Driven by Republicans, most Americans are concerned about fraud in the 2024 election

A majority of Americans worry this year’s general election will be tainted by fraud, according to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll out Thursday — an ominous finding for the thousands of local election officials across the country tasked with administering voting.

Almost 6-in-10 Americans say they’re concerned or very concerned that there will be voter fraud this election, a number that experts say is driven in large part by Donald Trump’s continued false insistence that elections can’t be trusted. Eighty-eight percent of voters who say they support the former president say they are concerned there will be fraud, compared with 29% of those who support the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris.

In the four years since the 2020 election, there has never been any evidence of widespread voter fraud in that contest, and numerous audits, studies and investigations (including those led by Republicans) have confirmed the results many times over.

Still, as voting has begun in many parts of the country, election officials are struggling to persuade voters listening to political figures who insist the results will be tainted.

Local election officials say they’ve spent countless hours trying to educate voters on the checks and balances that make fraud unlikely and rare, but it’s unclear those efforts have made much of a dent. And they worry the stage is set for Trump again to try to overturn the results, or for his followers to commit violence, if they feel the election was stolen from him.

“This conversation is so much deeper than even the mechanics of election administration,” said Stephen Richer, the Republican county recorder in Maricopa County, Ariz. “It’s more about, how do you convince someone of the truth?”

Richer, who lost a