Tennessee Says It Found 40 Credible Claims Of Voter Fraud. What That Means:

Officials in Tennessee have found 40 credible allegations of voter fraud during this year’s primary and general elections.

That’s more than any other state, according to a nationwide investigation from the New York Times that concluded, overall, there is no evidence of “rampant voter fraud.”

Researchers at the Times contacted election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and they received estimates of voter fraud incidents from all of them, except Kansas. They found that, in an election in which nearly 138 million people voted, the majority of states say they’ve heard no serious claims of fraud whatsoever.

Against that backdrop, Tennessee stands out. Mark Goins, the state’s director of elections, believes it’s because officials here are looking harder.

“I think we’re probably more vigilant,” he says. “It’s something that we have focused on, somewhat. We’ve encouraged the counties to look for these things.”

Goins declines to give specifics about individual allegations, saying the investigations haven’t been completed. But he says the largest number of cases involve felons who’ve been stripped of their rights to vote. Another big group are people who’ve voted outside their districts.

One case involves a suspicious absentee ballot. The allegation is that it wasn’t filled out by the person who supposedly cast it.

And one other involves a possible non-citizen who voted.

Even if all the allegations prove to be true, the 40 cases would represent less than one vote out of every 100,000 cast this year in Tennessee, according to the Times.

But Goins predicts more suspicious votes will be identified. He says officials plan to keep digging into voter records next year.