It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and the major electoral news of the day is the release of an opinion from the 3rd Circuit that starts with the following passage: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

This came in an unsuccessful appeal brought by Trump’s campaign requesting, among other things, an injunction to block Pennsylvania’s certification of the election results. And those words were actually penned by a Trump appointee to the bench, Judge Bibas, whose opinion was joined by both of the other members of the panel, Republican appointees themselves. Which didn’t stop a campaign attorney from complaining about “the activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania” after the decision didn’t go their way, mind you.

In other news, Biden was already the first Presidential candidate to surpass the 70 million mark in the national popular vote, but two days ago he passed the 80 million mark. His lead over Trump is now about 6.2 million and should continue to grow, as Democratic-leaning New York continues to be the largest source of uncounted votes (in 2016 there were 7.7 million votes counted in New York, while at this point we’re only at about 7.25 million votes counted in 2020, despite nationwide turnout being up significantly from 2016 to 2020).

Of course, Trump took that news well, tweeting the following today: “Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous ‘80,000,000 votes’ were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!” I love how the article linked above dispassionately follows in the next paragraph with this: “Biden does not have to disprove mass fraud to become president, and there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.” I imagine the copy editors of America are looking forward to a time when they no longer have to view each article they publish about the President through the lens of, what disclaimers do we need to put in this article and where so as to make it clear that certain of the President’s statements are inaccurate and/or unsubstantiated…