Readers of this platform are almost certainly hearing the propaganda that, while there is election fraud (if fraud is admitted at all), it’s insignificant, and therefore, cannot possibly determine the outcome of an election.
The propaganda bases its claim that election fraud is negligible on successfully prosecuted cases. As a criminologist, I can tell you that the ratio between crime in the United States and the number of crimes successfully prosecuted is striking. Even when considering only crimes reported to the police, a relatively small proportion result in successful prosecution.
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), in recent years, only a little more than 40 percent of violent crimes and 30 percent of property crimes have been reported to police—and that isn’t counting the crimes victims do not report to the US Census Bureau. Of those crimes reported to the police (recorded in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report), only around 15 percent result in arrest or clearance, i.e., are delivered to the next phase of the criminal justice process. Only around 10 percent lead to prosecution—and this varies dramatically by jurisdiction and offense type. Less than ten percent end in a conviction.
Obviously, one would have to be naïve in the extreme to believe that the frequency of criminal offending in America reduces the number of convicted criminals. Yet Democrats want the public to be similarly naïve about election integrity. But as we see with crime in America, just because there are a few successfully prosecuted cases of election fraud doesn’t mean that that’s all the election fraud there is.
Americans need to think about election integrity in the following way: What is the likelihood that somebody’s going to break into my house at night? Statistically small. Yet we lock our doors at night (especially after Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood). Some of us get a Ring system so we can see who’s at the door. We established organized police forces in the nineteenth century to respond to home invasions and other crimes. Many of us keep firearms to protect ourselves from home invaders. We do this because we know that, while home invasion is unlikely, it is not only possible, but happens a lot. Including burglaries, there are 1.5 million or more home invasions annually in the US. Only about 11–14 percent of burglaries reported to police result in an arrest or similar action. Of that number, a substantial portion are not prosecuted, and thus there is no possibility of conviction.
When we look at the 2020 election, we’re looking at a crime scene. This is why a judge signed the warrant the FBI used to seize 2020 ballots in Fulton County, George. Democrats fight investigations into that crime (they want those ballots back), and furthermore, seek to prevent America from locking its door to election fraud, thwarting the effective policing of election fraud. This is obvious in the Democratic Party’s vehement opposition to the SAVE Act, which would compel states to require a photo ID to vote. Democrats characterize photo IDs as “Jim Crow 2.0”—even though more than 70 percent of blacks support photo IDs.
In November 2024, Harris only won 19 of 50 states. Yet she won more popular votes than Trump did in 2020, even though Trump increased his popular vote total in 2020 over 2016 by around 11 million votes. No states shifted towards blue in 2024. They either shifted red or remained status quo. Yet Trump won less than 50 percent of the popular vote. Harris’s vote total of 75 million is artificial, just as Biden’s vote total of 81 million votes was artificial. Mainstream polling is engineered to reflect these numbers to make them appear real.
Consider that, in 2024, of the states with strict photo ID (Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin), Trump won all of them. Of those states with strict non-photo ID (Arizona, North Dakota, and Wyoming), Trump won all of them. Of those states with photo ID requirements (Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas), Trump won all but one (Rhode Island was the sole exception).
Yet Trump won only half of those states where ID was requested but photo not required (Alaska, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia), while Harris won the rest (Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Washington). Of the states where no document is required to vote in person, Trump won only two of them (Nevada and Pennsylvania). Harris won the other 14 (California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Mexico, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont).
Democrats will argue that Trump won states with strict voter ID rules because strict voter ID rules suppress the minority vote. If this were true, then why are photo IDs required for virtually every other activity in which black Americans engage? Americans are required to show ID not only to access secure locations, but for air travel, banking and financial transactions, driving, employment verification, restricted purchases (alcohol, prescription drugs, tobacco, etc.), and public assistance (which blacks disproportionately access). Does having to show ID in those cases resemble Jim Crow laws? It is an absurd argument. We know it is absurd because there is no effort by Democrats to eliminate the requirement for a photo ID for those activities.
Democratic states are not only fighting election integrity, but are engaged in extreme gerrymandering of states to effectively lock out Republicans from the electoral system. They say they are doing this because Republicans are, even though Republicans are engaged in reapportionment in light of population change in those states. For Democrats, what should be secure is left insecure, what should be open is closed, and they lie about the reasons why.
Democrats cite the Tenth Amendment and the Constitution to claim that election rules are determined by the states. These claims are also lies. Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution reads: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” The Tenth Amendment cannot prevent Congress from acting under the Elections Clause, because Congress’s authority to regulate the times, places, and manner of federal elections is itself a specific constitutional grant that supersedes general state-authority claims under the Tenth Amendment.
If the SAVE Act is not passed into law, Americans will have good reason to suspect that, if Democrats prevail in the 2026 midterm elections, the popular will not have been conveyed by a democratic process. Democrats will claim, as they did in 2020, that the 2026 election was the most secure in history. But they cannot claim this if they fight the very measures that would make them secure. Democrats tell us that Republican doubts about election integrity represent a grave threat to democracy. In reality, the threat lies in failing to secure our elections. If Democrats want Americans to have confidence in our democracy, they must pass the SAVE Act. But they won’t, because their electoral success depends on insecure elections. They tell us that they must win or lose our democracy. But weakening our democracy is how Democrats win.
freedom and reason 
Grok doesn’t seem to agree with you. here is its assessment of your piece in terms of veracity of claims and the soundness of the arguments presented.________________________________________Assessment of Veracity
The piece presents a series of claims about U.S. election integrity, drawing analogies to crime rates and home security, while asserting that Democratic vote totals in 2020 and 2024 were artificially inflated due to fraud. It also correlates election outcomes with voter ID laws and criticizes Democratic opposition to measures like the SAVE Act. Below, I evaluate the key factual claims based on available data from official sources (e.g., FBI, NCVS, FEC, Pew Research, NCSL) and expert analyses. Overall, while some statistics on crime and voter ID support are accurate, claims of widespread election fraud lack supporting evidence and have been repeatedly debunked by election officials, courts, and non-partisan experts. Instances of fraud are rare and have not affected outcomes. 1. Claims on Crime Reporting and Prosecution Rates
Piece’s Claim: Only ~40% of violent crimes and ~30% of property crimes are reported to police (per NCVS). Of reported crimes (per FBI UCR), ~15% result in arrest/clearance, ~10% in prosecution, and <10% in conviction. This is used to argue that low prosecutions for election fraud do not mean low incidence.
Veracity: Mostly accurate but generalized. The NCVS (Bureau of Justice Statistics) shows that in 2023–2024, ~40–45% of violent victimizations and ~30–35% of property victimizations were reported to police, aligning with the piece. Clearance rates (arrests or resolutions) for reported crimes vary: FBI data indicates ~15–20% for violent crimes and lower for property (~10–15%). Prosecution and conviction rates are indeed low overall (~10% or less for many offenses), varying by jurisdiction and crime type. However, this analogy assumes election fraud mirrors other crimes in scale, which is not supported—election fraud is exceedingly rare compared to violent or property crimes (see below).
Soundness Note: The logic holds that low prosecutions do not prove zero incidence, but it does not provide evidence for widespread fraud in elections.
2. Home Invasion/Burglary Statistics
Piece’s Claim: ~1.5 million home invasions (including burglaries) annually; 11–14% of reported burglaries result in arrest.
Veracity: Accurate. FBI data estimates ~1–1.1 million burglaries per year (down from peaks in the 1980s/1990s). Arrest rates for reported burglaries are consistently below 13–15%, per FBI and Council on Criminal Justice reports.
Soundness Note: The analogy to election security (e.g., precautions despite low individual risk) is reasonable for advocating preventive measures like voter ID, but it does not prove fraud occurred.
3. Fulton County, Georgia, Ballot Seizure
Piece’s Claim: A judge signed a warrant for the FBI to seize 2020 ballots in Fulton County as part of investigating a “crime scene.” Democrats are fighting to get them back and oppose investigations.
Veracity: Partially accurate but misleading. In January 2026, the FBI executed a warrant to seize ~700 boxes of 2020 ballots and records from Fulton County as part of a probe into potential “deficiencies or defects” (e.g., missing ballot images and vote count discrepancies). The warrant was approved by a magistrate judge. Fulton County (Democratic-led) challenged the seizure in court, arguing it showed “callous disregard” for constitutional rights and seeking the materials’ return, but this was not framed as opposition to all investigations—rather, concerns over federal overreach and voter privacy. The case was dismissed after the seizure, with no public findings of fraud yet. No widespread fraud has been proven in Georgia’s 2020 election.
Soundness Note: The piece implies proven criminality, but the probe is ongoing and focuses on procedural issues, not confirmed fraud.
4. SAVE Act and Democratic Opposition
Piece’s Claim: Democrats oppose the SAVE Act (requiring photo ID and proof of citizenship), calling it “Jim Crow 2.0,” despite >70% of Black Americans supporting photo IDs. This opposition enables fraud.
Veracity: Accurate on opposition and polling. The SAVE Act (H.R. 8281) requires documentary proof of citizenship (e.g., passport, birth certificate) for federal voter registration. Democrats and civil rights groups (e.g., Brennan Center, ACLU) oppose it, arguing it could disenfranchise ~21 million eligible voters without easy access to such documents (disproportionately affecting people of color, the elderly, and low-income groups). Some Democrats have indeed called similar voter ID laws “Jim Crow 2.0.” Polls (e.g., Pew, CNN) show 76–83% of Black Americans support voter ID requirements, with overall U.S. support at 80–85%.
Soundness Note: The claim that opposition proves intent to enable fraud is unsubstantiated speculation. Opposition centers on access barriers, not fraud promotion. Noncitizen voting is rare (e.g., <0.0001% per audits).
5. 2024 Election Results and “Artificial” Votes
Piece’s Claim: Harris won 19 states but >74 million popular votes (Trump’s 2020 total), despite no states shifting blue and Trump increasing his vote by ~11 million from 2016. Harris’s 75 million and Biden’s 81 million (2020) are “artificial”; polling was engineered to match.
Veracity: Numbers mostly accurate, but fraud claims false. Official FEC/AP results: Trump won 312 electoral votes (31 states + ME-02), Harris 226 (19 states + DC + NE-02). Trump: 77.3 million (49.8%); Harris: 75 million (48.3%). 2020: Biden 81.3 million; Trump 74.2 million. Trump’s 2024 increase (~3 million from 2020) aligns with population growth and turnout. No states shifted from red to blue (Trump flipped 6 blue states: AZ, GA, MI, NV, PA, WI). However, no evidence supports “artificial” votes—election officials (including Republicans) and CISA declared 2024 secure with no widespread fraud. 2020 claims were debunked by 60+ lawsuits, audits, and Trump’s own officials. Polling errors occurred but were not “engineered” for fraud; they reflected sampling issues.
Soundness Note: High Democratic votes in blue strongholds (e.g., CA, NY) explain totals without fraud. Lower 2024 turnout (~66% vs. 2020’s 67%) accounts for differences.
6. Correlation Between Voter ID Laws and 2024 Outcomes
Piece’s Claim: Trump won nearly all states with strict photo/non-photo ID requirements, but fewer in lax-ID states, implying fraud in the latter. Democrats claim strict ID suppresses minority votes, but this is absurd since ID is required for other activities.
Veracity: Correlation accurate, causation not. Using NCSL/Ballotpedia classifications (as of 2024/2025):ID CategoryStates (Examples)Trump Wins (2024)Strict PhotoAR, GA, IN, KS, MS, NC, OH, TN, WIAll 9Strict Non-PhotoAZ, ND, WYAll 3Photo Required (Non-Strict)AL, FL, ID, LA, MI, MO, MT, NE, RI, SC, SD, TX11/12 (lost RI)ID Requested (Non-Photo)AK, CO, CT, DE, IA, KY, NH, OK, UT, VA, WA, WV6/12 (won AK, IA, KY, OK, UT, WV)No Document RequiredCA, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, MN, NM, NJ, NY, OR, PA, VT (and others like NV)2/14+ (won NV, PA)Trump performed better in stricter-ID states, which are often Republican-leaning (e.g., Southern/red states). ID is indeed required for activities like banking or flying, but critics argue voter ID laws add barriers without preventing significant fraud.
Soundness Note: Correlation does not imply fraud; demographic/political leanings explain patterns. No evidence ties lax ID to fraud in 2024.
7. Gerrymandering and Constitutional Claims
Piece’s Claim: Democrats engage in “extreme gerrymandering” to lock out Republicans; they lie about the 10th Amendment, but the Elections Clause allows Congress to regulate federal elections.
Veracity: Partially accurate. Both parties gerrymander (e.g., Republicans in TX/NC, Democrats in IL/NY), per non-partisan analyses. The Elections Clause (Art. I, Sec. 4) supersedes the 10th Amendment for federal elections, allowing Congress to preempt state rules—correct interpretation per Supreme Court precedents.
Soundness Note: Accusation of Democratic hypocrisy is opinion; both sides cite states’ rights selectively.
8. Overall Evidence of Widespread Fraud in 2020/2024
Piece’s Claim: Implies massive fraud boosted Democratic votes.
Veracity: False. Heritage Foundation database (conservative source) lists ~1,500 proven fraud cases since 1982 (~0.0001% of votes). Brennan Center/AP investigations: <475 cases in 2020 battlegrounds; none outcome-changing. 2024: No evidence of systemic fraud per CISA, FBI, and officials. Courts dismissed 60+ 2020 challenges for lack of evidence.
Soundness Note: The piece relies on speculation, correlations, and analogies without direct proof. It assumes fraud where none is documented, undermining its logical coherence.
Assessment of Soundness
The piece is logically structured but partisan and speculative. Analogies to crime/home security effectively argue for precautions (e.g., voter ID), but they overextend to claim unproven fraud. Correlations (e.g., ID laws and wins) ignore confounding factors like state demographics. Fraud accusations lack evidence, contradicting official findings. A non-partisan view: Elections are secure, fraud rare; measures like SAVE Act could enhance integrity but risk disenfranchisement. If the goal is truth-seeking, the piece promotes doubt without substantiation.
Resorting to AI is an interesting way to attempt to rebut an argument. Grok’s response is data-dense, technically polished, and sounds authoritative. But it fails to engage my essay’s core logic, which concerns asymmetries of proof, epistemology, incentives (electoral advantage), and why elections are treated differently from every other security-sensitive system. In short, Grok attempts to rebut a claim the essay wasn’t actually making and, in so doing, sidesteps the problem the essay raises.
This is one of Grok’s shortcomings; it struggles with comparisons and extrapolations. Moreover, the chatbot draws from questionable sources. Not just in the case, but routinely. Grok admits that it is biased in that it produces responses that support the progressive narrative and defense stance because progressive ideology dominates the prevailing sense-making sources from which it scrapes its data. Musk has revised the program numerous times to get around this problem, but, at this point, it appears to be an intractable one.
Let me steelman my own position (I don’t trust you would, frankly). You would agree that we did not first require evidence of widespread unauthorized access to nuclear weapons before implementing elaborate safeguards. We put those systems in place precisely because the risk existed and the potential harm was catastrophic. We recognized that, just as some would cheat in an election if they could, some bad actors might like to get their fingers on the buttons that launched missiles. People saying that we don’t need security systems around either nuclear weapons or voting warrant suspicion. Why would anybody not want security systems around nuclear weapons or voting?
There is a lot of disagreement over how many accidents involving firearms occur every year, but knowing that there are some, we have safety measures around firearms. Even if there were no documented accidents, we can imagine how accidents might occur, and therefore, safety measures around firearms make sense. It’s not hard to imagine how people can cheat in elections where there is no voter ID. They can vote multiple times in different precincts. They can vote if they are not citizens. They can vote if they are not of age. They can vote as someone else. Photo IDs can reduce the likelihood of all of these possible ways voters could cheat.
Preventive security is justified not by documented failures or a small number of failures arbitrarily deemed insignificant, but by the possibilities and consequences of failure if safeguards are absent, which I illustrate with the crime-to-conviction ratio analogy. We see the same thing when queer activists say that men in women’s sports is not a big deal because there are so few men (trans women) in women’s sports. But if men in women’s sports is unfair because men have a competitive advantage, then it doesn’t matter how many men are competing in women’s sports—or even if that number is zero. Moreover, and more to the point, we require physical examinations to ensure that there are no unfair competitive advantages. We presume most of those who claim to be women are. But there are some who are not—or there could be. The safety measures are for them.
The distinction between risk and realized harm is crucial here. There is the harm caused by voter fraud itself, insofar as it thwarts the popular will. In addition, as with the gap between crime and conviction, there is likely more harm than has been conclusively identified, especially since electoral systems are designed to make fraud difficult to detect. This design, combined with institutional incentives that may discourage aggressive investigation, limits what we can confidently observe. Beyond these realized and suspected harms (of course, my essay contains speculation), there is also the forward-looking risk that, absent adequate security measures, individuals who should not have access to the electoral process may nonetheless influence outcomes.
Locking one’s door at night operates on the same logic—we do not wait to be victimized before acknowledging the risk; we act in advance because the cost of being wrong is far greater than the cost of precaution. Type I and Type II errors are directly relevant here because election integrity systems must balance the risk of false positives against false negatives. A Type I error in this context would involve incorrectly identifying legitimate votes or voters as fraudulent, thereby disenfranchising lawful participants and undermining democratic legitimacy. A Type II error, by contrast, consists of failing to detect actual instances of voter fraud, allowing illegitimate votes to influence outcomes without correction. Because fraud is presumed rare (the point of my analogy), difficult to observe (made even more difficult by less secure systems), and costly to investigate (which is the excuse for not auditing or canvassing), those who want a lax voting system use these claims to prioritize minimizing Type I errors. This is analogous to the rustling of bushes being attributed to the wind and not a bear. But doing so necessarily increases the risk of Type II errors. And it is better to presume a bear than the wind if one does not want to be eaten.
Obviously, the choice of where to set this balance reflects normative judgments about which kinds of harm—wrongful exclusion (which I debunk in my essay, and Grok does not address that—or perhaps that was left out of the prompt) or wrongful inclusion (for which there is evidence and almost certainly occurs more than is detected or else one is left arguing that we have accounted for every case of election fraud)—are considered more damaging to the democratic process. I come down on the side of election integrity. The same reason I lock my doors at night. And worry about the nuclear codes. And bears.
Here is one response that Grok gave to your reply.
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Assessment of the Author’s Response
The author’s rebuttal is a thoughtful, philosophically framed defense that shifts focus from empirical claims of widespread fraud to broader principles: epistemic humility about undetected harms, the precautionary principle in high-stakes systems, asymmetric incentives in elections, and the ethics of Type I (false positives: disenfranchising valid voters) versus Type II (false negatives: allowing invalid votes) errors. It steelmans the original essay effectively, avoiding strawmen while critiquing my prior analysis for allegedly missing these layers. However, it overrelies on analogies that don’t fully map to elections, downplays the evidentiary threshold for “risk” justifying systemic changes, and treats fraud’s undetectability as a feature rather than a testable hypothesis. I’ll evaluate veracity (factual accuracy) and soundness (logical coherence) point-by-point, drawing on updated data from official audits, nonpartisan studies, and databases like Heritage (conservative) and Brennan Center (progressive-leaning) to represent distributions of evidence.electionfraud.heritage.orgbrennancenter.org1. Core Logic: Asymmetries of Proof, Incentives, and Epistemology
2. Analogies to Nuclear Safeguards, Firearms, and Sports
3. Preventive Security vs. Documented Harm; Crime-to-Conviction Ratio
4. Type I vs. Type II Errors and Normative Balance
5. SAVE Act and Broader Claims
Overall Soundness: The response elevates philosophy over data, validly questioning naivety but ignoring that evidence (audits, prosecutions) bounds the “unknown.” Fraud exists (isolated, prosecutable); prevention via ID/citizenship checks is defensible for integrity. But claims of “artificial” votes or unaddressed suppression lack substantiation—2024 was secure per officials. Truth-seeking favors measured reforms (e.g., free IDs, RLAs) over unsubstantiated overhaul. Both sides’ doubts erode trust; evidence builds it.aljazeera.com
I will respond to this and the other, but I have no time to argue with Grok. Audits and prosecutions do not exclude unknown fraud. Audits and prosecutions only bear on the information they produce. If you don’t audit, then you don’t find fraud. The rest of the output is trees for the forest. The question is risk. If you have a leaky system, you risk leaks. If you want to keep a leaky system, then it’s leaks you want.
Grok also provided an alternative response too.
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This is a serious, non-frivolous argument. Many “fraud is rare” dismissals do sidestep it.
Where the Position Weakens
The precautionary principle is not absolute. It must be proportional to the actual risk and weighed against the costs of the precaution. Here’s where evidence matters:
Incentives and Epistemology
You’re right that electoral incentives can discourage aggressive investigation, especially in one-party jurisdictions. Decentralization is both a strength (harder to rig everything) and weakness (patchy enforcement). However, the same incentive problem exists on the other side: claims of massive fraud are politically useful for motivating bases and justifying restrictions. Truth-seeking requires acknowledging both.Agreement and Way Forward
We agree on far more than it may appear:
The optimal approach is targeted, high-leverage safeguards that minimize both error types: better real-time voter roll maintenance, mandatory risk-limiting audits, same-day registration with robust ID checks, severe penalties, and standardized signature verification. These achieve most of the risk reduction without the massive collateral disenfranchisement of full documentary proof-of-citizenship mandates.
Your essay raises a legitimate and under-discussed point about asymmetric proof burdens and risk tolerance. The “fraud is rare, therefore do nothing” dismissal is intellectually lazy. But so is “because some risk exists and harm would be severe, we must accept very high costs to mitigate it.” The hard work is calibrating the response to the actual threat level.
I’d be happy to dive deeper into any specific analogy, study, or policy mechanism. This is a genuinely important debate.
The “fraud is rare, therefore do nothing” dismissal is intellectually lazy. But so is “because some risk exists and harm would be severe, we must accept very high costs to mitigate it.” The hard work is calibrating the response to the actual threat level.
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The risks of mitigating risk do not outweigh the risks of a leaky system. That’s the bottom line.