Keep in mind that the mail-in balloting issue has opened up a huge can of worms due to both custody and voter identification issues. With in-person voting, there's no real issue with chain of custody -- meaning the transmission of the vote goes directly from the voter to the vote counting machine. Additionally, the voter in question must pass some sort of an in-person ID test (e.g., providing name, address, photo ID [in some cases], and signature).

With mail-ins, none of the ID requirements necessarily hold, and that's particularly true IF -- IF -- Trump (or Biden) observers were denied their legal access to monitor the counting process, as alleged. (Courts will decide this.) In your shopowner example, they would not just count whatever is in the cash register -- they would also check to make sure that none of it was counterfeit, as presumably many people had access to the cash register duing the day.

Long story short, one can't logically claim that it's okay on the front-end to smother the validation of the ballots tossed into the pool and then just say let's recount only that pool on the back end. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

You use the word "should" in your post. That cuts both ways. What you think "should" happen might be different than what I think "should" happen. What matters is what the law and the courts say, and we're potentially in new territory there.

[Post edited by Los Angeles Hoo at 11/11/2020 12:18PM]