The electoral college

[BzaDem]

26. I'm not downplaying anything.

I agree that the Russians had a big influence through their e-mail hacks. I also suspect (but do not have evidence for) their involvement in fake news efforts and other efforts to get Americans to change their votes.

I'm just saying that taking all of this as a given, it is not (and has never been) a reason to overturn an election result. The straightforward reason is that the voters decided, and it is not up to us after the fact to say that they should have decided differently (or for us to say that they should have been more discerning about what information they credit).

That is true not just from a legal perspective, but from a basic practical perspective. A world in which you can overturn the election (because you don't like information exposed by foreign governments) is a world where Republicans can also overturn elections for reasons other than invalid vote counting (and for that matter, an open invitation for third parties to attempt to influence elections and exposing that influence later to get the result thrown out). It would be madness.