Fact Checking False Voter Fraud Claims About Votes Exceeding Eligible Voters

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Some people have misleadingly claimed that election officials in one state or another have counted more ballots than there are registered or eligible voters.

Presidential election data has shown that the number of ballots cast has always remained well below the number of eligible voters. Only about 66 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election, according to multiple data sources, including the University of Florida’s Election Lab, which collects and analyzes survey and election data. Turnout rates by state ranged from 54 percent in Oklahoma to 79 percent in Minnesota. Overall, 2020 saw the highest turnout recorded for any national election since 1900.

In 2020, Trump supporters nevertheless claimed that some states counted more ballots than there were registered or eligible voters.

One viral claim in 2020 falsely suggested that Wisconsin had counted more than 3.2 million votes when there were only 3.1 million registered voters. The claim was based on outdated data: As of Nov. 1, 2020, there were more than 3.68 million active registered voters, not 3.1 million, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

The same idea has fueled other misleading posts on social media. Elon Musk, the owner of X, questioned on Oct. 19 whether Michigan had more registered voters than citizens this year. But his post relies on data that needs more context.

Michigan has 7.9 million citizens of voting age and just 7.2 million active registered voters. The state also has about 1.2 million inactive records on its voter roll.

Like most states, Michigan’s voter rolls includes records of both active and inactive voters. Voters with inactive records are still eligible to vote, but their status became “inactive” after they had not voted for six consecutive years or they failed to respond to a notice confirming that they still lived in Michigan.

“There aren’t more voters than citizens in Michigan,” Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Secretary of State, wrote on X.

State and federal laws require most states to keep records of inactive voters on voter rolls for up to four years before they are removed. There are more than 338,000 records of inactive voters in Michigan slated for removal in 2025 and another 256,000 planned for removal in 2027, according to the Michigan Department of State. A lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee over Michigan’s voter rolls was dismissed in October by a judge for a lack of evidence that any ineligible voters were registered.


This article is part of a series about some of the most common falsehoods around voter and election fraud.

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