(No, of course. Trump won Ohio. But the absentee ballot count in Ohio tells us something about the absentee ballot count in states which Trump now claims have been stolen.)

The numerical facts of the Presidential election seem clear. Officially, President Trump leapt out to a huge lead on election night. As absentee ballots were added to this official number, Joe Biden overtook Trump and won the election.

There is an alternative narrative that many Republicans–not all–believe. They believe that Trump won reelection and that Democrats took advantage of the delayed count of absentee ballots and manufactured enough votes to steal the election.

IMHO this alternative narrative does not adequately explain events, as I have noted before.

• If Democrats manufactured absentee ballots to steal the White House, then why did they not also steal a few Senate seats? The polls favored a Dem takeover of the Senate to the same degree that they favored Biden over Trump.
• Democrats have traditionally used absentee ballot more than Republicans.
• Trump spent the last four months telling his voters not to vote absentee.
• Trump has spent the last seven months telling his voters that COVID was a hoax, and that they should get on with their lives.
  • So it’s logical that more Republican voters would vote in person.
  • And it’s logical that Democratic voters, more worried about COVID, would vote absentee.

Luckily, we are not without a test case. Not ALL the battleground states put off the counting of absentee ballots until after the polls closed on election night. Ohio and Florida counted absentee ballots BEFORE election day, and released the results election night.

Here is my hypothesis. If the “official” narrative is true, and Biden actually received a huge preponderance of the absentee vote, then we would expect to see that preponderance in the absentee vote in Ohio.

And what do we find?

Trump total vote	3,071,959
Biden total vote	2,611,377
Trump ABSENTEE VOTE	835,536
Biden ABSENTEE VOTE	1,143,682

In the absentee vote count, which Ohio officials released when the polls closed, Biden led Trump by nearly 310,000 votes. Trump trounced Biden in the election day vote–which is to be expected–and won the overall count by 450,000 votes.

But if all you had was the absentee votes, Biden won by 16 points, 58% to 42%. And if those votes had been released in dribs and drabs after election day, you would see something similar to what we are seeing in Pennsylvania and Georgia–great drama about whether Biden’s absentee advantage would be enough to overcome Trump’s election day total. Not identical, but similar. (Excepting the Trump victory, of course.)

Or if the release of the in-person votes and the absentee votes were reversed, the picture and perception would be reversed.