Election Eviction -- What If Trump Refuses To Concede?

“They are sending out 51,000,000 Ballots to people who haven’t even requested a Ballot. Many of those people don’t even exist. They are trying to STEAL this election. This should not be allowed!”

– Donald J. Trump, tweet (August 20, 2020)

It is uncertain how Donald Trump would react to electoral defeat, especially a narrow one. What if he rejects the result? You think this is just fiction? As improbable as this reaction may seem, people should consider the unthinkable.

"If Trump refuses to accept the election results, we will see the streets overflow with outraged Americans.”

– Dana R. Fisher, author of the book American Resistance and a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland

Some believe Trump is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep power, His noxious proposal to postpone the elections is not the real threat to democracy. He has openly declared that he may not abide by the election results in a nationally televised interview on Fox News, recalling a similar threat he made weeks before the 2016 vote.

Trump:

“I have to see. Look ... I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say ‘yes.’ I’m not going to say ‘no,’ and I didn’t last time, either.”

Trump has never accepted his popular vote loss -- always repeating the lie that millions of Democrats voted illegally. Now he is questioning the legitimacy of an election that will rely on mail-in ballots, even though he himself has often voted absentee. He has threatened to withhold funding from states that are trying to make it easier for people to vote, and he is undermining the U.S. Postal Service, both of which are essential, especially in a pandemic.

His Republican allies have been passing voter ID laws, purging voter rolls, and cutting the number of polling places in urban areas, forcing people to stand in line for hours to exercise their right to vote. This is a war on voters who lean Democratic, specifically Black people, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, naturalized immigrants, poor people, and young people. We’ve already seen in Georgia and Wisconsin how these tactics play out on Election Day.

(Frances Fox Piven, Deepak Bhargava. “What If Trump Won’t Leave?”

The Intercept. August 11, 2020.)

What might happen in a country where Trumpian presidential narcissism flourishes?

The School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU) speaks to the scenario:

“To steal the election, we suspect he will adapt the standard playbook of authoritarians everywhere: cast doubt on the election results by filing numerous lawsuits and launching coordinated federal and state investigations, including into foreign interference; call on militia groups to intimidate election officials and instigate violence; rely on fringe social media to generate untraceable rumors, and on Fox News to amplify these messages as fact; and create a climate of confusion and chaos.

“He might ask the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security – which he has now weaponized against democracy – to deploy to big cities in swing states to stop the vote count or seize ballots. If he does all this right, he’ll be able to put soldiers on the streets, inflame his base, and convince millions of people that the election is being stolen from him.”

(Frances Fox Piven, Deepak Bhargava. “What If Trump Won’t Leave?”

The Intercept. August 11, 2020.)

If Trump loses the presidency, he could claim the vote was rigged and rely on a complicated scheme involving emergency powers and the compliance of his fellow Republicans to make sure he can stay in power. He would likely blame mail-in ballots and Chinese election interference for the loss and invoke emergency powers.

What’s Trump's end game? Under the Constitution, state legislatures decide how to appoint electors. From there, he could create a “false justification” for right-wing state legislatures to appoint Trump-loyal electors. The legislatures in all of the closely contested states this fall – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina – are controlled by Republicans.

It’s hard to conceive how you justify changing the rules for appointing electors after the election. But legislators have contemplated it before: Florida’s Republican legislature seriously considered doing just that in 2000 before the Supreme Court ultimately stepped in. But, if this happens, the Democrats will challenge the investigation and the challenge to the election, which would eventually be taken to the US Supreme Court.

Time has proven Trump will work to exacerbate any crisis, not resolve it; the Constitution assumes good faith, and laws intended to regulate voting outcomes are disastrously vague. In the past, political leaders like Al Gore have taken measures to insure the peaceful transfer of power. Gore could have pursued constitutional avenues to claim victory. Though he had won the popular vote, Gore saw it as his duty to avoid escalating the electoral crisis.

Lawrence Douglas, a legal scholar and a professor at Amherst College, says, “The Presidential elections of 1800 and 1876 ended in compromises, too, in the spirit of the Constitution, common cause, and good faith-- all things alien to Donald Trump. It’s not the compromise that functions as precedent here but the conflict: election results have been unclear in the past, and they can be unclear again.”

(Masha Gessen. “What Could Happen If Donald Trump Rejects Electoral Defeat.”

The New Yorker. July 21, 2020.)

Trump would likely blame the Deep State and undocumented immigrants for his loss. Without an orderly handover during a pandemic and a deep recession, this would be disastrous to Americans' perception of governmental operations.

“The best we can expect from President Donald Trump after an electoral defeat is self-pitying, peevish submission.”

– Lawrence Douglas

Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) says …

"Members of Congress and political leaders of both parties, good government organizations, and regular Americans should right now be condemning the President's failure to say he will abide by the election results, and should make clear that they will not stand with him if he does dispute the results.”

Ryan Thomas, a senior spokesperson for Stand Up America, told Newsweek that a "large coalition of groups" was preparing to protest should they feel necessary. Thomas posits that Americans need to be ready to mobilize if Trump refuses to concede …

"Trump poses an existential threat to our democracy and is already working to undermine the election. Americans need to be ready to mobilize if Trump refuses to concede—and 'Protect the Results' is organizing a large coalition of groups to meet the moment if we need to take to the streets in protest."

(Jacob Jarvis. “If Trump Rejects Election Results, Streets Could 'Overflow' With Protesters.” Newsweek. July 22, 2020.)