Is Voter Fraud a Real Issue

There is current legislation in the US House of Representatives to amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, it is called H.R. 22 – the SAVE Act.  “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” It requires all eligible voters to present either their certified birth certificate or passport as proof of citizenship when they vote. In doing so, the bill nullifies all previous voter identification documents, most significantly state issued driver licenses that have been issued with the star on them that indicated this is acceptable among other things to vote and go through airport security to travel.

Who does this impact? Let’s consider Jane Doe (a purely fictitious name) who a 75-year-old black woman living in a small rural town in Georgia. She was born there, grew up there, is a grandmother who always pays her taxes, is a member of local civic groups and everyone in town knows her.  She has been voting for over 50 years (using her social security card, an acceptable voter ID document in most states because a birth certificate documents you are a citizen) but has no driver’s license because she can’t afford a car and insurance, she doesn’t have a passport because traveling was never in her plans. Under the new law, Jane would not be able to vote because the name on her birth certificate is not her same last name because she was married to her deceased husband for as many years that she has been voting.

Currently there are 36 states that have legislated some form of voter ID laws similar to the SAVE Act. They passed these laws under the opinion that voter fraud was running rampant and needed to be reined in.

Voter ID laws by state, as of August 2025:

  Photo ID required (strict)

  Photo ID requested (non-strict)

  Non-photo ID required (strict)

  Non-photo ID requested (non-strict)

  No ID required to vote

The Heritage Foundation went back and researched the voting in the seven highly contested states over the past 38 years; here are their own findings: (taken from the Heritage Foundation website)

State	Heritage Foundation number of years analyzed	Number of elections held*	Total ballots (for reporting years)	Number of reported cases of fraud	Percent fraudulent votes
Arizona	25	36	42,626,379	36	0.0000845%
Georgia	27	34	64,742,598	23	0.0000355%
Michigan	17 (first case in 2007 about 2005 election)	26	64,520,604	19	0.0000294%
Nevada	13	14	8,506,824	8	0.0000940%
North Carolina	38	39	81,677,000	58	0.0000710%
Pennsylvania	30	32	100,526,098	39	0.0000388%
Wisconsin	20	28	45,329,695	69	0.0001522%

Here are the total results: 407,929,198 million votes cast, 252 reported cases of voter fraud, percent pf total fraudulent votes cast; .000000617754% or 6.17754 hundredth thousands of 1% which the Heritage Foundation concluded there was no evidence to support the argument of voter fraud has impacted elections.

Again, these numbers are from the Heritage foundation. A similar research study conducted by the Brookings Institution yielded similar results, or results that were not outside of the statistical margins of error.

So, here is my question: Is voter fraud really an issue? Why is this even being debated in the House of Representatives? I don’t understand.

I’m R.Simon Kent and that is My View from the Cheap Seats.