Yep that’s why. It’s a mess. hahahahahahahahahahaha
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Under this scenario is where the international community would need to step in. The IMF, World Bank, NATO, UN etc would have to make it clear that they will not sit any of the representatives he submits to their organizations. US Allies will need to refuse his ambassadors as well. As soon as results are verified major US allies such as Merkel or Macron will likely acknowledge Biden as the winner via the obligatory “Congratulatory phone call.”
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Also, the Speaker doesn’t have to be a member of Congress, and there is no set term limit on Speaker. So, in the nightmare scenario where there are no House elections, Pelosi would remain Speaker indefinitely, of an empty House, and retain her position in the line of succession.
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For Rapey Brett, I don’t think it’s hard. (However, who is going to volunteer to be infected with Covid and then give it to Rapey?)
Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, is a recluse. He started socially distancing long before Covid came along.
You need a 2/3 vote to impeach someone off Scotus. We won’t get that even if we totally swamp the Rs this November. I don’t know how immune zombies are to Covid (they did get Aqua Buddha, which has a different immune biology), but enough would be left standing to hold a 1/3 minority.
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If history is a guide, John Kasich or Colin Powell will be the third-highest vote getter.
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How about we just all concentrate on ‘gaming out’ getting out the vote?
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Ewwwwwwww!! I just threw up in my mouth a little bit – well, quite a bit actually!!
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Oops! Sorry.
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My head hurts.
Don’t make me correct you on your own shtick.
Can I come over and you can hold my hand?
Over five decades old and I’d never known there were two separate words.
AFAIC, “forego” is fine. I’ve literally never heard anybody use “forego” to mean “to come before” while I hear “forgo” fairly often to mean “to do without” and I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen it “misspelled” as “forego”. Even dictionary.com is listing the definition of “forgo” as a second definition of “forego.”
If history is a guide, John Kasich or Colin Powell will be the third-highest vote getter.
Only if they get one or more electoral votes.
" Scenario #2: A long, litigious morass inflamed by Trump’s conspiracy theorizing"
It’s going to be this every step of the way and the path all leads straight to a packed SCOTUS. And yes, it will include litigation Dems are forced to bring because of he shenanigans assclowns like Desantis get up to.
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That’s what makes it fantasy, que no?
I was about to say the same thing, but if you look it up forgo has a more specific and apt meaning here.
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Say ballots are tossed and lawsuits are filed — now the count is ensnared in the courts. Even with an expedited process, December 14 could come and go without a judicial decision.
At that point, it’s unclear how electors would be selected.
Wouldn’t the existing law that each state has, requiring their electors to be submitted to Congress by the 14th then be the case? You don’t throw out a law just because someone started a lawsuit against it. Also I highly doubt any state supreme court (if not the actual supreme court) would let any election lawsuit that prevents electors from being submitted go past the Dec. 14th deadline, as I recall FL 2000 was an early Dec. decision and there aren’t any states or election boards that are more screwed up than FL (sorry to any Floridians here).
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I have been looking at what happens if trumper looses.
He has a big problem, the secret service will continue to protect him.
Because of the S.S. always being present trumper cannot flee, say to Russia or anyplace else.
He cannot just disappear without the S.S. knowing what he is up to.
Therefore, he is already trapped with nowhere to go, he just doesn’t know it yet and so are his children.
Funny how things work out ,Huh!
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The Democratic Party represents people you can work with. Republicans have a problem with that.
Get it?
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This article ignores the most likely way we end up with Congress forced to decide the presidential election, that red states where Biden seems likely to win will block certification of that result, and substitute EV tallies for Trump. The rationale will be that the election process as specified in their state law could not be conducted without undue interference – from COVID, from failed postal service, from insurrectionists, from whatever – significant enough to invalidate the election result and require that state’s legislature to come up with an alternative way of selecting the electors.
Of course states can do this. There is absolutely no requirement that states conduct popular elections as their way of selecting electors. The Florida legislature in 2000 was preparing to send in a Bush tally when the Bush v Gore result made that unnecessary. Federal law does require states to select their electors no later than election day, but the only “penalty” for violating that requirement is that it forces the next Congress to vote on the validity of the EV tally the state sends in. Congress can hold such a vote anyway if even one Senator plus one Member of Congress insists, it’s just that failure to choose electors by E-Day, or sending in two tallies, or not sending in a tally before the date in December specified, forces a Congressional vote.
A vote of Congress could substitute a Biden tally for these Trump tallies. Even if that works because D majorities are seated in both chambers on the first day of the next Congress, we will have a president chosen by a vote of Congress, a circumstance that of course will garner the new president an unquestioned legitimacy. Not that we need to worry about that problem, because if the other side’s position is that Trump Really Won, or would have won if only a fair election could have been conducted, or if the mails hadn’t screwed up, etc, etc, it follows that Every R On The Ballot Really Won, and of course D majorities will not be seated in either chamber, not unless the Ds have more armed partisans on hand to prevent the coup that Rs will have called in their armed partisans to prevent our side from carrying out.
I would not count on the courts to prevent this. Even if they sincerely tried to call balls and strikes and be absolutely impartial to both parties, at the end of the day, Congress is the controlling legal authority on the validity of federal election results of all kinds. The most that the courts can legitimately do in a legal contest of an election is to referee the question of whether it was conducted according to the legal election scheme in place before the election was held. Because of this, a party contesting an announced or pending election result has to be able to present a reasonable theory of how the failure to conduct the election according to law could flip enough votes that the declared or apparent result will be overturned. Anything beyond that would be a political question, and the rationales that the Rs will use will be exactly that, arguments that the election that the legal election scheme required could not be carried out as the law specifies. Trump could lose a state by 10% and it wouldn’t invalidate the political claim that Trump Really Won, as long as it is based on such wide-bore claimed factors like COVID and insurrectionists.
This sort of claim can only be addressed by the state legislature, and then the federal legislature, because only they can grant the relief required by such claims, some new way of choosing electors that can be carried out under present conditions. In 2000, for example, either the Florida or the federal legislature could have imposed the only just solution to Florida’s impossibly close result, a re-vote in Florida.
The actual correct decision an unbiased SCOTUS would hand down if presented with the R contest it will be asked to adjudicate, will be that it can’t decide such issues, that they are political questions, not able to be adjudicated by courts.
Well, neither Florida nor the US had a just legislative majority in 2000, so that just result wasn’t going to happen anyway, even if SCOTUS that year had observed the just limitations on its jurisdiction and not interfered with that election being decided by either the Florida SC or by Congress. This election, the Congressional majority is going to be as up in the air as the presidential results, so the question will be settled by whoever has the most guns on hand on January 3, 2021. Trump is still going to be Commander-in-Chief until Inauguration Day, so the count there seems likely to go in his favor, barring mutiny and treason beforehand, or betrayal on that day by whatever generals he has put in to keep him in power, but pull a John Churchill on him.
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