Here's the key to an ultimate Trump victory

President Trump's campaign is rightly pursuing challenges to the results of the 2020 presidential election in several battleground states. Meanwhile, the conservative media are shining a bright light on election fraud and irregularities, from dead voters, to chicanery at the post office, to faulty voting machine software, to outright ballot-box stuffing.

All of these stories cast doubt on the legitimacy of Joe Biden's "victory," and, if sufficient proof can be assembled in the form of witness statements, statistical analysis and documentary evidence, Biden's supposed win may yet be overturned. If it is, a strong argument can be made that the electoral votes of the relevant states should be changed, or they should be thrown out altogether. If that happens, the Electoral College may produce no majority for either candidate. Then, the next president would be chosen by the Constitution's Plan B: The House of Representatives, voting by state delegation, would decide. Given the fact that Republicans control most of those delegations, Trump would be reelected. We would be rid of Joe Biden once and for all!

This, of course, is the outcome millions of us hope for. How can we bring it about?

The problem with the current narrative about the election is that, while doubts about its legitimacy are rising, conservative criticism of how it was conducted is highly diffuse. While the standard line of leftist journalists – that there is "no evidence" of election fraud – is growing threadbare, Biden backers can justifiably claim that so far the evidence that has emerged is episodic and anecdotal: It proves no systemic fraud that would be capable of changing the election's outcome. That conclusion, however, is arguably premature, since assembling proof of pervasive fraud is challenging and time-consuming, by definition. It may take weeks, or even months. On the other hand, even if the fraud is real, proving it may be impossible.

Luckily, there exists another path to demonstrating the illegitimacy of the 2020 election.

First, we must keep in mind that Biden's margin of victory in the critical states was incredibly small – 20,000 votes or less in Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona, and about 62,000 votes in Pennsylvania. Given that we are talking about thousands of votes, rather than hundreds or dozens, it's still a high bar to prove sufficient fraud to invalidate the results. On the other hand, it we count the votes in a different way – by changing the standards for what constitutes a valid ballot – this could easily alter the outcome. It could result in four more years for Trump.

And here is where I believe Republicans and conservatives should concentrate their attacks. This year, because of the coronavirus pandemic, more Americans than ever voted by mail. Most of those who did were Democrats or left-leaning independents. Democratic election officials (as well as Republican election officials rooting for Biden – not a small demographic!) knew this would be so from the start. They made a variety of changes to make voting by mail easier in 2020. They did so because they wanted to maximize the number of votes for Joe Biden.

What appears to have happened in 2020 is that, in addition to officially and/or legislatively approved changes to vote-by-mail procedures, election officials routinely and systematically ignored statutory safeguards intended to guarantee the legitimacy of mailed ballots. Depending on the state, such ballots might have to be requested, they might have to be returned by a certain deadline, they might have to be verified by a witness, they might have to be accompanied by information confirming the identification of the voter, they might have to be sealed in a special envelope, they might have to be signed, they might have to be stamped with a readable postmark, or they might need to meet any number of other requirements. Traditionally, any returned ballot that doesn't comply fully with all these stipulations is either flagged for review (the voter is sometimes given an opportunity to correct any errors), or it is not counted. Historically, between 1% and 5% of mail-in ballots are rejected (for novice voters-by-mail, the average is close to 3%).

In 2020, these patterns were turned upside down. In the fanatical drive to encourage and expand voting by mail, and to count as many of these votes as possible, Democrats and their allies achieved a massive, and highly suspicious, reduction in the rejection rate for such ballots. In Pennsylvania, .03% of mail-in ballots were rejected in 2020, compared to a rejection rate of 1% in 2016. In other words, in a year when mail-in ballot requests exploded, and when many mail-in voters were new to the process, rates of rejection were 30-fold lower than four years earlier. A little fishy, no? Rates of ballot rejection fell – cratered, in fact – similarly in other states, including Wisconsin and Georgia.

Should certain mail-in ballots be disallowed from counting?

Reports are piling up of election officials "curing" ballots on a systemic basis: fixing problems with the ballots with or without any input from the alleged voters. Reports are accumulating of postal and election workers backdating ballots so that they would be counted. Some ballots lacking vital signatures or other information may also have been tabulated in violation of statute.

You get the idea: The fix was in. Democrats and their allies in post offices and boards of election across the country worked feverishly this year to change the terms by which our elections are conducted, and by which votes are counted. They did so to privilege votes cast by mail, and to count such votes even if past practice and relevant legislation would seem to dictate that they be thrown out. They did so to expand the "universe" of votes that would be counted, so that low propensity voters, voters who have trouble complying with official instructions, and – yes – probably some imaginary "voters" as well, would all have the opportunity to participate in … the Biden campaign for president! This was extremely thoughtful of them, to be sure, but it was also a form of election interference. It was, in fact, a form of fraud. Election officials lowered the bar for participation below what the law allows, and they did so to ensure the election of the candidate of their choice. Our election system was corrupted as never before.

It bears repeating that, because of the tight margins in many of the critical states, the acceptance of tens of thousands of ballots that in any ordinary year would have been rejected had the effect of altering the outcome. Were it not for this Democratic cheating, we would not be in the current mess: Donald J. Trump would have been reelected, Sleepy Joe would have gone into retirement, and the ordeal of the 2020 election would be over.

As it is, though, we are dealing with the consequences of the Democratic Party's mendacity and fraud. Either President Trump will succeed in reversing the illegitimate outcome of a Biden win, via the courts, the Electoral College, or the Congress, or Joe Biden will take office on Jan. 20, safe and secure in the knowledge that since he and his allies successfully gamed the system in 2020, there's no reason why they can't do it again in 2024.

That's not an outcome any American patriot should find acceptable. We must demand that the votes in the critical states be counted again, in a transparent and fair way. In other words, those votes should be counted according to the law, and thus mail-in votes that do not meet all the statutory requirements should be thrown out.

If and when that happens, the tally will confirm what most Republicans already know: Donald Trump won the election.

Democrats will never admit it, of course.

The more germane question is whether the Republican establishment and GOP lawmakers can still be persuaded, or whether they too are on the Biden bandwagon.