The U.S. Supreme Court’s September 14, 2026 decision in USPS v. California has averted what was the greatest immediate threat looming over the 2026 general election. Other threats include the possibility of interference at the polls by Justice Department monitors, or by armed federal law enforcement agents or troops (in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 592), and seizure of ballots or voting equipment after election day.

More broadly, the threats to this and future elections arise mainly from those who mistakenly believe that elections are insecure or lack integrity, or who seek to exploit others’ credulity for their own political advantage by shrinking the electorate, casting doubt on electoral outcomes, or undermining faith in American democracy. The challenge – for election administrators, journalists, and educators – is to inform the public about how elections are actually administered and why the claims about their insecurity and lack of integrity are wrong.

Sound election administration practices prevent the stealing of elections. Although not all are universal, these practices are widespread in the U.S.

President Trump has claimed repeatedly that voting by mail is rife with fraud. Election deniers hypothesize the use of counterfeit ballots to steal elections. The truth is that bad actors cannot manufacture ballots, submit them, and have them counted.

First, counterfeiting ballots would be prohibitively difficult and expensive. Counterfeit ballots would readily be identified as such and rejected. Ballots are precisely programmed with timing marks that allow tabulation equipment to count the votes based on the exact location of the voter’s marks on the ballot. This programming is done using software specifically designed for the equipment used to tabulate the ballots. Even tiny, inadvertent printing errors that occasionally occur on authentic ballots cause those ballots to be rejected by tabulating equipment as unreadable, necessitating inspection and remaking of those ballots by replicating the voter’s marks on a new ballot.

Second, even perfectly made counterfeit ballots could not be used to steal an election. Each mail-in ballot is linked to a particular voter, either by use of a coded ballot ID envelope in which the voted ballot must be returned, or (as in Ohio) by a perforated stub on the ballot that has a unique ballot number. When the ballot is returned by the voter, the election administrators record its receipt in the records for that voter. This ensures that only one ballot can be cast in an election for any voter. The election administrators also authenticate the ballot. This is done by comparing the voter’s signature to the one on file for that voter. In some states, the voter is required to provide on the ballot ID envelope an identification number (their driver’s license number, their official state ID number, or the last four digits of their social security number) or their birthdate, or both. In those states, the ballot is further authenticated by comparing that information to the information on file for that voter. Only after the ballot has been authenticated is it made anonymous by removing the ballot from the ID envelope and, in those jurisdictions that use identifying ballot stubs, removing the stub.

The only real risk of fraudulent voting by mail is that someone could steal another’s absentee ballot, mark it, and submit it. To do this, however, they would need to have physical access to the ballot that was sent to that person, be familiar enough with that person’s signature to forge it, and, in some states, know the person’s identification number or birthdate or both. As a practical matter, this limits the opportunity for fraudulent voting by mail to an immediate family member or caretaker. There is no real risk of an election being “stolen” by fraudulent mail-in voting at scale.

Neither can someone vote absentee, vote again at the polls, and have both ballots counted. Poll workers have records of who was sent an absentee ballot. Anyone who was sent an absentee ballot and attempts to vote in person on election day must vote provisionally. The provisional ballot will not be counted unless their absentee ballot is not received. Nor can someone vote twice (or more) at the polls on election day and have both ballots counted. The second ballot would be provisional and would not be counted. Nor can someone impersonate a voter at the polls without being able to forge their signature and, in the many states that require photo ID, stealing their photo ID and resembling the person depicted in the ID.

Ballots (both unvoted and voted) and election equipment are stored in secured areas within election administration offices that are themselves secure. Access is strictly limited so that only authorized personnel can enter those storage areas. (In Ohio, for example, only a bipartisan team of election administrators can enter the vault where ballots are stored or the secured area where voting or tabulating equipment is kept.) When ballots and voting machines are deployed to polling places, strict chains of custody are maintained, and tamper-evident seals are used.

Before and after each election, voting and ballot tabulation equipment is tested using a “test deck” of ballots for that election to ensure that they count votes accurately. Voting or ballot-tabulating machines deployed to polling places are not connected to any public network; many do not even have networking capability. Central count equipment – the tabulation equipment at election administration offices that is used to tabulate mailed-in ballots and compile election results – is “air-gapped” so it is impenetrable from outside the election administration office.

After each election, post-election audits are conducted to confirm the accuracy of the counts. Contests and precincts or voting locations are selected at random. All ballots from those precincts or locations are counted by hand. Those counts are compared with machine counts for those precincts or voting locations. If the counts differ, more precincts or locations are selected at random, and the process is repeated until the required level of accuracy is achieved. Thereafter, ballots for the remainder of the jurisdiction or district are counted by machine. These audits typically result in 100 or 99.99 percent accuracy. Anything less triggers an investigation.

The election security and integrity measures described above prevent election fraud at the scale that would be necessary to steal elections. There are opportunities for isolated instances of fraudulent voting, but these rarely occur because fraudulent voting is strongly deterred by the threat of criminal sanctions. The expected benefit of such fraudulent voting is vanishingly small because of the extremely low probability that any one vote (or even a few votes) would change the outcome of an election. Unlike with consensual crimes such as drug trafficking, the probability of fraudulent voting being detected is high because someone’s ballot was stolen and submitted by another. The probabilities of the perpetrator being identified, apprehended, and punished are also relatively high, and the punishment is severe. Under federal law, fraudulent voting in a federal election is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. Most states have made fraudulent voting in any election a felony.

None of this is to say that election administration is perfect or cannot be improved. Election administrators continually work to improve their methods. But there are systems in place that prevent the stealing of elections. Americans can be confident in the accuracy of election results.