One key factor makes it imperative to fill the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat immediately. And Democrats can thank themselves for this.

To understand why, imagine this analogy:

World Series Game Six just ended. The Yankees and Red Sox are tied, three wins each.

With shockingly little respect for baseball’s institutions, the liberal-minded Red Sox unilaterally change Game Seven’s rules.

The more conservative, traditionalist Yankees complain loudly, but in vain. They must play the deciding game the Red Sox’s way:

• Any Red Sox batter may try to steal first base. If he succeeds, he earns a base hit, and may advance from there.
• It takes four strikes, not three, to retire Red Sox.
• Red Sox runners who reach third base may stroll home, unchallenged.
• No winner will be declared until at least two weeks after Game Seven, especially if the Yankees are ahead.
• Meanwhile, the Red Sox may review Game Seven videos and request score-boosting rule interpretations.

Fearing chaos, the Yankees insist that — at a minimum — every umpire’s post be manned until a final decision.

Like the Red Sox in this thought experiment, Democrat governors and Left-wing judges have invented their own self-serving, Game-Seven rules changes:

• They are proliferating mass mail-in ballots with few safety precautions.
• Witness-signature requirements have been diluted or dropped.
• Signature-verification standards have been weakened.
• Postmark requirements have been diminished or dumped.
• Ballots can arrive and be counted six days after Election Day inWisconsin, nine in North Carolina, and 14 in Michigan.
• North Carolina began delivering absentee ballots on September 4 —25 days before the first presidential debate and 60 days before November 3. During the two months preceding Election Day, stored ballots could be abused, shredded, or snatched. Absent malice, they could be damaged or destroyed in floods, fires, or hurricanes — as were criminal records and pre-trial evidence, when Katrina flooded law-enforcement facilities in New Orleans.
• Humiliated Democrat presidential wannabe Michael Bloomberg is raising funds to pay the fines of and restore voting rights to 32,000 ex-felons in Florida. The multi-billionaire’s money-for-votes scheme seemingly violates state and federal law.
• Partisan-activist ballot harvesters in California, Nevada, North Carolina, and other states will grab votes by the armful. Will they faithfully submit them or remove those marked “the wrong way?” Only God knows. Federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania announced Thursday that they are probing nine mail-in ballots discarded and recovered, seven of them favoring President Trump.

Conniving Democrats turned the China virus into an excuse to drown voters in some 80 million mass-mail-in ballots fire-hosed to everyone on often-dated rolls. Unrequested live ballots are landing in the mailboxes of the apathetic, the relocated, and the deceased. These orphan ballots can be adopted by cheaters, submitted, and counted — with little worry of prosecution.

Even assuming universal honesty, the U.S. Postal Service could let 3.2 million of these mail-in ballots disappear and still meet its 96-percent delivery standard for political and electoral mail. If so, enough voters to populate Utah would be disenfranchised, and candidates — from presidential nominees to aspiring aldermen — could be swindled in four time zones.

Unfortunately, this Democrat-created election calamity could reach the Supreme Court. SCOTUS might need to settle a Pennsylvania recount, weigh the votes of Florida’s ex-felons, or evaluate ballots that materialized a fortnight after November 3.

A 5-4 ruling would decide these questions and, possibly, determine the next president. But what if the eight living justices deadlocked, 4-4? A coast-to-coast question mark would haunt this land.

The American people rightfully would blame such a catastrophe on diabolical Democrats. Again: Republicans engineered none of this.

So, the very least that Democrats can do is stand down, accept precedent (among 19 jurists nominated during presidential election years, when one party controlled the White House and the Senate, 17 — 89.5 percent — were confirmed), and let Republicans fill Ginsburg’s seat.

May America enjoy a full crew of umpires for the Democrat-concocted cataclysm that likely follows.