It would help lower the temperature if a highly visible, authoritative commission were ready to observe and evaluate alleged irregularities — to clarify that voting officials in Georgia are counting votes, not stuffing ballot boxes, or that postal workers in Iowa took a little longer to deliver ballots, so it is not surprising that a surge of votes was recorded a couple days after Election Day. Alternatively, a commission could highlight authentic problems, such as long lines deterring voters from polling sites or mail-in ballots being thrown out for small technical issues beyond voters’ control.
Mr. Trump will not convene such a commission, because he wants chaos. But congressional leaders could do so, or a balanced group of business and community leaders. The American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein suggests that former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama could head the commission. If they did not want to be so visible, they could at least help establish it. The commission could rely on highly experienced U.S. election monitoring groups for expertise.