Stealing a presidential election requires an unrealistic level of planning, coordination and good luck.
Even before Election Day, Donald Trump cast doubts on Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots. The Supreme Court’s decision permitting the state to accept absentee ballots for several days after the election, he tweeted, “is a VERY dangerous one. It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating.” As soon as the election is over, he told reporters on Sunday, “we’re going in with our lawyers.” Republicans are already in court, challenging the count of some mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. But there is no rampant fraud going on in Pennsylvania, and any judge with integrity and intellectual honesty should recognize the claim for what it is: specious. Fraud on a scale to affect a presidential election, or even to tip one state, would require planning, coordination, good luck and a high tolerance for risk. The chances of pulling it off are extremely slim. Such a nefarious plot would require the foresight, many weeks or even months in advance, to know to focus the effort on Pennsylvania. The plotters might hedge their bets by targeting multiple states, but that just makes the effort more expensive, risky and difficult. A conspiracy to fix the 2020 election in Pennsylvania would also need to muster tens of thousands of votes. In 2016, almost 6.2 million Pennsylvanians cast ballots for the presidency. Donald Trump won by 44,292 votes,0.7 percent of the total. Suppose the conspirators somehow knew this year that Pennsylvania would be tied but for their efforts. For the sake of argument, let’s say they decided to marshal 62,000 fraudulent votes, roughly 1 percent of the 2016 total and twice the 0.5 percent margin that sets off an automatic recount. (Even that seems to cut things a little close.) How hard could it be to order up 62,000 illegal ballots? The chance that 62,000 Biden supporters in Pennsylvania would spontaneously vote with a second, illegal ballot, either in person or by mail, is effectively zero.
