[chimera]

What you are describing is what precisely happened in the 2004 Governor election in Washington state. The ‘Pub, Rossi, was ahead in the final count and the initial recount. The ‘Rat, Gregoire (aka Fraudoire), gamed the hand recount (i.e., “finding” so-called “lost” ballots, sounds familiar) to “win” by all of 129 votes out of about 2.3 million ballots counted. Of course, the ‘Pubs sued in court, but, as usual, the court shied away from interfering with an election result. They chose political expediency over justice.

[Rockingham]

Good example. Similarly, during the Florida 2000 recount, the Democrats protracted the process so that new ballots for Gore could gradually be inserted during the recount through one pretext or another. As that fell short for the Dems, Florida’s judges got involved, with a divided Florida Supreme Court wanting to conduct a statewide recount. Mercifully, the US Supreme Court intervened to stop that.