VA gave me hope. Our side actively engaging in Poll watching, Ballot box camping, and laywer’d up. Gave the D’s no chance at fraud.
As a lawyer who was in the middle of this, I'll pass along these thoughts:
1. VA should give you hope;
2. We did great with poll watchers, but needed FAR more, especially in precincts and counties largely infested by Democrats;
3. We need more people willing to serve on electoral boards, especially in counties largely infested by Democrats. In VA, each electoral board is supposed to contain at least one member of each party. In many Democrat jurisdictions we can't find any Republicans to serve, so the Democrats run rampant.
4. The Democrats had plenty of chances at fraud in VA because the previous Democrat legislature enacted election laws making it very easy to cheat. I suspect Youngkin was actually up by five or six percent. The Democrats simply couldn't cheat their way out of that much of a deficit.
The takeaways are (i) there is reason for hope; (ii) in states where we can, we must tighten up the election laws; and (iii) EVERYONE on our side needs to get involved to fight this war. It is not enough to simply complain (I'm not accusing you of that.). It's a real inconvenience and potentially a lot of work to serve as a poll watcher (especially now that many states have weeks-long in-person voting) or an election official, but we must find more people on our side to do it.