A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports and The Heartland Institute reveals that 28% of likely voters would be willing to engage in illegal voting activity if it would help their preferred candidate win the 2024 presidential election.
There is little variation among voters of different candidates, with 27% of President Joe Biden's voters willing to cheat for their candidate, 29% of former President Donald Trump's voters ready to commit voter fraud, and 25% of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s voters willing to be dishonest, Rasmussen noted
The new poll follows up on a Rasmussen Reports/Heartland Institute survey in December that found more than 20% of voters who used mail-in ballots in 2020 admit they participated in at least one form of election fraud.
In the new survey, 18% of all likely voters said that, if their spouse or another trusted family member allowed them to fill out and sign their mail-in ballot, they would. Similarly, 17% said they would fill out and sign a mail-in ballot on behalf of a coworker or friendly acquaintance, and 14% would do so on behalf of a close friend.
Furthermore, 9% said that, if given the opportunity, they would alter the candidate selections made in a mail-in ballot belonging to a friend or family member, without their knowledge.
And 10% said they would vote in two different states to help their candidate win, and 10% would also offer to pay another voter for their vote. The same percentage of voters would give another voter misleading information about the time and place of the election if that would help their candidate win.
All such activities would be crimes under federal law.
"Our survey clearly indicates that millions of voters, both Democrats and Republicans alike, are willing to vote illegally and even to commit serious crimes in order to stop political opposition," said Justin Haskins, director of the Socialism Research Center at The Heartland Institute. "As deeply troubling as these survey results are, however, the even bigger story is that state lawmakers have not put election integrity policies in place that will stop cheating in 2024 and beyond."
The survey found that 45% of voters would vote for Trump, 36% for Biden, 11% for Kennedy, and 4% for some other candidate, while 3% are undecided.
The survey of 1,467 U.S. likely voters was conducted on April 5-10, by Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.