{"id":85671,"date":"2020-09-14T11:49:22","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T19:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671///wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671//www.yesmagazine.org/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671//?post_type=article&p=85671"},"modified":"2025-03-31T15:27:54","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T22:27:54","slug":"election-day-results-voting","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671///wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671//www.yesmagazine.org/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671//opinion/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671//2020/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671//09/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671//14/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671//election-day-results-voting","title":{"rendered":"Where the Election Can Go Badly/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014And What We Can Do About It"},"content":{"rendered":"/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

Here we are, after Labor Day, in the final slog of the election season, after nearly four exhausting years of the Trump administration./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

Nervous yet?/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

There are plenty of reasons to be so. President Trump has openly mulled canceling the election, he/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s threatened to send federal troops to polling stations, he/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s stated he doesn/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019t want to fund the post office because he thinks mail-in voting favors Democrats, and most recently he/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s encouraged his supporters to vote twice./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

Some of our angst, however, is misplaced. The military does not want to get involved in domestic politics. Trump/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s blatant manipulation of the post office has been met with fierce blowback. And voting twice is illegal, and so is soliciting people to vote twice./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

Trump simply does not have the power to cancel the presidential election outright, and if there/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s no election, at noon on Jan. 20, he simply stops being president. (And if he/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s still in the White House, he/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s trespassing)./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

The Electoral College is a strong and at times decisive anti-democratic feature of electing a president./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

An interesting side note: If no election is held, not only does Trump cease being president at noon Jan. 20, Mike Pence also stops being vice president. According to the order of presidential succession, the next in line for president would be Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which would be particularly galling to Trump/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014but if there were also no congressional elections, then no House members would have been sworn in. That takes us to No. 4 on the list, the president pro tempore of the Senate, who is defined by statute as the second-most powerful sitting senator, and canceling the November election entirely would also mean all 35 senators who were up for reelection also would not be seated. So the rump Senate would be split between 35 Democrats and 30 Republicans, with the most senior Democratic senator being Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and the new No. 2 being Dianne Feinstein of California. (Chuck Schumer of New York might be chosen again as majority leader, which would make Leahy first in line for the president pro tempore slot, and for president of the United States.) This is an extreme scenario, but it shows that canceling the election will not benefit Trump in any reasonable manner, even if he were able to pull it off./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

But there are vulnerabilities within our system of electing a president, and you can put money that Trump is going to try to exploit them./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

To date, Trump/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s most blatant attempt has been trying to undercut the post office/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014some have estimated that up to 80 million voters may attempt to cast their ballot by mail in November. And one should never discount other tried-and-true methods of vote suppression/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014Georgia/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s voter roll purges in late 2019, for example, wrongly purged nearly 200,000 voters, or an error rate of 63.3%, according to the ACLU of Georgia. Or the decision on Sept. 11 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that effectively codified a Florida poll tax against people who’d been convicted of felonies, disenfranchising them again after the public had previously voted to restore their voting rights./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

But Trump and his minions can game the system in other, less obvious ways./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

We already know that the Electoral College is a strong and at times decisive anti-democratic feature of electing a president. Twice in the past two decades, a candidate won the presidency while losing the popular vote. What matters is getting 270 electoral votes./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

And yet our 18th century electoral system isn/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019t as straightforward as all that. Electing a U.S. president is an arcane art practiced only by the acolytes working within the political parties and conventions, little understood by, and/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014until now/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014not affecting the average voter. It/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s not a system whereby the electoral votes are tallied on election night and a state goes blue or red, and we/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019re done, even though that/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s what we/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019ve come to expect./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

Request a ballot as early as possible and vote as early as possible./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

Consider the electoral calendar, which spells out the dates by which states must resolve controversies in the apportionment of electors, the governors send certificates to the National Archivist, and so on. (Here/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s the full list of steps necessary to elect a president.) Each date is a deadline, and also an opening into which a campaign lawyer can insert a monkey wrench to cause havoc./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

The key date is Dec. 14, when the electors (appointed by their parties) meet in their respective states to vote for president and vice president on separate ballots. This also was the deadline the Supreme Court enforced in the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision that shut down the Florida recount and gave the election to President George W. Bush, a legal recognition that Dec. 14 (specifically, the /wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u201cMonday after the second Wednesday in December/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u201d) is the real election day./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

But which slate of electoral votes is sent off to the National Archivist is left to the states. Congress/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019 role is to certify them, and the assumption is that the states/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019 votes are accurate. The Guardian in July outlined the nightmare scenario: Trump loses the popular vote but is within one state of an Electoral College victory, and puts political pressure on Republican-led state legislatures in key swing states to claim fraud and /wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u201cirregularities/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u201d and award Republican electors, even as the states/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019 popular votes go to former Vice President Joe Biden./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

The very foundations of our democracy are on the ballot./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

Those electoral votes are transmitted to the newly sworn-in Congress on Jan. 3, and they must be counted by Jan. 6, giving Congress three days to resolve any discrepancies. Given the extreme partisanship we/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019ve seen recently, a likely outcome is the disputed electoral votes simply would not be counted./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

And if the total electoral count minus the disputed states doesn/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019t give either candidate the required 270-vote majority, it/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019s up to the U.S. House of Representatives to vote/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014in which each state receives one vote. The winning threshold is 26 votes, and as of September 2020, 26 state delegations are majority Republican (although some by a single vote), and Michigan is tied 7-7. If the House deadlocks, then it goes to the Senate, with each senator receiving one vote./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

If you think that scenario is too extreme to occur, consider that it already has, in the 1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes and the Republican Party essentially flipped three Southern states through outright fraud at the polls and getting their allies in those states to submit rival slates of electors. The compromise Congress worked out gave Hayes the presidency, but in exchange for an end to Reconstruction, ushering in a new era of racial discrimination and terror in the South./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

And for anyone who says, /wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u201cOh, they/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019d never do that/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2026,/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u201d consider we/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019re in an era when the incumbent, with all of the built-in advantages that comes with it, has shown himself to be utterly unconstrained by ethics, past norms, or/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014with the aid of an enabling attorney general/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014even federal laws that prohibit using the apparatus of government for political purposes/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2014such as staging parts of the Republican National Convention at the White House. There literally is nothing Trump won/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/u2019t do to stay in power, even if it means cheating in the most blatant and illegal manner possible./wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n/wp-json/wp/v2/article/85671/n

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