• Vote totals: “I got 74 million votes, the largest in the history of a sitting president,” Mr. Trump said Sunday. It’s 11 million more than in 2016. Yet he lost to Mr. Biden, who Mr. Trump said “did not get 16 million more votes than Barack Hussein Obama.”
What’s unbelievable? The electorate grows. Since 2012, the voting-eligible population has risen by 17 million, according to estimates by the U.S. Elections Project. Turnout in 2020 was historic, helped by expanded absentee voting. If enthusiasm was also high, perhaps it’s because Donald Trump has been a polarizing President and drove Democratic as well as Republican turnout. As for the failure of bellwether states, they’re predictive until they’re not. Florida and Ohio have trended red for years.
• Poll watchers: Judges have dismissed affidavits submitted by the Trump camp as “rife with speculation and guess-work” and “inadmissible as hearsay.” Other claims made in public circulate largely without being tested. A poll watcher from Delaware County, Pa., alleged last week, without giving any evidence, that 47 USB cards used in the election “are missing, and they’re nowhere to be found.” Where’s the proof? “We are aware of these allegations,” says Laureen Hagan, the chief elections clerk in Delaware County. “They are false. All votes on all scanners have been accounted for.”
• Dominion: On Sunday, Mr. Trump called Dominion voting systems, used in dozens of states, “garbage machinery.” But the totals from Georgia’s hand recount closely matched the results from its scanners. How does Mr. Trump explain that? In an op-ed for these pages, Dominion’s CEO denied the “bizarre” claim that his company is tied to Hugo Chávez. Third-party labs, he said, “perform complete source-code reviews on every federally certified tabulation system.”
