Sure, the media shouldn't “call” elections. But what’s the alternative?

“The media doesn’t call elections.”

Yes, technically speaking, “the media” doesn’t — and shouldn’t — call elections. The media offers projections, based on data obtained by state-level elections departments, and reports on them for a national audience. (I’ve written in the past about how “the media” is a dumb monolithic strawman, so I won’t repeat it here.)

But pause for a moment and consider why we rely upon the press for national elections.

In the United States, we don’t have one singular national election for the White House; we have 50 different concurrent elections taking place at the same time. Each state independently compiles its votes and certifies its election results.

At the end of Election Day (or Election Week, for that matter), there isn’t one national entity to aggregate and digest all of this disparate and decentralized information. There isn’t a U.S. Department of Electioneering nor a National Election Certification Agency to perform this Sisyphean task. There isn’t some federal bureaucracy acting as one ginormous funnel where 150 million ballots are dumped into it and out pops a newly elected president at the other end.

And nor should there be.

This is why I find it funny that the most consistent critics of how we conducted the 2020 election — exactly how it has been conducted for years — also tend to identify as “limited-government, constitutional conservatives.” The only alternative to our current decentralized election system would be a more centralized one — one more beholden to the federal government (i.e., “the Swamp,” “the Deep State”) and one that would likely undermine the Tenth Amendment and the constitutional principle of state sovereignty. If you loosely (and erroneously) define socialism as any policy that empowers the feds to take over what the states should be doing, then — well — welcome to the class struggle of the proletariat, comrade.

Sure, as a conservative, you are well within your rights to be upset with the result of the 2020 election, as well as cautiously skeptical about the legality of the entire affair, so long as those legal claims are grounded in actual evidence. But many of you sound fully prepared to throw out the first-order principles with the bathwater, based on a misunderstanding of what not only underpins modern movement conservatism (or what it once was) but also American federalism.

This *is* the constitutional republic at work. This *is* the Electoral College doing exactly as it was intended to do. (That is, minus the wild card of the “faithless elector,” which the Supreme Court, including all of Trump’s nominees, neutralized when they ruled that states can legally punish faithless electors.) Okay, fine — this current process that is beholden to the “liberal media” may not seem ideal, but the only alternative would likely clash with the very foundation of the exact same system that you so righteously defend, day in and day out.

More so, advocating for upending this system brings our country even closer to policy reforms that you purport to oppose, such as a national popular vote.

If you currently question the results of this election, please feel free to continue down the path of audits and legal challenges. Those, too, are a part of the constitutional system of checks and balances. Bear in mind, though, the statistical likelihood of overturning this election is on par with the Denver Broncos becoming Super Bowl champions this year.

That said, I’m giving you until December 14, 2020. That is the day when the Electoral College meets and votes. This event comes after all 50 states have officially certified their elections, likely codifying the current projections that have awarded the presidency to Joe Biden. If, after this date, you still do not recognize the election results as legitimate (especially when claims of fraud are not supported by a substantive body of evidence and have all been rejected by the courts), don’t even claim to give a shit about the “state’s rights,” the Electoral College, or the Constitution ever again.