As Donald Trump warns inaccurately of voter fraud and polls show the unpopular president staying within touching distance of Democrat Joe Biden, the prospect of an unresolved US election draws horribly near, especially as the impact of the coronavirus is widely seen as likely to delay a result by days, if not weeks.
Across the political spectrum, pundits are predicting what may happen should Trump refuse to surrender power. The speculation is tantalising but the short answer is that nobody has a clue.
History does provide some sort of guide. There have been inconclusive US elections before. They were resolved, but not by any constitutional mechanism and the consequences of such brutal political contests have been severe indeed.
This is a very interesting read as we go into what promises to be a crazy and brutal political cycle.
Donald John Trump proves to be childlike and dangerous again 👨🏼💼
I can’t believe that the President could even hesitate to say that he wouldn’t voluntarily step down if the election doesn’t go his way. While any close election has its questions on which ballots are counted and disputes over the law, when ultimately an election is finalized, it is final and we must all accept it. That’s not saying that people shouldn’t lobby for policies they support or even campaign for the next election for their preferred candidate but we all live under the system put forward by our elected officials, like it or not.
No votes have been counted in the election of 2020, but a battle is already raging over the integrity of the tally and the process that will follow.
President Trump suggested he might not accept the election results if Democratic nominee Joe Biden is declared the winner.
"We're going to have to see what happens. You know that," he said on Wednesday evening in response to a question about whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
Now the Trump campaign is said to be considering another, even more outrageous approach: In a thorough and deeply disconcerting piece about the constitutional crisis that may await us between November 3 and the inauguration in January, the Atlantic’s Barton Gellman reports that the Trump campaign has been discussing “contingency plans to bypass the election results and appoint local electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” Citing the president’s baseless claims of fraud, Team Trump could ask GOP-controlled state governments to choose electors, completely ignoring an unfavorable or uncertain popular vote, state and national Republican sources told Gellman.
In your guts you know he's nuts. Can you imagine the political backlash if a state even tried to do that? Or the court challenges that would raise? That power may exist but I can't imagine anybody wanting to touch that.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is backing more House Democrats for reelection in at least a decade, prompting pushback from some of its strongest GOP allies in Congress.
After it became clear in mid-April that his administration’s response to Covid-19 was threatening his reelection, President Donald Trump considered a leadership shake-up within a health department whose rivalries and battles with the White House had hampered efforts to contain the virus.
Instead, Trump made a different move: He personally intervened to place his campaign aide Michael Caputo — a confidant of disgraced operative Roger Stone who had himself come under scrutiny for his ties to top Russian officials — as assistant Health and Human Services secretary for public affairs. Trump — not HHS Secretary Alex Azar — approached Caputo about the job, and Caputo has repeatedly emphasized that he works for the president, health officials told POLITICO.