Breaking down the 3 million illegal vote claim

[Fast Walker 52]

As well all know, Trump made this claim that 3 million people voted illegally in the presidential election (and of course they all voted Democrat, right?).

A blogger at RedState tries to defend his claim:
"Miller referred to the 2014 Washington Post study that indicated more than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 elections indicated they were registered to vote, and the Pew Research study that said approximately 24 million, or one out of every eight, voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate. Miller went on to say that the same Pew Research study notes that 2.5 million people have registrations in more than one state. These are studies and examples of where there have been issues of both voter fraud and illegal immigrants voting."

http://www.redstate.com/california_yankee/2016/11/28/team-trump-offers-evidence-for-millions-voting-illegally/

So there's really 3 claims here:

1) illegal immigrants voting when they shouldn't
2) inaccurate and expired voter registrations
3) registrations in more than one state

First off, importantly, there is no hard evidence or "proof" anywhere that there are large numbers of illegal votes being cast.

Second -- #2 & #3 are basically red herrings. There are always mistakes in voter registrations and our voting systems just do not efficiently weed out voters that have died or moved. There's simply no evidence that voter fraud is taking place in this way-- people using dead people to vote when they shouldn't and so forth. Particularly the cross state one is silly. It's hard enough to vote in one state, much less travel to a second state to vote? And a lot of duplicates are probably common names, as Greg Palast has shown. Unfortunately, these people are being removed wrongfully in the "crosscheck" program, which is true voter suppression.

The #1 is more serious, but it's really only supported by one controversial Wash Post article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/24/could-non-citizens-decide-the-november-election/?utm_term=.3632aca2e678

This article was based on one statistical study that said that non-citizens could vote. It's also been refuted by other studies.

Personally, I think it's hard to see undocumented immigrant or non-citizens voting in truly large numbers. Although ironically if they were, voter ID laws would not stop them since they have ID. But in general, undocumented immigrants don't want to risk getting in trouble, so what's the benefit for voting?

Now I suspect there are some "dreamers" who have grown up here but are not officially citizens that cast votes. But there's no way this is 3 million people, I doubt this is even one million people.

So basically the 3 million number is completely fabricated, and the bottom line is that Trump's claim has no factual basis, and obviously it was highly irresponsible for him as the winner and president elect to spread that sort of idea.