Unless there are others that reached the fact-finding stage, that's 10 out of 62, meaning 52 were not decided on the merits. So "most" being decided on procedural grounds is still correct, IMHO. But thanks for the link, that's useful info.

As for your "How do you reconcile ..." question, I'll assume that the summaries of those ten cases are correct (I don't have time to read all ten of them for myself), and look through them one by one:

First one, Trump v. Biden (Wis. Dec. 14, 2020): three out of four claims tossed for not being filed in a timely manner. Fourth claim, "that voters wrongfully declared themselves indefinitely confined", ruled against Trump because "Trump challenged the status of all voters who claimed an indefinitely confined status, rather than individual voters". Not expert enough on relevant law to know what that means, but it looks to me like this one was "your claim is overbroad and you can't prove it" rather than "your claim is false", and I don't understand how that case relates to vote fraud. (Perhaps someone more informed about relevant law can explain this one to me).

Second one, Trump v. Wis. Elecs. Comm’n (E.D. Wis. Dec. 12, 2020): Trump claimed that "Wisconsin officials violated his rights under the Electors Clause because said officials allegedly issued guidance on state election statutes that deviated significantly from the requirements of Wisconsin’s election statutes." Court ruled that "interpretations of election administration rules do not fall under the meaning of “Manner” in the Electors Clause" and even if they did, the officials had "acted consistently with, and as expressly authorized by, the Wisconsin Legislature". Again, I don't understand how this one specifically relates to vote fraud, it looks like an argument about whether laws were followed. Perhaps the laws being followed were highly relevant to vote fraud, but someone will have to explain that one to me as well.

Third, King v. Whitmer (E.D. Mich. Dec. 7, 2020): First part was a decision about whether the law was followed. "Second, the district court found the plaintiffs’ Equal Protection claim to be too speculative, finding no evidence that physical ballots were altered." This one is a case where the court said "you haven't presented evidence of fraud".

Fourth, Ward v. Jackson (Ariz. Sup. Ct., Maricopa Cnty. Dec. 4, 2020): This was a decision that the plaintiff showed insufficient evidence of fraud.

Fifth, Law v. Whitmer (Nev. Dist. Ct., Carson City Dec. 4, 2020): Plaintiffs failed to prove "that there had been either a voting device malfunction or the counting of illegal/improper votes in a manner sufficient to raise reasonable doubt as to the election’s outcome." Actual decision on the merits saying "not enough evidence of fraud".

Sixth, Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar (M.D. Pa. Nov. 21, 2020): Court found that Trump lacked standing, but decided on the merits of his case. "The district court held that different counties implementing different types of notice-and-cure policies (many implementing none) did not violate the Equal Protection Clause because the clause does not require complete equality in all situations—“a classification resulting in ‘some inequality’ will be upheld unless it is based on an inherently suspect characteristic or ‘jeopardizes the exercise of a fundamental right.’”" Again, unless I'm misunderstanding the case, not a decision about "you didn't show evidence of fruad", but rather about whether election law was followed correctly. (If I understand right, "notice-and-cure" policies means a voter says "Hey, something's fishy here" and the election board has been put on notice and must "cure", resolve, the alleged problem. Which is relevant to fraud, but does not mean this was a decision where the judge said "you didn't provide enough evidence".)

Seventh, Wood v. Raffensperger (N.D. Ga. Nov. 20, 2020): first claim dismissed because "there was no disparate treatment among Georgia voters". Second claim dismissed because "Secretary Brad Raffensperger had not overridden or rewritten any state law". Third claim dismissed because "there is no individual constitutional right to observe the electoral process (i.e., monitor an audit or vote recount)". Again, maybe there's something I'm missing, but this doesn't look like a decision on whether there was evidence, or lack thereof, of fraud.

Eighth, Bower v. Ducey (D. Ariz. Dec. 9, 2020): Did address claims of fraud, saying plaintiffs had not presented evidence, merely speculation that fraud "could" have occurred or was statistically likely, which the court did not find to meet evidentiary standards. So this one was indeed a decision on the evidence.

Ninth, Costantino v. City of Detroit (3d Jud. Ct. Wayne Cnty. Nov. 13, 2020): Dismissed at preliminary injunction stage; "the court found that the plaintiffs’ claims of fraud would unlikely prevail on the merits" because "many plaintiffs failed to include crucial information in their allegations, such as locations of alleged misconduct, frequency of alleged misconduct, names of those involved in alleged misconduct, and so on." So in a rushed case filed a week or so after the election, plaintiffs didn't put together enough evidence, and the judge said "We don't need to proceed to fact-finding, I can tell your case is weak before I even look at the details".

Arizona Republican Party v. Fontes (Ariz. Sup. Ct., Maricopa Cty.): "The court noted that the relief plaintiff sought—an additional hand count of ballots—was not legally available due to the suit’s numerous procedural defects. The court found that plaintiff did not adequately assess the validity of their claims before filing the suit, and thus failed to prove that the county had inappropriately applied the statute in question." Decided on procedural grounds, not actually evidentiary grounds.

So of the ten cases in that list, five (cases 1, 2, 6, 7, and 10) were not actually cases where the judge ruled on evidence of fraud, as far as I can tell. (Again, corrections on specifics welcome if I misunderstood one of these). The other five were decided on "you don't show convincing evidence of fraud", though I question whether #9 should count in that list because it was a preliminary injunction rather than reaching the fact-finding stage.

So that's five, or possibly four if you discount number nine but let's count it for the sake of argument, cases out of the 62 where the court went as far as ruling on the evidence.

And I have no trouble reconciling the idea of widespread fraud with five court cases where plaintiffs couldn't prove it. Because in many cases, the kind of fraud people are claiming happened (note that I have not actually investigated those claims) are things that would be extremely hard to prove afterwards, such as people walking up to an unguarded ballot dropoff location and stuffing 50 ballots into it. We know that happened in some places, because a few times the person was caught on video. But how do you prove, to a court's satisfaction, that that was someone committing fraud, as opposed to someone helpfully collecting ballots for friends and family so they didn't have to drive downtown?

No, if fraud is happening then the way to prevent it is by putting rules in place to make it hard, rather than court cases afterwards. It's very very hard to prove certain kinds of election fraud (such as alleged ballot-stuffing) were fraudulent. But it's a lot easier (not easy, mind you) to put rules in place, like requiring some form of official photo ID for verification, that make fraud harder to commit.

"An official list of citizens to check citizenship status against does not exist. If the required information for voter registration is included – name; address; date of birth; a signature attesting to the truth of the information provided on the application; and an indication in the box confirming the individual is a U.S. citizen – the person must be added to the voter registration file. Modifying state law would require an act of the state legislature, and federal law, an act of Congress. Neither the Secretary of State nor the county auditor has lawmaking authority."

https://www.thurstoncountywa.gov/departments/auditor/electio...

Yes, it's unlikely that people are illegally voting in person in large numbers. It is relatively easy to do so, and the risk is relatively low, if you approach it intelligently (e.g. vote as someone who is registered, but highly unlikely to vote -- even if they do vote, you're highly unlikely to be caught anyway). However, there's just no incentive for individuals to do so, because the reward is very low: each individual's vote is really worth very little, and an individual fraudulent voter does not benefit from it enough to counterbalance the risk.

On the other hand, there are other ways for people to steal elections. For example, you can steal mail-in ballots from mailboxes, fill them, and covertly drop them in. It's particularly easy to do in states where all ballots are mail-in by default. The risk-reward calculation is different, because now one organized person can cast dozens, or hundreds of fraudulent votes, instead of just one.

In other states, you don't even need to steal them: you can just knock on the door, ask people for ballots (or buy them, many people will happily sell their right to vote for $20, because it's worthless to them), fill them in, and drop them off completely in the open. Of course, the stealing/buying and filling in the ballots is illegal, but since this happens in private, it's much harder to detect and prosecute. That's why most states disallow dropping off votes for third parties, but some states inexplicably allow it.

There are multiple recent cases, where people were convicted for schemes like that, e.g State of Arizona v. Guillermina Fuentes, Texas v. Monica Mendez, Michigan v. Trenae Rainey, U.S. v. Kim Phuong Taylor, and more. Since these are only the cases where conviction was secured, the true number is much higher.

So... For each election, I have to register anew and the agency in charge has a backoffice is cross-checking this against... something? I guess they would first look if I was voting the last time? What if my birth certificate or whatever is from a different place. Do they assume I'm not risking using a forgery over politics (it's a fair assumption I would say)?

It's a trade-off that many USA states make willingly. Citizens have the right to vote, period^. It's not a "right to vote but only if you have an ID." Requiring an ID to vote, to me, is as ridiculous as requiring an ID to speak or practice a religion.

[^] except for the case of felony disenfranchisement laws, which I personally believe are a travesty

> Lack of such simple verification makes the potential investigations much more harder than they have to be

This can be argued for any hindrance to bureaucracy. On the balance you get a much more robust system, with fewer centralized fail-safes.

I am p sure a lot of those that aren't for it aren't for it because of access to said ID is gated behind money (or unreasonably out of the way), which would need to be fixed first.

I'm not supposed to vote for some other person too, but I could if spend some minimal amount of effort. The same applies to a birth certificate.

The document itself says that someone had a name listed there, or at least that the authorities who issued it believed so about 20 years ago. If anything, the voters roll itself is more reliable for that matter (somebody still believed the same facts more recently).

I mean, proof of possession is some level of assurance, which is better than nothing. Knowing my mothers maiden name and birth date is also some level of assurance (this of it, you don't know those about a random me in the internet, so you can't vote for me in the elections for the next 15 minutes at least). But what is a desired level of assurance for something so many people feel strongly about? Is it more or less compared to visiting porn websites, boarding a plane, drinking alcohol, crossing international border and driving a car on a public road?

I had a much longer comment here but I ended up scrapping it since it would make for too long of a discussion. I'll just quickly address a few specific things:

> added right before the election

I feel like it's not hard to counter-argue that the writing has been on the wall for decades and it's not a genuine surprise at this point.

> So the actual argument is not that there is link between race and going to dmv once in 10 years

IMO, it's probably better to make the the actual argument.

> DMV

This entire discussion appears to be over a red herring. You may be interested in my comment on the sibling thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47345614