What To Believe About the 2020 Presidential Election

Reader Tom sent me this:

To test the integrity of the Dominion Voting System, a forensic analysis was done on the machines in Antrim County, Michigan, covering the recent election. A judge just allowed the results to be released. The allowable election error rate established by the Federal Election Commission guidelines is 1 in 250,000 ballots (.0008%) (sic). On these machines, the forensics team observed an error rate of 68.05%!!! My Democrat friends have been demanding FACTS regarding voter fraud. Don’t look here, you might stumble on one.

Considering that I personally have no direct access to the facts, I have to rely on others to hunt them up and report them fairly. And here’s where my problem with all this lies. I need to believe either that:

a) Every single one of the hundreds of judges (and senators, electors, state governors, Supreme Court justices not to mention many of the 460,000 election workers) who have looked at this are totally corrupt and dishonest people, and that you are essentially the only one with the truth …. or

b) The situation is essentially as it seems, i.e., Trump lost by 74 electoral and more that seven million popular votes.

Scottish philosopher David Hume told us, “We always disbelieve the greater miracle.”

Sorry, but I’m going with b).

Tom responds: Biden supposedly got 80 million votes, after virtually zero campaigning with handfuls of people at his appearances. Yet there was a certainty that he would win. The fix was in. Very low ratings when he appears on TV. Trump attracts millions whenever he appears on TV and multi-thousands when in person. At some point native logic kicks in.

(To which I reply) I’m not an expert on elections, but I would say:

The polls predicted this near perfectly (not that polls can’t be wrong).
Trump had big campaign rallies, largely because his core base are angry, highly animated people; Biden’s people are generally better educated and find chanting “lock her up” and “build that wall” to be gauche beyond words.
Biden didn’t hold in person rallies because of the pandemic and his concern for the health and safety of the American people.
Virtually all Democrats and plenty of Republicans were highly motivated to get Trump out of office, thus the record voter turnout.
“Certainly that he would win” doesn’t mean “the fix was in,” any more than it was when Nixon slaughtered McGovern in 1972.