to purging the Brooklyn voters. Election Justice USA had filed a lawsuit on behalf of voters in New York during the primary. Because of the problems that plagued the New York primary, residents are pushing for primaries to be open in the future. A hearing about open primaries will be held on December 6.

Exactly what caused all the voter registration problems in New York and elsewhere wasn’t determined. Some said they were just clerical errors (albeit, quite a large number of clerical errors.) At The Gothamist, one reporter said his wife’s voter registration was listed as inactive because when she changed it, a clerical error caused her name to be misspelled. Connolly said that if a New Yorker has a voter registration problem, he can only trace the problem through his county office records. Unfortunately, there’s not one set standard for how voter information is retained, so the details can be stored different from district to district. He added: “Any time [county officials] change a voter record, it’s supposed to send updates to our system. There are times where that’s not the case.” This potentially haphazard information storage could put voter registration information at risk. In December, a database of 191 million voters’ records was mysteriously leaked, Forbes reported. No one ever figured out who was responsible for the leak. A computer researcher found multiple databases left open for perusing, including names, addresses, party affiliations, and logs of whether voters had participated in the primary or general elections. According to Forbes, “every registered U.S. voter is included in the leak.” Much of the information was already publicly available, but that didn’t cause many voters to feel less uneasy about the whole thing. Could this lead to voter registration tampering? That’s unclear and there’s no direct evidence at this point. However, Bloomberg wrote an article about how one hacker helped rig elections in Latin America for years, as an example of how it might happen.

Here are more stories about primary issues in New York:

North Carolina Voting Suppression & Fraud Concerns

This is what democracy looks like. pic.twitter.com/n40rvpAsly — Rachel Gurvich (@RachelGurvich) October 20, 2016

Some voters complained that their early votes for president were being “flipped” by the voting machines in North Carolina. NPR reported that these complaints were made in five counties, but voters were able to fix the errors before casting their ballots. However, those weren’t the only concerns from early voting in North Carolina. There have also been complaints by the NAACP that three counties purged voter rolls and disproportionately targeted blacks, WRAL reported. The NAACP argued that counties broke federal law when they removed voters less than 90 days before the election. A database showed eight counties had removed more than 6,000 voters over the last two years. But 4,500 challenges against voters were filed in August and September.

Additional concerns have been brought up about reduced polling locations. The Nation reported. In North Carolina, there are 27 fewer polling locations than in 2012. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, federal approval wasn’t needed to reduce those locations. Because of the fewer locations, some people had to wait in line for hours to cast a ballot.

University City Regional Library. Charlotte. 4 hour wait. People are hot and tired. #votehot @democracync pic.twitter.com/Uff5Rpswa9 — Mel Hartsell (@melhartsell) October 20, 2016

Meanwhile, double voting was a concern in the 2012 election. More than 35,000 people might have double voted by casting their vote in North Carolina and another state in 2012, ABC 11 reported. Of these, 765 had an exact match of first name, last name, birth date, and last four digits of their Social Security number, and voted in North Carolina and one other state. More than 35,000 voters had the same first name, last name, and birthdate, and voted in North Carolina and another state in the general election.

Ohio Voter Suppression & Fraud Concerns

There have been a number of issues cropping up in Ohio. One of them was related to voter suppression. According to The Columbus Dispatch, more than a million of Ohio’s registered voters didn’t get absentee ballot applications after the list was pared down, removing people who had changed their address or hadn’t voted in the 2012 or 2014 elections and didn’t respond to queries sent about their addresses. The decision brought criticism after a federal appeals court had ruled that people who don’t regularly vote shouldn’t be discriminated against.

And in a separate case, a lawsuit was filed relating to voting machine not being set up for auditing.

Bob Fitrakis, a lawyer, political science professor, and editor of Columbus Free Press, has filed a lawsuit related to election fraud in Ohio. His suit was on behalf of the Green Party Senate candidate Joe DeMare, to ensure that the could be audited, recounted, and verified. His suit demands that all 14 county Boards of Elections turn on their audit log feature and ballot imaging, so the ballots can be audited. Fitrakis is running for county prosecutor in Franklin County, Ohio.

He wrote:

In the 2015 general election, three counties had their vote totals flip on the marijuana legalization issue The Secretary of State said it was human error. When I asked for the audit logs as public records, they responded that they hadn’t turned them on. This year will be different.”

Oklahoma Voter Fraud Reports

KSWO reported in June that an investigation is underway, looking into three Comanche County residents who may have voted twice during a presidential preferential primary. They voted via absentee ballots in March and then voted again in person. This would qualify as voter fraud. The problem was signaled when the votes were logged electronically, but alerted that the votes had already been made.

Oregon Voter Irregularities

During the primary election in Oregon, Bernie Sanders’ supporters were concerned when Clinton gained 11,000 votes seemingly instantaneously in Marion County. At 34.2 percent reporting in Oregon’s Marion County, Sanders had 11,281 votes to Clinton’s 257. Then, seemingly instantaneously, the count changed to Clinton’s having 11,257 votes to Sanders’ 11,281. She gained 11,000 votes, with 68.5 percent reporting, and Sanders didn’t gain a single vote in that same time period. Sanders’ supporters said that they found this suspicious and highly unlikely. However, a simpler explanation for the Marion County issue was pointed out by other voters. It is possible that the person who keyed in Clinton’s vote simply forgot to put the “11” in front of the 257. That could possibly account for the sudden increase. Read more about the voter question in Fact 5 of the story below:

Pennsylvania Voter Suppression & Fraud Reports

In Pennsylvania during the Democratic primary, voters said that prohibited electioneering was happening inside polling stations, Inquisitr reported. Rules state that electioneering must stay at least 10 feet away from polling locations. But a poll worker was reported distributing a list of preferred candidates. And another voter reported that at least one machine in Philadelphia wasn’t letting her vote for Bernie Sanders and had to be reset. Another person, on Reddit, said that at least 900 people who had been registered to vote before the deadline were told their registration wasn’t processed and they weren’t allowed to vote.

In 2014 and 2015, three people were charged with voter fraud. One mom voted in her son’s place. Another woman voted for a relative in 2014. People involved were charged with forgery, fraud, and interference with elections.

Rhode Island Voter Fraud History

Rhode Island has a disturbing history of voter fraud, the Providence Journal reported in May 2014, after bills were introduced seeking to repeal voter ID laws. The article went on to recount various instances of voter fraud in the state, starting with 1938 when over 10 percent of the votes cast in two communities were found to be cast by “floaters.” In 1955, during a special election, it was found that more than half of the votes cast in one precinct were fraudulent, including hundreds of voters’ names who were checked off as having voted when they didn’t. In 2006, State Rep. Anastasia Williams said she was the victim of voter fraud. And in 2011, State Sen. Harold Metts said there were nearly two decades of complaints from residents about voter fraud.

South Carolina Voter Fraud Reports

Zombie voters were a problem in the 2012 election in South Carolina, The Washington Post reported. More than 900 people who died before the election had also voted. They may have even voted in 74 elections over a seven-year period.

Texas Voting Irregularities & Suppression

A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas. People are not happy. BIG lines. What is going on? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2016

In Texas, concerns began being voiced about election irregularities during early voting. In at least three counties, voters reported that when they voted straight-ticket Republican, their votes were “flipped” to Hillary Clinton.

Election officials said this occurred because the machines were faulty and relied on old technology, but not because of widespread voter fraud. In Chambers County, Texas, 12 News reported that the issues only affected a statewide court of appeals race. A press release from Chambers County stated that the error was caused by ES&S (Election Systems & Software) programming, a vendor who programmed the county’s election software. Votes were changed to paper ballots for the day until the machines were fixed. Officials said the problems in Texas were related to older voting machines that counties couldn’t afford to replace.

According to NBC, five machines were taken out of service after complaints were made.

Additional concerns have been brought up about reduced polling locations. The Nation reported. In Texas, there are 403 fewer polling locations than in 2012. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, federal approval wasn’t needed to reduce those locations, The Nation reported.

Virginia Voter Fraud Complaints

Virginia has been the source of quite a few voter fraud and irregularity complaints over the years. In 2012, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that investigations into voter registration irregularities from the 2008 general election might actually point to a bigger voter fraud issue. At least 38 people had been charged with voter fraud so far, at the time of publication, with 26 cases being investigated. Richmond alone had 124 cases of voter fraud opened by state police. Many of the cases involved felons who had illegally voted or registered. Many of them said they had been solicited to vote by voter participation or advocacy groups, despite knowing that they were felons and ineligible to vote. The solicitors had suggested that “new legislation” made them eligible to vote. Sen. Thomas Garrett said:

What that indicates to me, at least among certain groups, is there is an active effort to subvert the laws of the commonwealth.” The investigation seemed to contradict reports that there was no evidence of voter fraud in Virginia, and thus no need for voter ID laws, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. A later article by the Washington Post in 2014 showed that tens of thousands of voters registered in both Virginia and Maryland, and some may have crossed state lines and voted twice. In 2013, a Virginia man pled guilty to forging thousands of signatures while trying to get Newt Gingrich on the ballot for the 2012 primary, The Washington Times reported.

West Virginia Voter Fraud

There have been instances in the past in West Virginia too, although none in the past year. In 2012, a man in Lincoln County was sentenced for engaging in a voter fraud scheme. He conspired to stuff a primary ballot box while running for circuit clerk. Also in 2012, a West Virginia sheriff pleaded guilty to voter fraud for illegally filling in absentee ballots when he was worried he might lose.

Wisconsin Voter Fraud Allegations

Rigging the Election – Video II: Mass Voter FraudIn the second video of James O'Keefe's new explosive series on the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign, Democratic party operatives tell us how to successfully commit voter fraud on a massive scale. Scott Foval, who has since been fired, admits that the Democrats have been rigging elections for fifty years. View Video I here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY… 2016-10-18T17:45:02.000Z

Project Veritas and its founder James O’Keefe have been releasing videos alleging voter fraud by Democratic officials, including busing in voters from other states in an attempt to “make up” for illegal immigrants who couldn’t vote. The videos also show these same officials discussing inciting violence at Donald Trump rallies. One of the videos has a specific link to Wisconsin, where one of the operates talks about working in the state. The video features Scott Foval taking credit for disrupting a Scott Walker presidential rally and then discussing how to commit voter fraud. Foval lost his job as a result. But he said in a statement that he always engaged in only legal activities and he was being framed.

As a result of the videos, the Wisconsin attorney general announced that the state’s Department of Justice was going to review the voter fraud claims. Wisconsin attorney general Brad Schimel told WKOW-TV: “A recent video posted by conservative group Project Veritas shows concerning comments that will require a lengthy investigation.” He told Fox 6 Milwaukee that these were “apparent violations of law.”

You can read more about the investigation in the story below:

Voting Machine Concerns

A discussion of election fraud and voter irregularities wouldn’t be complete without a mention of voting machine concerns. One of the widespread problems reported in early voting centered around the voting machines themselves. The Brennan Center for Justice, in 2015, reported that many of today’s voting systems are outdated and counties don’t always have resources to buy new voting machines. NPR reported that many of the voting machines used today are more than 10 years old and use outdated technology, even dating back to the 1990s, for touchscreen calibration. Over time, the calibration loses its accuracy and may account for some of the “vote flipping” concerns. Some voters have also concerned about rumors that billionaire George Soros, a Hillary Clinton supporter, owned voting machines that would be used in the election. The Smartmatic voting machines in question are actually owned by Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, who serves on the Open Society Global Board. Soros does not have an ownership stake or involvement in Smartmatic, the company said on its website. Beyond that, however, Smartmatic machines won’t even be used in this general election, according to Smartmatic’s website. But in another interesting twist, a Guccifer 2.0 leak may have shown that two other major voting machine companies, Dominion Voting and H.I.G. Capital, both donated to the Clinton Foundation. This is still being verified and would not be proof of election fraud. But it’s interesting information to note.

More troubling, however, is talk about how easy it would theoretically be to hack Sequoia AVC Advantage computers, one of the most vulnerable voting machines in the U.S. and used in Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, according to Politico. Although Politico’s story focused on Russian tampering, others hypothesize that machines like these could be hacked by anyone, even groups connected to major parties. In fact, WikiLeaks itself warned about this possibility in October 2008 when it released a paper online, from Princeton, about insecurities and inaccuracies plaguing Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines. You can read the paper here. (Interestingly, Sequoia was once a subsidiary of Smartmatic.)

Edward Snowden warned about it again:

Researchers just demonstrated how to hack the official vote count with a $30 card. Details: https://t.co/uhcLVd0yPg https://t.co/uIFOQVb5uu — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 7, 2016

As you can see, there have been many allegations made about voter suppression, voter fraud, and election fraud both in early voting, the past primary, and even in years prior. Some deserve deeper investigation and some have already been debunked.

If you see any signs of voter irregularities that aren’t reported here, please let us know in the comments below.