Every Ballot Is Sacred Until It Counts Against The King

Lede

The trick is old: democracy is holy when it crowns you, crooked when it counts without permission.

Words used

Official canvass: the legal process used to count, audit and certify election results.
Election denial: refusing a lawful result without solid evidence, usually by replacing proof with accusation.
Rule of law: the principle that leaders, parties and citizens must obey the same laws.

Hermit Off Script

Elections are crooked, apparently, only when they don’t elect the man shouting into the microphone. That is the whole theatre. Weak men and weak politicians don’t look at themselves, don’t ask where they failed, don’t respect the electorate, and don’t respect the law. They blame imaginary enemies, invisible cheats, crooked reporters, crooked cities, crooked states, crooked anything. The only thing never crooked is their own hunger for power. I see cowardly politics in this because courage means accepting defeat, learning from it and coming back with better ideas. This is not courage. This is ego dressed as patriotism and sent on television to complain about counting. Trump’s pattern is painfully simple. If the numbers praise him, the system is magnificent. If the numbers reject him, the system is rigged. That is not leadership. That is a man arguing with a mirror because the mirror refused to flatter him. A president should defend the law even when it hurts him. A serious politician should respect voters even when they vote the wrong way. Instead, this politics treats citizens like props: useful when they cheer, suspicious when they count. Maybe, after Trump is gone, more facts and wrongdoings will surface. Maybe many people who excused all of this will feel shame, not because they were tricked once, but because they helped normalise the trick. The Republican Party may spend years trying to repair what trumpism weakened: respect for law, respect for elections, respect for truth, and respect for Americans who simply wanted their vote counted. The tragedy is not that one man hates losing. Many people hate losing. The tragedy is that a whole political machine learned to kneel before that weakness and call it strength.

Donald Trump walks out of ‘Meet the Press’ interview with Kristen Welker

What does not make sense

If vote counting follows the legal timetable, calling it fraud is not evidence. It is impatience wearing a legal costume.
If an election is clean only when your side wins, you don’t believe in elections. You believe in coronations.
If courts, election officials, journalists, states and voters all become “crooked” at the same time, the accusation has become a reflex, not a case.
If you respect the electorate only when it obeys you, you don’t respect the electorate.
If a party keeps feeding one man’s grievance, it should not act shocked when the grievance eats the party.

Sense check / The numbers

In 2020, the official Electoral College result was Biden 306, Trump 232, and Congress certified the result at 3:44 a.m. on January 7, 2021. [National Archives]
On November 12, 2020, the US election infrastructure statement said the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history”. [CISA]
On December 1, 2020, Attorney General William Barr told AP that the Justice Department had found no evidence of fraud on a scale that could change the election outcome. [AP]
Campaign Legal Center cites more than 60 post-2020 election court cases where judges, including Republican-appointed judges, found no widespread fraud that changed the result. [Campaign Legal Center]
For California’s June 2, 2026 primary, county election officials had up to 30 days for the official canvass, and on June 4 the state reported 5,617,892 ballots already processed and 3,606,128 still outstanding. [California Secretary of State]

The sketch

Scene 1: The perfect ballot
An oversized ballot box sits on a stage. A crown waits above it. A politician silhouette smiles while the count goes his way.
Dialogue:
Politician: “Beautiful election.”
Ballot box: “You are ahead.”

Scene 2: The dangerous count
The same ballot box continues counting. The crown moves away from the politician. Election workers stand behind a legal calendar.
Dialogue:
Politician: “Crooked!”
Election worker: “We’re counting.”
Calendar: “It’s the law.”

Scene 3: The party repair shop
A cracked elephant statue is surrounded by glue, court papers and voter rolls. Small party officials stare at the damage.
Dialogue:
Party official: “Can we fix it?”
Voter: “Try honesty.”

What to watch, not the show

Fundraising built on grievance rather than proof.
Media incentives that reward outrage faster than evidence.
Legal deadlines being reframed as conspiracy.
Party leaders staying quiet because fear is cheaper than courage.
Voters being trained to distrust any result that disappoints them.
Election workers being pushed into a culture of threat and suspicion.
Long-term damage to public trust when losing becomes impossible to admit.

The Hermit take

A leader accepts the count because the country is bigger than his ego.
A weak man calls the country crooked because the country refused to clap.

Keep or toss

Toss.
Keep the right to challenge real fraud with evidence.
Toss the tantrum that treats every defeat as theft.

Sources

User-supplied YouTube clip: https://youtu.be/kh8HHrlb1VI?si=AdS68gxgFksc9wIz
Guardian report on NBC interview: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/07/trump-walks-out-meet-the-press-nbc-interview
California Secretary of State vote counting process: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/upcoming-elections/vote-counting-process
California Secretary of State 2026 primary results page: https://dp.electionresults.sos.ca.gov/
California Secretary of State unprocessed ballots report: https://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/news-releases-and-advisories/2026-news-releases-and-advisories/california-secretary-state-shirley-n-weber-phd-issues-unprocessed-ballots-report
CISA 2020 election infrastructure statement: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election-infrastructure
AP report on William Barr and 2020 election fraud claims: https://apnews.com/article/barr-no-widespread-election-fraud-b1f1488796c9a98c4b1a9061a6c7f49d
National Archives 2020 Electoral College results: https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020
Campaign Legal Center 2020 election lawsuits tracker: https://campaignlegal.org/results-lawsuits-regarding-2020-elections
January 6 Select Committee final report: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/html-submitted/es.html