Top five threats to election integrity ahead of the presidential election

While there are dozens of ongoing election integrity issues, a newly released report from a watchdog group lists the top 50 election threats that the U.S. is facing with less than three weeks until the presidential election.

Election integrity has has a spotlight shined on it since the contentious aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and although some states have made improvements, many issues still remain. In a report released by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) on Wednesday, it details the top 50 election threats and breaks them down into five categories:

“‘Dark money’ such as ‘Zuckerbucks’ that is used for public election administration; Lawfare operations that use taxpayer resources to weaponize the justice system against challengers to incumbents; ‘Get Out the Vote’ operations that use nonprofit status to target voters from a preferred political party; Vote Fraud by people who double-vote, fraudulently vote someone else’s ballot, or vote without being eligible to vote; and Election Fraud that seeks to fix elections by illegal activities that take place during the counting or collection of ballots.”

Below are threats included in each of the above categories:

1. Federal Dark Money and Biden’s Order 14019

The “dark money” category includes President Biden’s March 2021 Executive Order 14019, often referred to by critics as “Bidenbucks.” The term alludes to "Zuckerbucks," the approximately $400 million coming from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and widely alleged to have been funneled through left-leaning nonprofits to turn out the Democratic vote in the 2020 presidential election. 

According to the Executive Order, “The head of each agency shall evaluate ways in which the agency can, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, promote voter registration and voter participation,” including "soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and State officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”

“With no agency publicly releasing its strategy to increase voter participation, EO 14019 lacks transparency and obfuscates how these agencies are conducting themselves,” according to the GAI report. In June, House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil subpoenaed 15 Biden cabinet officials for their agencies’ strategic plans to implement the executive order.

The Biden administration has worked with left-wing organizations to implement “Bidenbucks.” The Department of Justice had a “listening session” in July 2021 with multiple non-governmental organizations regarding the implementation of “Bidenbucks,” and none of them were conservative.

In August, nine Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over "Bidenbucks," arguing that it "violates the Constitution." Earlier that month, two Republican secretaries of state had filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over the executive order.

2. Lawfare conducted by rogue prosecutors

“Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis have all brought various legal actions against a leading candidate for president, using what some have described as novel and, at times, tortured legal theories,” according to the GAI report.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has thus far largely fended off his many legal woes, delaying proceedings and bogging down cases in the appellate process. Though the prospect of additional convictions prior to the election remain dim, Trump now faces attempts to revive some of his criminal prosecutions and barriers to his own efforts to delay proceedings further.

Trump has faced four separate criminal cases, including two from Smith related to his 2020 election challenges and his storage of sensitive materials at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Willis further brought Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act charges against Trump and 18 co-defendants related to his election challenge in Georgia. Bragg’s New York hush money case is the only case to proceed to trial and secure a conviction.

3. Dirty voter rolls

Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, states are required to maintain their voter rolls. However, some states appear to clean them more regularly than others.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced in August that more than 1 million ineligible voters had been removed from voter rolls since 2021. Of those voters, more than 6,000 have a felony conviction and almost half a million are deceased.

Also in August, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) said more than 150,000 voters were removed from voter rolls. LaRose said all 88 county election boards finished the annual list maintenance process, which resulted in 154,995 voters being removed for being inactive or having out-of-date registrations.

Last month, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) revealed that more than 450,000 voter registrations have been dropped from the state's voter rolls since 2021. The state removed a total 456,309 names from the rolls, consisting of 5,607 felons, 14,993 duplicate registrations, 97,065 deceased voters, 143,682 voters who moved out-of-state, and 194,962 inactive voters.

However, states like Michigan and Pennsylvania have a history of poorly maintained voter rolls. The majority of counties in Michigan have abnormally high voter registration rates. There are 23 counties with registration rates of 90%, and 53 counties with registration rates over 100% this year, according to the GAI report.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania has experienced voter roll issues for decades.

In 2017, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican who was a Philadelphia city commissioner at the time, told a Pennsylvania Senate committee that there were over 100,000 matches of voter registration records to state driver's license numbers with Immigration and Naturalization Service indicators.

The matches don't mean that all of those people were registered to vote, but Schmidt argued: "We're not talking about an insignificant number here. We're talking about a potentially very significant number of thousands and tens of thousands."

The Pennsylvania Department of State announced in September 2017 that records indicated 1,160 non-citizens since 1972 had requested their voter registrations be canceled.

4. Non-citizen voting

As states have examined their voter rolls, they have found non-citizens registered as voters.

While non-citizens are prohibited from voting in federal, state, and most local elections, municipalities in California, Maryland, and Vermont, and Washington, D.C., allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.

“States across the country including Ohio, Minnesota, Nevada, and Texas have recently audited their voter rolls and found more than two million ineligible voters—including nearly 30,000 non-citizens in just five states,” according to the GAI report.

In August, LaRose removed 499 non-citizens from Ohio’s voter rolls.

When Texas removed the 1.1 million voters, over 6,500 of them were non-citizens, and about 1,930 of them had voted. The records of those 1,930 voters are in the process of being sent to the attorney general's office from the secretary of state's office for investigation.

In Arizona last month, the secretary of state’s office found that the number of voters who were incorrectly registered in the state as providing proof of U.S. citizenship was 218,000. The number was updated from nearly 98,000 voters earlier last month.

The Arizona Supreme Court determined that the nearly 98,000 voters who had not proven their citizenship may vote in the November elections with full ballots. Following the discovery of the additional 120,000 voters, the secretary of state’s office said that the state Supreme Court's decision still applies and the voters will be able to vote with full ballots.

5. Mail-in ballots

“Voting by mail, also known as automatic absentee voting, is very convenient but can pose serious risks to election integrity,” according to the GAI report. “Ballots can be lost in the mail or manipulated, and a secure chain of custody is impossible to guarantee. Twenty percent of poll respondents who voted by mail admitted to committing at least one kind of fraud. These are very difficult to verify, even when you require matching signature verification. Ballots can arrive late and raise difficult questions about when vote counting will conclude.”

In 2005, the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform – which included ex-President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush, James Baker – highlighted the issues that concerned them about absentee ballots.  

"While vote by mail appears to increase turnout for local elections, there is no evidence that it significantly expands participation in federal elections,” the commission wrote. "Moreover, it raises concerns about privacy, as citizens voting at home may come under pressure to vote for certain candidates, and it increases the risk of fraud."  

"Vote by mail is, however, likely to increase the risks of fraud and of contested elections in other states, where the population is more mobile, where there is some history of troubled elections, or where the safeguards for ballot integrity are weaker," the commission also said. 

Last month, the Republican National Committee sent a letter to Montgomery County, Pa., demanding that it cease distributing mail ballots, claiming that the ballots have not undergone required logic and accuracy testing.

In Connecticut, after alleged ballot harvesting occurred during the September primary election last year and resulted in a court-ordered "redo" election, Democratic Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas advised voters to cast their ballots in person ahead of the Bridgeport mayoral redo primary election in January.