Congressional Special Election (last call! unstickied after NY-27 final results)

[ag]

I mean, this is one of those cases where, if allegations turn out to be sufficiently established to order a new election (which would seem to be the only reasonable remedy at this point), somebody better go to prison. Because the allegations are those of very serious electoral fraud, and it will not be sufficient to leave them underinvestigated. I mean, I generally agree that only very serious and proven misconduct should be grounds for annulling electoral results at this stage.  The allegations, clearly, raise to the former standard - but I want to see them proven in court.

[ag]

Again, the fraud here cannot be proven or disproven purely by looking at the stats. The stats can be useful to a) get some indication whether something strange happened and whether an investigation is warranted and b) assuming the wrongdoing is shown, to get some idea of its scale. But actual finding of wrongdoing would have to primarily rely on establishing what happened on the ground: affidavits, testimony, paper trail, etc.

If all there were to go by were the statistical anomalies, in the absence of other evidence I would still argue that Harris should be seated. I mean, one could imagine that there indeed was an efficient vote-by-mail operation on one side, and that could account for many of the apparent anomalies. Alas, it seems, evidence is rapidly accumulating that law was violated. And that evidence cannot be overturned by explaning away statistical anomalies. At this point, it seems, not only repeating the election, but also criminal prosecution may be warranted.