It's coming at it kinda sideways, but here's the approach I found most useful in getting skeptics to at least consider the issue a little more openly:
I am an analyst by profession. One of the first things I look at regarding any claims of a specific event happening is the baseline probability of such an event happening that way.
For example, Credit Karma did a study in 2018 on tax evasion and, of about 2,000 respondents to their survey, about 6% openly admitted to cheating on their taxes. Now, cheating on taxes is a socially undesirable behavior, and social desirability bias tends to distort results on self-response questions like this (some people whose true answer would be socially undesirable will lie about it, even to anonymous surveys), so the actual percentage of tax cheats is almost certainly higher than 6%. Given those facts, what percentage of people would YOU estimate cheat on their taxes? The usual response is around 10%+. For sake of making a minimal estimate, I'll just assume at least an extra 1%, for an adjusted baseline of 7%.
So, we've agreed that, of the population, at least 6%+ cheat on their taxes. Now, different states have different tax laws, so would you expect that rate to be the same across every State? Of course not, IRS estimates show tax fraud much more prevalent in places like California than in places like the Midwest.
Lastly, let's consider the political aspect. The American Economic Association did a study of tax evasion patterns and found that the percentages shifted by 2-4% depending on whether the taxpayer was politically aligned with the current administration (essentially, more people would underreport their income to pay lower taxes when they didn't want those taxes supporting government policies with which they disagreed politically). When a Republican is in office, Democrats are more likely to cheat on their taxes (and vice versa).
Therefore, when a Republican is in office, tax fraud rates in heavily Democrat areas are likely to be at least around 10%+ (adjusted baseline 7% + 2-4% partisan misalignment shift) plus adjusted for State rates (and vice versa for heavily Republican areas when a Democrat is in office). Believe it or not, that's actually a very low estimate in comparison to most foreign countries. Americans are relatively very good about paying our taxes honestly.
Still, tax fraud IS a crime and in many cases the savings from tax fraud are comparatively small. OTOH, tax audits are also relatively infrequent and the penalties even if caught often aren't severe.
Now, what's another crime with very similar characteristics to tax fraud? A crime rarely investigated, even more rarely prosecuted, with relatively minor penalties if convicted, that people might be willing to engage in even for comparatively small benefits? What's another type of fraud that requires nothing more than some creative papershuffling or lying on government forms? What's another type of fraud that might also be particularly appealing to people politically misaligned with the current administration? Vote fraud.
Let me put it this way: we've already agreed that, under a Republican administration, around 10% of Democrats will commit tax fraud (and around 4% of Republicans)... and voter fraud is similar to tax fraud... So, consider for a moment what it would mean if vote fraud is committed at similar rates to tax fraud... That suggests that the party out of power in each election is likely to commit vote fraud at about 6% higher a rate than the party in power. In the 2020 election that margin would be enough to flip 7 States from Biden to Trump. Even a mere 2% fraud rate favoring Democrats would change results for the 4 closest States.
So yes, just by looking at the closest parallel crime for which we have better data, it's plausible to argue that vote fraud likely occurs in American elections at a rate that would be sufficient to change the outcome of particularly close races (and that there were enough sufficiently close State races in the election in question, 2020, that even the most minimal estimated rate of fraud could have altered the outcome for the President and possibly Congress as well).
Is that 'proof'? Of course not, but it certainly seems to me to be a reasonable suspicion and legal predicate for opening investigations into close races within the margin where fraud could be reasonably expected to alter outcomes.
The idea that vote fraud is committed at similar rates to tax fraud is ridiculous - there is basically nothing to personally gain from committing voter fraud (one vote makes no difference whatsoever), while you have a lot to gain from tax fraud.
There could be something to gain if someone was paying you to harvest ballots. Then there would be the same incentives as there was from any illegal activity, with a vanishingly small chance of being investigated or prosecuted if the authorities were tacitly supporting the activity.
I'm not an expert in this field but I wrote this essay because I found the mismatch between states with strict voting laws and states without (controlling for partisan composition) pretty convincing. If states with automatic voter registration consistently generate 1.1x (+10%) of the Democrat votes (compared to exit ballots and party registration data) than the states without then that is a strange and persistent trend that requires an explanation.
Some significant elections have in fact been flipped on the basis of very small numbers of votes, including 1.
Vote fraud, unlike tax fraud, is also not limited to only one fraudulent vote submitted. Ballot harvesting enables a single bag actor to submit dozens of hundred of fraudulent votes.
Given the substantial electoral stakes and different policy agendas between the two major parties, people often have much MORE to gain from successful vote fraud then tax fraud.
The mere fact that people make donations to campaigns, PACs, and GotV efforts rather proves that they consider even the mere potential of more votes for their candidate worth more than the money they donate in the attempt. In battlegrounds, the estimated cost per additional vote from efforts like advertising and door knocking can reach hundreds to thousands of dollars or more. IDK about you, but that makes the going rate for even just one vote worth more than my entire tax return. By the logic of economists, that makes vote fraud MORE likely than tax fraud, since it scales easier, the projected return on investment is higher, and the odds of getting caught or prosecuted are lower.
It's coming at it kinda sideways, but here's the approach I found most useful in getting skeptics to at least consider the issue a little more openly:
I am an analyst by profession. One of the first things I look at regarding any claims of a specific event happening is the baseline probability of such an event happening that way.
For example, Credit Karma did a study in 2018 on tax evasion and, of about 2,000 respondents to their survey, about 6% openly admitted to cheating on their taxes. Now, cheating on taxes is a socially undesirable behavior, and social desirability bias tends to distort results on self-response questions like this (some people whose true answer would be socially undesirable will lie about it, even to anonymous surveys), so the actual percentage of tax cheats is almost certainly higher than 6%. Given those facts, what percentage of people would YOU estimate cheat on their taxes? The usual response is around 10%+. For sake of making a minimal estimate, I'll just assume at least an extra 1%, for an adjusted baseline of 7%.
So, we've agreed that, of the population, at least 6%+ cheat on their taxes. Now, different states have different tax laws, so would you expect that rate to be the same across every State? Of course not, IRS estimates show tax fraud much more prevalent in places like California than in places like the Midwest.
Lastly, let's consider the political aspect. The American Economic Association did a study of tax evasion patterns and found that the percentages shifted by 2-4% depending on whether the taxpayer was politically aligned with the current administration (essentially, more people would underreport their income to pay lower taxes when they didn't want those taxes supporting government policies with which they disagreed politically). When a Republican is in office, Democrats are more likely to cheat on their taxes (and vice versa).
Therefore, when a Republican is in office, tax fraud rates in heavily Democrat areas are likely to be at least around 10%+ (adjusted baseline 7% + 2-4% partisan misalignment shift) plus adjusted for State rates (and vice versa for heavily Republican areas when a Democrat is in office). Believe it or not, that's actually a very low estimate in comparison to most foreign countries. Americans are relatively very good about paying our taxes honestly.
Still, tax fraud IS a crime and in many cases the savings from tax fraud are comparatively small. OTOH, tax audits are also relatively infrequent and the penalties even if caught often aren't severe.
Now, what's another crime with very similar characteristics to tax fraud? A crime rarely investigated, even more rarely prosecuted, with relatively minor penalties if convicted, that people might be willing to engage in even for comparatively small benefits? What's another type of fraud that requires nothing more than some creative papershuffling or lying on government forms? What's another type of fraud that might also be particularly appealing to people politically misaligned with the current administration? Vote fraud.
Let me put it this way: we've already agreed that, under a Republican administration, around 10% of Democrats will commit tax fraud (and around 4% of Republicans)... and voter fraud is similar to tax fraud... So, consider for a moment what it would mean if vote fraud is committed at similar rates to tax fraud... That suggests that the party out of power in each election is likely to commit vote fraud at about 6% higher a rate than the party in power. In the 2020 election that margin would be enough to flip 7 States from Biden to Trump. Even a mere 2% fraud rate favoring Democrats would change results for the 4 closest States.
So yes, just by looking at the closest parallel crime for which we have better data, it's plausible to argue that vote fraud likely occurs in American elections at a rate that would be sufficient to change the outcome of particularly close races (and that there were enough sufficiently close State races in the election in question, 2020, that even the most minimal estimated rate of fraud could have altered the outcome for the President and possibly Congress as well).
Is that 'proof'? Of course not, but it certainly seems to me to be a reasonable suspicion and legal predicate for opening investigations into close races within the margin where fraud could be reasonably expected to alter outcomes.
The idea that vote fraud is committed at similar rates to tax fraud is ridiculous - there is basically nothing to personally gain from committing voter fraud (one vote makes no difference whatsoever), while you have a lot to gain from tax fraud.
There could be something to gain if someone was paying you to harvest ballots. Then there would be the same incentives as there was from any illegal activity, with a vanishingly small chance of being investigated or prosecuted if the authorities were tacitly supporting the activity.
I'm not an expert in this field but I wrote this essay because I found the mismatch between states with strict voting laws and states without (controlling for partisan composition) pretty convincing. If states with automatic voter registration consistently generate 1.1x (+10%) of the Democrat votes (compared to exit ballots and party registration data) than the states without then that is a strange and persistent trend that requires an explanation.
Some significant elections have in fact been flipped on the basis of very small numbers of votes, including 1.
Vote fraud, unlike tax fraud, is also not limited to only one fraudulent vote submitted. Ballot harvesting enables a single bag actor to submit dozens of hundred of fraudulent votes.
Given the substantial electoral stakes and different policy agendas between the two major parties, people often have much MORE to gain from successful vote fraud then tax fraud.
The mere fact that people make donations to campaigns, PACs, and GotV efforts rather proves that they consider even the mere potential of more votes for their candidate worth more than the money they donate in the attempt. In battlegrounds, the estimated cost per additional vote from efforts like advertising and door knocking can reach hundreds to thousands of dollars or more. IDK about you, but that makes the going rate for even just one vote worth more than my entire tax return. By the logic of economists, that makes vote fraud MORE likely than tax fraud, since it scales easier, the projected return on investment is higher, and the odds of getting caught or prosecuted are lower.