Not ready to answer the rationalist questions, but why is it that, as soon as elections don't go toward someone who played the standard political game, suddenly, "it must be a mistake somehow"? You guys set the terms of the primaries, you pick the voting machines. If you're not ready to trust them before the election, the time to contest them was back then, not when you don't like the result.

Where was Rawl on the important issue of voting machine reliability when they did "what they're supposed to"?

I understand that elections are evidence, and given the prior on Greene, this particular election may be insufficient to justify a posterior that Greene has the most "support", however defined. But elections also serve as a bright line to settle an issue. We could argue forever about who "really" has the most votes, but eventually we have to say who won, and elections are just as much about finality on that issue as they are as an evidential test of fact.

To an extent, then, it doesn't matter that Greene didn't "really" get the most votes. If you allow every election to be indefinitely contested until you're convinced there's no reason the loser really should have won, elections never settle anything. The price for indifference to voting procedure reliability (in this case, the machines) should be acceptance of a bad outcome for that time, to be corrected for the next election, or through the recall process.

Frankly, if Greene had lost but could present evidence of the strength Rawl presented, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

ETA: Oh, and you gotta love this:

On election night, I was among the first reporters to speak with Greene after his victory was announced. His verbal tics and strange affect were immediately apparent: he frequently repeats and interrupts himself, speaks haltingly, and sometimes descends into incoherent rambling, as subsequent video and audio interviews have made all the more obvious.

Damn those candidates with autism symptoms! Only manipulative people like us deserve to win elections!