With the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot now over, let’s focus on the big picture.

The great anomaly of the 2020 U.S. presidential election was that Joe Biden won the national popular vote by 7 million votes, yet came within 43,000 (in three close states) of losing the Electoral College, and thus the election. In California alone, Biden had 5 million more votes than he needed, and in New York, another 2 million.

So far this century, only Barack Obama has won decisive victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. In 2000 and 2016, the popular-vote winner lost the election. In 2004, the result turned on a single state: Ohio. This anomaly is not only persistent but constitutional, which makes it practically unsolvable.