In the days after Nov. 3, Trump
tried, without evidence, to turn
the basic work of completing the count
into an act of stealing the election. His
campaign went to court in a handful
of close states raising questions about
ballots and counting, but federal judges
largely rejected these initial challenges.
Nonetheless, a framing took hold among
Trump’s allies, from his daughter Ivanka
to Mitch McConnell, the Senate majori-
ty leader: Count ‘‘legal’’ but not ‘‘illegal’’
votes — with no evidence that illegal
ballots existed anywhere in any state in
anything like meaningful numbers.
This baseless alarm was entirely
untethered from the reality experienced
by many workers, from printers to mail
carriers to election offi cials, who made
the absentee- ballot election possible.
Before the election, Justin Vacca, a vote-
by-mail coordinator in Collier County,
Fla., fi elded questions from friends about
election security and found that explain-
ing the process reassured them. Like so
many election workers, he had a straight-
forward job to do, which, when joined
to the rest of the eff ort, became some-
thing grand. He took me through each
aspect of using the new sorter his offi ce
got over the summer, describing how he
does the initial count and then scans the
ballots again after they’ve been checked
and returned to him. ‘‘It’s pretty rare,’’ he
said when I asked about discrepancies in
the count as ballots moved through dif-
ferent parts of his offi ce. ‘‘But when that
happens, I usually catch it on the sec-
ond pass.’’ His job was about executing
a series of steps with care, over and over
again, until all the votes were counted.
Natalie Falcone (front) and Kaleb Wassa checking
voter names in Lehigh County, Pa.