Reality: Safeguards are in place to prevent home-printed or photocopied mail-in ballots from being counted.
Rumor: A malicious actor can easily defraud an election by printing and sending in extra mail-in ballots.
Get the Facts: Committing fraud through photocopied or home-printed ballots would be highly difficult to do successfully. This is because each local election office has security measures in place to detect such malicious activity. While the specific measures vary, in accordance with state and local election laws and practices, such security measures include: signature matching, information checks, barcodes, watermarks, and precise paper weights.
Useful Source
- Mail-in Voting Election Integrity Safeguards Infographic, CISA
- Link directly to this rumor by using: https://www.cisa.gov/rumorcontrol#rumor7