We have learned a hard, sobering lesson on the danger of premature pontificating. We pledge to never again express an opinion formed before all the facts are known (though, honestly, that is the kind of pledge that is begging to be broken).

We thought we knew what happened. But we didn’t.

It was a tough way to learn about the futility and folly of predicting the outcome of an election these days if you fail to take into account the new reality of how voters vote and how election counters count.

Even by the end of that Saturday on which the editorial was published, it was starting to become clear that the later counting of mail-in votes was going to boost totals for Democrats in Frederick County. And the Democratic tally just kept growing and growing.

We guessed that Democrat Jessica Fitzwater might be too far behind Republican Michael Hough in the race for county executive, trailing by more than 8,000 on Election Night.

“While it is mathematically possible that the count of mail-in votes could swing the election to Fitzwater, she has a lot of ground to make up,” we wrote. She did make it up.

Day after day, the headlines on the front of the News-Post and at the top of our website proclaimed: “Fitzwater closes in on Hough”; “Fitzwater trails by less than one percentage point” and finally, “Fitzwater elected county executive.”

Fitzwater wasn’t the only one, either.

We said Hough could be joined by as many as five Republicans on the County Council. After all, GOP candidates led in the at-large race, as well as in Districts 1, 2 and 5. Two seats looked safe for the GOP, in Districts 2 and 5. By the time the counting was done, that was all they got.

The story was the same in the races for Board of Education, where we saw surprising strength for the Republican-aligned Education Not Indoctrination slate, but that strength was not sustained. The top vote-getter from that slate slipped from first to fourth, holding on to win a seat, while the Democrat-aligned slate took the top three places.

In the good old days — say, eight years ago — most folks voted on Election Day. A few started to vote early when they could, and some would vote absentee, meaning they were not able to get to the polls on Election Day and would vote by mail.

The polls would close at 8 p.m., and the election board would soon be cranking out results. By 11 p.m., most races would be called for one candidate or another.

We knew that the election of 2020, conducted during the pandemic, altered the behavior of some voters. Democrats became comfortable voting early and voting by mail, and a large proportion of the party faithful did just that this year.

Republicans influenced by Donald Trump’s repeated lies about widespread vote fraud in mail-in votes in the 2020 presidential election have been urged to show up on Election Day and vote in person. That is what they did, too.

For our punishment, we promise we will copy these two sentences 100 times on the blackboard at News-Post headquarters: “The GOP vote totals are higher when results are announced on Election Night, but many more votes from Democrats are yet to be counted. Wait to declare a winner.”