South Dakota Voter Fraud Claims Don’t Hold Up Under Scrutiny

Voter fraud myths continue to fuel restrictive voting laws, but the facts from South Dakota reveal a different story. According to the Heritage Foundation, which often pushes for tougher voting restrictions nationwide, only three people have been convicted of voter fraud in South Dakota elections since 2004. These cases included individuals voting more than once and attempting duplicate votes during local elections. Two offenders received suspended sentences, and one served time, underscoring the rarity and limited scale of these offenses.

The state’s recent legislative move to allow challenges to voters’ citizenship status comes amid reports that 273 non-citizens were mistakenly added to voter rolls due to human error. Only one of those individuals actually cast a ballot in 2016, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. This isolated incident has been used to justify new laws that critics argue could suppress legitimate voters under the guise of preventing fraud.

South Dakota’s experience is a microcosm of a broader national pattern: claims of rampant voter fraud are not supported by evidence but are leveraged to justify aggressive voting restrictions. As activists and voters push back, it’s crucial to ground the debate in facts rather than fearmongering. This fact brief from South Dakota News Watch, supported by local reporting and data, debunks the notion of regular voter fraud in the state and highlights the dangers of laws that may undermine democratic participation under false pretenses.