Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos gave an interview on election issues, where he noted that fraud happens, it is difficult to know to what extent as we can only tell the instances in which it is caught, and that it occurs in many different forms:

We don’t know. I can tell you that fraud does exist. It does happen. How much of it? We’re not really sure, because not all of it may be addressed or caught. I can tell you that when I ran in 2010 there was some voter fraud that affected my race. Voter fraud is something that can happen at different levels. I think when people ask me about voter fraud, I ask them, ‘Well, be more specific. What is it that you really mean to say about voter fraud? Does it happen on Election Day? Does it happen during early voting? Does it happen during the mail-in ballots? Does it happen during recount elections? You know, what do you mean?

We acknowledge that fraud does exist in elections. Now, whether they can sway elections, we don’t know what those numbers are. I can tell you about what happened in my race. I ended up winning by 69 votes out of 42,000 that were casted. In South Texas, when I was county judge there were a lot of races, a lot of local races that were decided by sometimes one vote. Just this past May there was a school board election in Harlingen that tied, so they had to redo another election. Is it possible for a fraudulent vote to be cast or votes to be cast that change an election? Yeah, it is.

I don’t know if anybody knows how prevalent it is, because the only time you find out is when somebody gets caught. It’s like anything else. I mean you could have 50 people run a stop sign, and you may catch three of them, but you don’t catch the other 47. It’s the same thing with this. No one can pinpoint if they say there’s, you know, 10 percent is fraud, 5 percent is fraud, 3 percent is fraud. To me, every vote counts. I heard someone say, ‘Well, that’s like taking a very philosophical approach.’ Well, at the end of the day it is. I believe that every vote does count, and it matters. I take voter fraud and the integrity of the elections very seriously.

Thanks to Secretary Cascos and the many other election officials around the country who are working hard to ensure the integrity of elections but being honest about the possibility of vote fraud and its effects on elections.