How accurate are claims that the US election is rigged?

Electoral fraud is affecting the outcome of the election

Question: How accurate are claims that the US election is rigged?
Position1 of 3›: Claims that the US election is rigged are very accurate
Argument1 of 6›: Electoral fraud is affecting the outcome of the election

Claims that the US election is rigged are very accurate. Increased postal voting due to the coronavirus pandemic will lead to tremendous electoral fraud.

The argument

The Trump campaign has often claimed that increased postal voting due to the coronavirus pandemic will lead to tremendous electoral fraud. His campaign has claimed that voters may receive inaccurate absentee ballots (ballots for those voting outside of their state). Trump may be able to declare victory on election night, based on the tally of in-person voting while many postal ballots would still need to be counted in key states. The election could in fact be rigged for Trump as the public may be confused about the election, and Trump may be able to challenge postal ballots (and even throw some out in key states).

Premises

[P1]Proponents cite the Trump campaign's claim that the surge in pandemic-era postal voting will produce tremendous electoral fraud, including inaccurate absentee ballots. [P2] They argue Trump could declare victory on election night from the in-person tally while postal ballots in key states remain uncounted, then challenge or discard those ballots amid public confusion. [C] On this reasoning, proponents claim electoral fraud is affecting the outcome, so claims that the US election is rigged are very accurate.

Counter-arguments

The claims of the Trump campaign are often made without much evidence, and are therefore questionable at best. The error of inaccurate absentee ballots ended up being due to a technology malfunction as a high-speed scanner stopped working. This meant that more than 250,000 absentee ballots, for those not voting in person in their state, sent out were inaccurate. This was simply due to an error rather than targeted electoral fraud.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise reports a campaign's claim rather than evidence for it, as the argument itself concedes by attributing the allegation to the Trump campaign rather than to any finding. The inaccurate-absentee-ballot episode it alludes to was traced to a high-speed scanner failure affecting a large batch of mailings — a processing error, which is the opposite of a scheme. [Rejecting P2] The scenario described is a prediction about what a candidate might attempt after the vote, not a description of fraud affecting the count. It also undercuts the position it serves: if the danger is a losing candidate contesting lawfully cast ballots, the wrong identified is an attempt to overturn a result rather than a rigged election — and the premise supplies no mechanism by which valid ballots could actually be discarded.