While I agree that all protests and riots are a response to feeling disenfranchised or angry about a situation, it’s important to think of the cause in each case.
For BLM protests, the cause is partly real police violence that lots of people have experienced. Lots of people have this firsthand, negative experience with the police, and are frustrated that they cannot feel safe in the hands of people meant to protect them.
For the voter fraud protests, the cause is a propaganda and disinformation campaign. For months and even years, Trump has been saying that things are stollen from him, that the election would be stolen from him, etc. He really incensed this narrative of voter fraud with a lot of lies. The cause is not people’s firsthand experience of voter fraud: republicans were not turned away from the polls nor were their votes discarded. It’s that they were told by Trump and other republicans that if they loose elections, then it must be fraud.
The response, then, is totally different. In the one case, addressing the cause means to reform the police. In the other case, addressing the cause means... what? I would say it is addressing the propaganda campaign. This is what news orgs and social media sites have tried to do.
No matter how secure this election was, or how many policies got implemented, the election fraud claim would persist because the cause is propaganda, not evidence. People (even republicans) who know way more elections than I do say that this election was one of the most secure ever. The few instances of fraud that occur — and always occur in events of this scale — are hardly proof of a sinister campaign.
While I’ll agree to make voting as secure as possible (I’d support voter ID if it didn’t take 5 hours at the DMV just to be eligible to vote), that’s not really the narrative voter fraud protests are about. That’s why we push back when people try to say that the election was fraudulent: these folks are really trying to say that they should have won. They are not (primarily) trying to say that we should fix the handful of fraud instances that happened even though it wouldn’t change the result.
If I said “you’re right to be angry here,” I would be heard as saying, “you actually should have won.” Therefore, I must be honest and say “you’re wrong to be angry about this. The evidence of fraud will not address your anger about this loss.”
And let me be clear: I support trump folks right to protest because of their anger over loosing. But I cannot agree that it ought to be addressed as they say it should be.