wouldn't part of discovery be . . .
Sort of. But lot of that is the initial evidence you already have, and that stuff is statistical in nature. Judges don't tend give large weight to arguments based on statistics. Science very much does.
A clearer hypothetical example would be this.
You claim vote fraud and have a signed affidavit of a person who witnessed workers carrying in a bunch of fake ballots and running them through the machine. That still might get rejected as insufficient evidence. But let's say a judge let's it proceed.
Now you can do discovery. You ask for video of the area inside and out, you ask for video from neighboring businesses, you depose the person who allegedly did it, you might ask for phone records, bank statements, emails, you depose everyone else around who might have seen it, you ask for records from the machine that show what votes came in when, you ask for the actual paper, you get an expert to testify whether or not those ballots are fake (such as never being folded, or wrong paper, or marks printed on a printer instead of being hand marked with a pen), if you find suspicious phone call or e-mail or check, you depose folks associated with that, and so on.
If none of that shows anything, you are probably going to lose. But if it shows a bunch of stuff, now you have solid evidence.
take your pick, you need proof that thousands of people perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands were part of the conspiracy.
No. Your claim might be that a bunch of votes at location A are fraudulent. You need to show compelling enough evidence of that. Could be you show that one person did pump in a bunch of fake ballots through the machine. You don't need to show every other aspect involved.
what you call discovery is just an excuse for the lack of proof. you can request all that info or find it on the internet.
No. There is data you can't get on your own. Discovery is your ability to get stuff that is otherwise confidential or unavailable without court order. Depositions, phone records, confidential video, emails, bank statements, the actual paper ballots -- stuff like that.