NEVER ATTRIBUTE TO MALICE THAT WHICH MIGHT MORE EASILY BE UNDERSTOOD AS CARELESSNESS.

Under ordinary circumstances, the boffins at the news services monitor the election tallies as they come in, compare and contrast the results they are receiving with their understanding of indicator precincts, exit polling, and intuition, and they announce the presumptive winner.  George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley explains precisely why those announcements do not have the force of law.

We are finishing only the second of four stages in an election for president. After the voting stage, states began the tabulation stage. We will soon enter the canvass stage, in which local districts confirm their counts and face challenges or recounts. Finally, there is the certification stage, in which final challenges can be raised. In other words, Trump is not deceased yet. Biden has reason to claim his lead as the odds are heavily against Trump. One or two states could flip on a “Hail Mary” challenge. But Trump needs four of those to win in a feat that would hyperventilate Aaron Rogers.

Yet the public should welcome close scrutiny of these swing states. There are valid reasons to examine the figures based on the many unknowns in a new kind of election. The outcome will be determined by millions of mailed ballots in various states, some of which have never used such mailed ballots to this magnitude, and legitimate concerns were raised before the election.

I think the professor is referring to Aaron Rodgers, and sometimes it's possible to overcome a deficit that seems insurmountable, but that doesn't invalidate the rest of his analysis.

Under normal circumstances, the presidential vote-counters have the same information as the boffins at the networks, and they have similar mental models of the indicator precincts and probably the same sort of intuition.  These are not normal circumstances, though.  Each state has its own protocols for tabulating, canvassing (which can mean audits or internal recounts, depending on the margin and existing state provisions for automatic recounts,) certification (raising the bar for legal challenges and providing, in the case of the presidential election, the final totals to the state legislature for the appointment of electors.)  There's a lot at Jim Geraghty's recent column about how those things vary in the contested states.  The key lesson, dear reader, is this.  "President Trump has not conceded the race. This morning, you don’t need anyone to tell you how to feel about all this. You need someone to tell you the vote margin, the threshold for mandatory recounts, what to expect if there are recounts, and the status of the Trump campaign’s various lawsuits about the vote counts."  That's all at the column.

The president is under no obligation, ever, to concede.  It's done as a courtesy, and generally, once sufficient returns are public for the news anchors to call a winner, and the losing candidate's staff have given him the bad news, the concession speech from one hotel precedes the victory announcement at another, and the punditry moves on to handicapping the presidential race to come.  Once the tabulating, canvassing, certification, litigating, and transmission of the results to the legislatures is done, it's generally procedurally clear -- on a few occasions the result has been litigated into the House and Senate -- who will next be inaugurated, and if the incumbent has lost, it is time to call the movers, acknowledgement of defeat or not.

If there is going to be litigation, though, it ought be treated seriously.  I'm skeptical of some of the litigation.  "Attorney Sidney Powell claims that her team has found 450,000 ballots with only votes for Biden and no down-ballot selections made. Powell suggests that this number of single vote ballots is suspect, and indicative in part of 'abject fraud' that she says flipped the election to Biden."  Sorry, that's in a class with paying for a false Hawaiian birth certificate for Barack Hussein Obama in 1961.  If you're going to fake a birth certificate, mightn't a more anodyne name make more sense?  Likewise, if you're going to fake a ballot, why not help more of your team?  Here's Mr Geraghty.

The Democrats who allegedly nefariously “fixed” the Pennsylvania elections in favor of Joe Biden forgot to ensure Democratic victories in the race for auditor general, state treasurer, half of the state’s U.S. House seats, a majority of the State Senate seats, or a majority of State House seats. In fact, as of this writing, it appears that Republicans may have expanded their state house majority; they’re currently leading Democratic incumbents in three races not yet called. This must be the most slipshod, sloppy, laziest vote-fixing conspiracy ever.

The recriminations among Democrat activists are going to be spectacular.  The party has long been more focused on the presidency than it is on other offices, and what likely happened is get-out-the-vote operations mentioned the presidency, but didn't offer any advice on the auditor general, State House delegate, or dog-catcher.  (Incidentally, let me throw a challenge flag on that talk of network decision desks suppressing votes with early calls.  Decision desks focus on the presidency, the senators, governors, if there are any, and maybe the size of the House caucuses.  They don't spend any time on state houses or auditor general or school board representatives, or the dog-catcher.  Stay in line, if only for your neighbor's sake, or to convince your neighbor to chill.)

Had there been fraud, wouldn't it be more likely that some substantial fraction of the fraudulent votes included the straight ticket, or at least some smattering of ticket-splitting so as to look authentic?