The NY Times once wrote an editorial warning that Chuck Hagel would use his voting machine connections and ownership to flip votes from Gore or Kerry to George Bush. See the movie "The Campaign" where the Moch Brothers do that to flip votes to Cam Brady. It's fiction, but amusing.
Al Gore claimed he won Florida and it went to the Supreme Court, where a suspicious 5-4 ruling gave the election to George W. Bush.
According to a University of Chicago research paper, Georgia ranks 8th among the most corrupt states, based on how many public officials have been convicted of corruption. This year, Republicans produced a videotape of the vote count ending in Georgia with Republican poll watchers told to leave, and when they did, the vote count continued with strange boxes of votes, which were counted without poll watchers.
There are election "irregularities" regularly and some voter fraud somewhere every major election, especially when the election is close and when a little fraud will tip an election.
Republicans do it, as do Democrats. It happens. One of the best or maybe only advantage of the electoral college is that the incentive for fraud and the ability to check for fraud is minimized to a handful of swing states. If we had purely popular vote, there would be an incentive to engage in voter fraud in every precinct with every vote contested.
Republicans have routinely been accused of voter suppression, usually with black or student voters. Democrats routinely accused of having illegal aliens or convicted felons vote, and also suppressing military or elderly votes.
There does need to be major evidence, because we generally allow some fraud. In economics, they have journal papers on the optimal level of theft or fraud. At some point it's not worth stopping all fraud. It's too costly to prevent all fraud or correct it. Jimmy Carter went to Egypt as an observer of their election and came back congratulating them on a relatively fair election although there was some obvious voter fraud. Relatively fair is about the best we can do or are willing to do.
Every case or state is different. Republicans may or may not have a good or successful argument for Georgia voter fraud, although the past two Atlanta mayor elections involved similar voter fraud claims. The use of absentee ballots does create another avenue for increased voter fraud, particularly with ballots mailed to deceased voters. Occasionally people are prosecuted for filling out their deceased spouse's ballot and mailing it back as if it were a valid vote. That probably happened more often this year, although the deceased voters tend to be about half Democrat and half Republican.
There are clues and signs of fraud, such as inexplicably different exit polls compared to the official vote count. A University of Pennsylvania study claimed it was statistically impossible to explain the disparity in Ohio where Bush won over Kerry, yet exit polls were the opposite. At some point the disparity is beyond the realm of a statistical error.
Gore had a legal right to challenge results in Florida. Trump has the right to do the same in Georgia. Both legal challenges may end up failing or we may get another 5-4 suspicious Supreme Court ruling. The winner usually claims it was a fair election and the loser claims it wasn't. But we have had stolen elections before, such as Hayes over Tilden, and Republican voter suppression of Southern votes post Civil War.
Chicago economist Stephen Levitt has written on cheating in general, such as seemingly religious Shinto Sumo wrestlers throwing matches and teachers faking test score results to get bonuses. See the movie "Bad Teacher" Georgia's Atlanta had a major similar teacher's scandal. We trust teachers, but when the incentive and motive are strong enough, people cheat. Levitt noticed that the teachers would leave test answers the same in most of the test answers where students often missed easy questions, and then change the last part of the test getting much harder questions correct. The students hadn't finished the test and left the end questions blank, allowing the teachers to fill them in. Something similar may happen in voter fraud, where the suspicious ballots only voted for president and left other offices blank. Ticket splitting is rare. Most people just vote a straight party ticket.
