In September 2020, Sharon McMahon, a public-school teacher turned yarn entrepreneur and portrait photographer from Duluth, Minn., was nursing her husband through a recent kidney transplant, looking after her four school-age children, watching the election campaign with mounting dismay and, as she puts it, “just riding out COVID like everybody else was.” Weary of people bloviating online about stuff they didn’t understand, she posted a short video explaining the Electoral College using an enamel bucket, a wooden box, a mug, a fake branch, and her mildly zany personality.