Marc Elias is foiled in his attempt to change vote-counting rules.

The Democratic candidates for Governor and U.S. Senate in Florida finally conceded on the weekend, 11 days or so after the final votes were cast. A machine recount in both races, and then a hand recount in the Senate race, made clear that Andrew Gillum and Senator Bill Nelson lacked a path to victory against Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott. This spares the country from what would have been a polarizing fight had either Democrat made up tens of thousands of votes to prevail after Election Day. But that possibility was closer than it should have been as Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias tried to have tens of thousands of ballots counted in violation of normal election rules. Mr. Elias used the counting follies in Democratic Broward and Palm Beach counties to demand that the legal deadlines be extended for vote counting and for mail-in ballots. Broward elections had to be ordered by courts to disclose how many votes they had left to count and what kind of votes they were. Mail-in ballots are valid if they arrive within 10 days of the election as a concession to voters serving in the U.S. military, but Mr. Elias was hoping to extend the election indefinitely as Democrats hunted for more votes somewhere, anywhere. Federal Judge Mark Walker was right to enforce regular vote-counting order. In the end Mr. DeSantis won by a little more than 33,000 votes and Mr. Scott led by 10,033 after the manual recount on Sunday. One lesson is that Florida needs to tighten up on its absentee and provisional ballot rules. Democrats like to say “count every vote,” which they use to suggest that black voters are being disenfranchised. But turnout this year was a record for a midterm election. The far greater opportunity for cheating, and thus a greater threat to democratic legitimacy, is if politicians can change the election rules after votes have been cast.

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