While @realDonaldTrump's lurid claims of mass-tampering with mail-in ballots seem hysterical, it would be foolish to ignore the considerable scope for "funny business" on this front - especially for post-poll antics. [THREAD]

. @realDonaldTrump's strategy is clearly to both suppress the number of mail-in votes (which are disproportionately likely to be from angry people, keen to oust him, and make their voices heard ASAP) & to cast doubt on them. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/five-ways-trump-and-gop-officials-are-undermining-the-election-process/

. @realDonaldTrump's claims of mass postal vote fraud can be seen in the context of his habit of accusing opponents of the very things that he's doing, typically to deflect attention.

The huge extension of postal voting makes perfect sense in a mass pandemic; and the mantra of "Count all the votes" dictates that in many states, postal ballots that were only posted on polling day itself, with a postmark, should be counted.

But the latter is also problematic.

Several key swing states will still be accepting votes (postmarked 3rd Nov), as late as 17th Nov. This is significant.

For one thing, it makes it hard to call these states on election night - you can "call" a state even before all the votes are counted, if a candidate's definitely polled >50% of all votes cast.

But you don't know the % of votes cast if you don't know how many votes are to come.

And this is where it's worth looking at the history books, and at how people have stolen elections in the US in the past. It's especially worth reading Robert Caro's work on Lyndon B. Johnson, who was notorious for ballot-rigging...

The 101 on election-fixing from Lyndon Johnson's day: always wait for your opponent to declare their strongest areas first, so that when you declare your strongest areas last, you know how many ballots you need to forge, to make the difference to close the gap.

Johnson unexpectedly lost his first Senate campaign for the Democratic nomination in the Texas special Senate election of 1941, because he didn't pay heed to this, declared his counties early, and his opponents stitched up the results at the last minute.

In the Democratic primary for the 1948 Senate election in Texas, he won by just 87 votes out of nearly a million cast - because he'd learned his lesson by then, and waited until the last minute to declare his counties.

Last-minute stitch-ups in '48 included one polling station that recorded 100 votes (99 of them for LBJ) in the last 10 minutes of polling. Records showed that when the 100 voters signed in, they signed their names in the same pen, and the same handwriting, in alphabetical order.

So unless Biden picks up clearly >270 Electoral College votes on election night, by huge margins in key states, then all eyes should be on Republican-controlled states that are still in the balance, & whether we see any suspiciously large surges of last-minute Republican ballots.

Ballot-tampering in the US is not some phenomenon of the distant past, as anyone who remembers the Florida antics in 2000 will recall.

There's little evidence mail-in ballots are more vulnerable than "normal" ballots. But ballots are still susceptible to tampering.