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By The Washington Post 
3h ago
Philip Bump
Washington – Americans old enough to remember 2016 or who paid close attention in fifth grade civics class understand that last week’s presidential election was not the time when Joe Biden was determined to become the next. President. At least not directly.
Last week’s vote established Biden as president-elect, yes. But it is the electoral college vote, a pool of 538 individual voters, that will formally make Biden the next president.
Typically, the transition from state level voting to electoral voting is trivial, an artifact of how the Constitution established the office of president.
This year, however, with President Donald Trump so far refusing to acknowledge his loss, the period from Election Day to the Electoral College vote becomes much more tense, presenting a number of points that Trump can try. spoil the works.
It is useful, then, to articulate what happens next and how Trump and his allies could try to change the outcome of the election by changing the composition of the electoral college.
The National Archives has a useful chronology of how things proceed.
November 3: Voters cast their votes in every state and DC
Sometime from November 4 to December 14: The results of the elections in each state are certified.
Usually this is not a big problem. Delaware, for example, has already certified Biden as the winner, which is not surprising given that it is where he lives. This year, however, Trump and his allies have already suggested that they will try to discontinue certification in some states, such as Pennsylvania.
Republican officials in Georgia have been under enormous pressure to somehow reconsider Biden’s apparent victory in the state. On Wednesday morning, Georgia’s secretary of state announced that a manual count would be conducted. It is unlikely to affect the results.
Once the results are certified, state governors prepare multiple copies of a “verification certificate.” This document lists the names of the actual voters the state sends to the electoral college and the number of votes cast for the winning candidate. (In the cases of Maine and Nebraska, both Trump and Biden will be represented by electors because both states divided their electoral votes depending on the winners of the House districts.)
The selected voters are not random people from the streets. The state identifies them in advance and they depend on the winning candidate. Parties elect people they trust will vote for the intended candidate, since the electoral vote is what determines the president.
In Wyoming, for example, the three state voters will be Bonnie Foster, Teresa Richards, and Karl Allred, Trump’s state campaign manager and two Republican officials, respectively. In New York, the list includes Governor Andrew Cuomo, D, and both Bill and Hillary Clinton.
This does not prevent the emergence of so-called “infidel voters”. In 2016, seven voters ended up voting for candidates other than those they were supposed to support.
December 8: If there are any disputes over the voters list, such as disputes over who actually won the election, it must be resolved by December. 8 to ensure that the process can move forward. If there is any controversy after this point, things are sent to Congress.
How can controversy arise? Well, let’s say voting results in one state favor Biden, but Republicans in the state legislature sympathize with Trump’s claims that those results are suspicious. There is no evidence whatsoever in any state that the results should be viewed that way, but that does not guarantee that legislators will not sympathize with them. And under the Constitution, the authority to appoint voters rests with the state legislature.
A legal adviser to the Trump campaign described the thought to Barton Gellman of The Atlantic earlier this year: “State legislatures will say, ‘Okay, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t believe the results of our own state they are accurate, so here is our list of voters who we believe adequately reflects our state’s results. ‘
A state could end up with two voters lists in that scenario, and those lists could survive the December 8 deadline.
December 14th: Voters meet in their states and vote for their appointed candidates. Votes are recorded on “vote certificates” which are then paired with verification certificates and stamped to form the actual state votes.
If there are competing lists of voters, the two could meet separately and create “official” ballots.
December 23th: This is the deadline for votes to be received by the United States Archivist and the President of the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence. They are then transmitted to Congress by January 3, 2021, the day the new Congress is seated.
January 6, 2021: Votes are counted in a joint session of Congress. Members of Congress may file objections to the count in writing, and any objection requires the agreement of both a member of the House and the Senate. If objections arise, each chamber is withdrawn for separate consideration.
What could be an objection? Well, how about a state’s twin voter rolls? The US Code states that electoral votes from a state that legally certified its constituents cannot be discarded, but if the votes have not been certified or there are multiple constituencies of voters, some could be. All of this quickly becomes a rarity at this point, with just two weeks to resolve any issues.
Noon on January 20: Opening.
All of this could give a stronger impression of Trump’s ability to intercede than is perhaps warranted. As Andrew Prokop of Vox reports, efforts to name voters that don’t match the registered popular vote would often have to work its way through a mix of Democratic and Republican state officials and land before sympathetic judges in order to work.
And it will take more than success in one state: Trump’s electoral college deficit means he would need several states to reject his popular vote totals.
That seems unlikely at this point. The question, however, is whether Republican officials or unsuccessful legal proceedings succeed in stopping Trump’s drive to reject the election result, or will those officials instead be dragged in as he gains momentum.
Those in the Republican establishment so far are expressing private skepticism about Trump’s efforts. But then they did it in 2016 too, until he was the party’s nominee.
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