Trump lost both the 2016 and the 2024 elections.

[Metaphorical]

79. Mathematician here

Yes there is a certain amount of dependency between states, but it's not usually strong when populations are equally divided, especially with the votes all convenient falling JUST outside the threshold to invoke an automatic recount.

I think Hillary Clinton legitimately lost in 2016. There was a bruising primary, a lot of acrimony going into the Fall, and then Comey's FBI surprise three weeks before the election turned the tide in Trump's favour. Harris led pretty much since July 2024 in most polls, and turnout was very low at most of Trump's events. There was no significant event that should have changed that, yet somehow, Trump managed to come out five points ahead of where he had been polling all autumn. That can happen, of course, but Trump was a known (and largely hated) quantity.

I know some people get frustrated with the speed of counting paper ballots, but paper ballots provide an audit trail that electronic ballots don't. It is trivially simple to change votes in a database if the only records are electronic.