Here’s what makes US elections so complex and secure

In an address to the nation Thursday night, President Donald Trump said Americans deserve a secure election, and claimed he was using federal power to prevent it from being “stolen.”

Read more: Live fact check of Trump’s speech from the White House

In fact, one of the strongest security features of US elections is the fact that they are not conducted at the federal level. America votes in more than 10,000 different election jurisdictions, each with different rules set by state and sometimes local governments.

This structure makes the country’s elections very complex – and safe from widespread fraud. When misconduct occurs – rarely – security protocols often detect it.

The history of decentralized elections dates back to the founding of the state

America’s largely decentralized voting system exists because the country’s Founding Fathers gave power in elections to the states, rather than the federal government. While Congress has the power to regulate elections — and has used that power to pass laws like the Voting Rights Act — the Constitution makes clear that states have the primary authority to determine the “times, places and manner” of elections.

There is also no national electoral agency to manage the presidential competition, which is different from many other countries. When it comes to doing the day-to-day work of election administration, the responsibility falls to local-level officials — usually an election clerk or supervisor — with the help of staff and volunteers.

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While the differences in election laws can be confusing, election security experts say this structure is a strength. That’s because pulling off the theft of the presidential election — as Trump falsely claims happened to him in 2020 — will require large numbers of election workers in the most competitive counties across the country who are willing to risk prosecution, jail time and fines while working with officials from both parties willing to look the other way. Everyone will have to remain silent one way or another, a highly unlikely scenario.

There are also common security practices and procedures in place across the country that work together to ensure that only eligible voters can cast a ballot, and only one ballot is counted each.

Voter fraud can happen, but it is rare and there are safeguards to catch it

Most Americans have probably heard stories by now about someone casting multiple ballots, voting in the name of deceased relatives, or stealing mail-in ballots from mailboxes.

When these incidents occur, they are often arrested and prosecuted.

Voting more than once, tampering with ballots, lying about your residence to vote elsewhere, or casting someone else’s ballot are crimes that can be punished by heavy fines and imprisonment. Non-US citizens who violate election laws can be deported.

For anyone who is still motivated to cheat, U.S. electoral systems are designed with multiple layers of protection and transparency meant to stand in the way.

For example, for in-person voting, most states require or require voters to present some type of identification at the polls. Others ask voters to verify their identity in some other way, such as giving their name and address, signing a ballot book or signing an affidavit.

For absentee voting, all states require the voter’s signature, and many states have additional precautions, such as having bipartisan teams compare the signature with other signatures on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign.

This means that even if a ballot is mistakenly sent to someone’s previous address and the current resident mails it, there are checks in place to alert election workers that a crime has occurred.

An AP review found there was too little voter fraud to make a difference in the 2020 election

Trump spent six years insisting that he won the 2020 election, a campaign in which he lost to former President Joe Biden.

Read more: Here’s what to know about foreign interference and voting security

An Associated Press review in 2021 looked into every possible case of voter fraud in the six states Trump opposed. It found fewer than 475 cases, a number that would not have made any difference in that race.

Trump’s claims of massive voting fraud have been refuted by a variety of judges, state election officials and the Department of Homeland Security arm of his administration. In 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, told the AP that no evidence of widespread voter fraud had been uncovered. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” he said at the time.