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And some experts say that backers of tighter curbs on mail voting are correct on one point: Mail ballots are more prone to manipulation than ballots cast in person, even if the amount of fraud in either case is minuscule.

“When I go into the voting booth on Election Day, no one’s going to help me or whisper in my ear,” said Trey Grayson, an elections expert and Kentucky’s former Republican secretary of state. “When a ballot is mailed, I don’t know who’s around when it’s completed.”

But he added that mail voting has election security advantages, too. States that vote largely by mail have more accurate and up-to-date voter rolls — an anti-fraud goal that Republicans embrace — because mailing ballots to voters effectively double-checks addresses and shows which voters have moved. It also appears to increase participation. “I’ve always been really impressed that in off-year elections, states that have more voting by mail have a little better turnout,” Mr. Grayson said.

As for fraud risks, election experts say the biggest examples involve campaigns, not voters — most recently, in a 2018 House election in North Carolina where a Republican campaign worker directed a crew that falsely filled out and signed hundreds of ballots that had been sent to local residents.

That kind of organized fraud is very hard to conceal; signature checks and odd voting patterns quickly uncovered the North Carolina dodge. But fraud by individuals is hard, too: Signature checks also flagged attempts by two Pennsylvanians this year to request absentee ballots in the name of dead relatives.

Many Democrats say the Republican outrage over imagined fraud was completely predictable.

“They were building up to this storm, to the opportunity to cry fraud,” said Barbara Byrum, a Democrat who is the county clerk and chief election official in Ingham County, Mich., which includes most of the state capital, Lansing. “They were setting the stage for the conspiracy claims we’re hearing today.”