The Myth of Voter Fraud?

Wisconsin got caught in the unfolding Corona Virus shut-downs that have turned the entire country inside out, so wanted to allow people more voting options to adapt to stay at home orders, absentee ballots being late due to government shutdowns from stay at home orders and the other Covid issues that have turned normal routines upside down.  The Republican dominated legislature challenged the idea in court and won, alleging it would create opportunities for voter fraud.  So all the voters in Milwaukee, a city that normally has about 175 polling places, had to vote in 5 polling locations.  That's the stuff of comic satire, not reality.

The studies I find on the internet that are not commissioned by partisan Republican think tanks suggest that voter fraud is vanishingly rare, although clerical errors by bureacrats are more common.  One comprehensive look at voter fraud found that fraud occurs in about .00003 to .00025 percent of the cases.  Another study found 31 cases of confirmed fraud in 1 Billion ballots cast.  Your chances of getting struck by lightening are higher than the chance of voter fraud occuring.

What tips me toward being pretty confident this cure is far worse than the disease is that the Republican leaning think tanks such as the Heritage foundation focus on anecdotal anecdotal instances of fraud, and then suggest that since they only found these few cases there must be way more.  They make no attempt to figure out if fraud actually changes elections, they just raise suspicions.

Also, curiously I couldn't find much of anything on the internet suggesting the bureacrats who handle voting believe fraud is a big problem, even bureacrats in deeply Red States.

Based on the data I have seen it seems to me fraud is so vanishingly rare making it harder to vote benefits no one but a minority party who wants to depress the vote.

Claims of fraud are pretty common after elections - poor losers sure that voters couldn't have picked another candidate over them. Verified fraud is very rare.  But the President of this country and the Republican party see voter fraud as such a big issue that piles of bills the House sent to the Senate sit unvoted on in the Senate while they rail about voter fraud.

I just wish those Republicans who actually value Democracy would step up and object to their parties blatent win at all costs strategy's.  Republicans have a majority on the Supreme Court and probably will have for some time.  They can take run to the Supreme Court if there are real instances of fraud affecting Republicans and be assured of winning.  The don't need to cheat to win.