“Let us not hedge about one thing. Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede. Not under any circumstance. Not during the Interregnum (the interval between two periods of office) and not afterward. If compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will insist from exile, as long as he draws breath, that the contest was rigged.
-- Barton Gellman, staff writer at The Atlantic
Many Trump supporters believe incorrect or evidence-free claims made by the president recently, such as that ballots are going out that omit just Trump’s name, or being sold, or being dumped in a river.
At packed outdoor rallies Trump has said the polls that show him trailing the Democratic nominee Joe Biden are “fake,” drawing boos from the crowd and raising their expectations of victory. He also said he feared voter fraud, which studies have repeatedly found to be extremely rare, and in most cases nonexistent.
“The biggest problem we have is if they cheat with the ballots. That's my biggest problem,” he told supporters at the Phoenix Goodyear Airport this week. “That's my only thing – that's the only thing I worry about.”
Trump has lied about voter fraud in the past as well, insisting even after he won in 2016 that he would have also won the popular vote if millions of votes hadn’t been cast illegally. The truth is that voting fraud is exceedingly rare, and widespread voting fraud of the kind that can sway an election is even rarer.
And, remember, Trump has also off-handedly mused on a handful of occasions about getting more than the constitutionally permitted eight years in office because of the time in his first term “stolen” from him due to former special counsel Robert Muller’s investigation – comments that also raised concerns about Trump’s commitment to the limits of presidential terms.
As Trump continues to lie to his crowds, he has also refused to say he’d accept the results of the election in the event that he loses. And long vote counts and potential fights over rejected mail ballots in the states most likely to decide the election – Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – increase the chance of chaos.
If we are lucky, this dysfunctional election cycle will reach a conventional stopping point in time to meet crucial deadlines in December and January. That is, if the contest is decided with sufficient authority that the losing candidate will be forced to yield.
A lot of people, including Joe Biden frame any threat of Trump refusing to vacate the White House as a concern, but entirely unthinkable They generally conclude, as Biden has, that in that event of any refusal, the proper authorities “will escort Trump from the White House with great dispatch.”
Barton Gellman writes …
“The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that uncertainty to hold onto power.”
(Barton Gellman. “The Election That Could Break America.” The Atlantic. November 2020.)
We know that Trump’s state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for postelection maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states. He has spent months attacking the integrity of the election and lying about mail voting.
Gellman speculates …
“Ambiguities in the Constitution and logic bombs in the Electoral Count Act make it possible to extend the dispute all the way to Inauguration Day, which would bring the nation to a precipice. The Twentieth Amendment is crystal clear that the president’s term in office 'shall end' at noon on January 20, but two men could show up to be sworn in. One of them would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand.”
Some scholars conclude that if such a scenario were to take place, few people have “actual answers to what happens.” If the election is close and contested, it could test American democracy more than any race in a century.
What We Do Know
Cameron Joseph, Senior Political Reporter for Vice, shares these perspectives;
Trump has no power to unilaterally hold onto power or cancel the election. Even if he holes up in the White House, his current term will end on January 20.
A number of crucial battleground states will likely take days or even weeks to tally up their votes because of the major spike in mail voting expected due to the coronavirus. That won’t be pretty, but it isn’t a full-blown crisis
Court fights over ballots also happen in nearly every political cycle, and state court battles are almost guaranteed if this is a close race.
The real problem comes if a partisan state supreme court – say, Wisconsin’s GOP-allied majority, or Pennsylvania’s Democratic court – twists the law to find a favorable ruling for their side that could decide the election that then gets appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Republicans rammed through a replacement for Justice Ginsburg, giving them a 6-3 ideological edge. An unfavorable decision from the court might not be accepted by Democrats.
(Cameron Joseph. “What Happens Next If President Trump Refuses to Concede?” Vice. September 21, 2020.)
According to a new poll by Baldwin Wallace University, more than half of likely Ohio voters believe that President Donald Trump won’t concede or accept next month’s general election results even if certified vote totals show that he lost.
The poll found more than 78% of likely Democratic voters in Ohio, as well as 31% of GOP voters, said they think Trump wouldn’t accept an unfavorable election result, according to the poll.
Fifty-seven percent of independent likely voters in Ohio believe Trump wouldn’t concede, compared to just 18% who think he would.
Poll results from three other battleground states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, showed even more skepticism that Trump would peacefully transfer power. Between 57-58% of likely voters in each of those other states said they don’t think Trump will concede even after the vote count is certified.
(The Baldwin Wallace University Great Lakes Poll: In partnership with Oakland University and Ohio Northern University. Conducted between 9/30/20 and 10/8/20. Published
October 9, 2020.)
If the past is precedent, Trump will reject next year’s presidential elections results. Over the past several months he has relentlessly sought to undermine the credibility of the presidential poll, calling it the “greatest rigged election in history”.
Trump claims that US elections are riddled by fraud which allows Democrats to steal victory. The accusation has become a favorite of Republicans in recent years, despite having been conclusively debunked.
The Republican party has amassed a $20m war chest to spend on litigation in what has the potential to be a toxic post-election period. Trump has also commandeered the support of the US attorney general, William Barr.
Testifying before Congress this summer Barr pointedly declined to give assurances that he will keep the DoJ out of any contested election count in November.
(Ed Pilkington. “'Our democracy is deeply imperiled': how democratic norms are under threat ahead of the US election.” The Guardian. September 09, 2020.)
The damage Trump has done to America’s democratic institutions will be lasting. The 2020 election is indicative of that damage. His voters and his conservative media enablers have shown that when it is coming from him, they are not too concerned about assaults on America's constitutional norms and the institutions that hold presidents to account.
Trump's wild lies about election fraud are another example of how he prioritizes his personal advantage ahead of national interests and the health of the political system.
Professor Michael Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches Constitutional Law and Constitutional History, says there are ten “basic democratic norms that Trump fails to comply with or outright repudiates:
Respect for an independent judiciary,
Support for a free and independent press,
More generally, the importance of independent actors within government, as opposed to actors who simply owe loyalty to the president;
A commitment to the peaceful resolution of political disputes rather than encouraging violence;
Respect for the legitimacy of elections;
Not using the legal system to attack political opponents;
Not expressing admiration for foreign autocrats;
Preserving transparency within government;
The maintenance of a sharp separation between the private interests of public servants and the public good;
(10) At least a minimual commitment to truth telling.
(Michael Klarman. “Trump and the Threat to Democracy.” Take Care. December 10, 2019.)
1 comment:
Ill be there to see you cry when Trump wins
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