WELL: Texas Governor Abbott: election irregularities in Harris County may necessitate new elections.

Abbott hasn’t said the “F” word…yet. Although he certainly implied it by suggesting that Harris County elections officials will have to be forced to conduct fair elections through the force of law.

At issue? Harris County officials didn’t provide enough ballot paper to 121 voting centers to cover the needs of the precincts. Not due to a surge in voting at the polls–that wasn’t the issue at all. Nor was it due to a shortage of available paper. There was plenty of it to go around.

They simply chose to deliver about half as many ballots to some voting centers as were needed in previous years.

Guess which ones. Plus:

Abbott is hardly a firebreather or conspiracy theorist, and he isn’t making wild accusations without evidence of actual wrongdoing.

But the religious article of faith that nobody ever cheats in elections only developed after 2020, when suddenly it became forbidden to question the integrity of an election–because to do so would be to add fuel to the fire of Donald Trump’s narrative.

But of course in reality election fraud is as American as Apple Pie, and has been more common in history than 100% fair elections. Why do you think that everybody jokes about dead people voting in Chicago? It’s because dead people have voted a lot in Chicago. Political machines are about winning, and the incentives to do so are high. In the history of the universe elections would be the first thing of immense value that nobody tried to steal, were elections always clean.

Usually, elections don’t turn on the margins of cheating, and usually, the integrity of elections is sufficient to ensure an outcome that reasonably reflects the “will of the voters.” But when elections are close, irregularities can matter a lot.

And that’s when they’re most likely to happen, of course.