More than one in four Americans expressed willingness to commit at least one type of illegal voting practice in the 2024 election to assist their favored candidate or stop a candidate they do not favor, according to a new survey from the Heartland Institute.
The survey, conducted by Rasmussen, indicated that some 28% of respondents would engage in election fraud to “help their preferred candidate.” Even as 32% of Democrats said they would pursue illegal activity, 28% of Republicans and 24% of independents said the same.
Roughly 17% of overall respondents, for example, said they would “fill out and sign” a mail-in ballot given to them by a friend with permission to “use their ballot to vote for anyone that you choose.” Meanwhile 9% said they would “alter the candidate selections made” on a mail-in ballot “belonging to a friend or family member,” while 11% said they would “throw out or destroy” a mail-in ballot belonging to a friend or family member “without their knowledge.”
Heartland Institute researchers emphasized that stronger election security laws are needed ahead of the fall election given the number of Americans willing to commit voter fraud.
“The results of this poll will hopefully galvanize state policymakers to craft legislation designed to ensure election integrity by vastly restricting mail-in voting. In turn, that legislation must be enforced to the greatest possible extent by states’ executive branches,” Heartland Institute research editor Jack McPherrin said in a statement. “Failure to implement such solutions will allow our elections to become even more tainted by election fraud. Without secure elections, we will collectively lose faith in our electoral system, and our republic will die with a whimper.”
Justin Haskins, the director of the Heartland Institute Socialism Research Center, suggested that states can pass laws requiring mail-in ballots to be signed in front of a notary. Mississippi, Missouri, and Oklahoma, none of which are swing states, have adopted such a policy.
The survey results come after the campaign for former President Donald Trump raised concerns about and filed lawsuits over election integrity following the 2020 election, during which many states saw the use of mail-in ballots swell as a result of lockdowns. Lawmakers in states such as Georgia enacted election security laws to increase voter confidence, a move which President Joe Biden and other Democratic officials criticized as “Jim Crow in the twenty-first century.”
