[ad_1]
A LOT HAS HAPPENED in the last six days, and there is still a long way to go before US President-elect Joe Biden is officially inaugurated in January.
Although the US media has projected that Biden wins the election (as is traditional in every presidential election) the votes are still being counted and the results have not yet been certified.
The media projections are made by teams of experts and Biden is being named the winner due to the statistical improbability that President Trump will be able to make up the difference based on the number of votes left to be counted in key states.
However, Trump’s campaign team has already filed several lawsuits in recent days.
Let’s take a look at how things are likely to play out between now and January 20, when Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris enter the White House.
Where are we now?
An estimated 159 million Americans voted for a new president on or before November 3.
People also voted for newly elected members of the House of Representatives, Senate, and in individual states there was a slew of other votes on issues like the reintroduction of wolves and the legalization of recreational marijuana.
It was until Saturday before the Associated Press and other outlets made their official calls about a winner, even though the outcome in most states was clear on Wednesday or Thursday.
Heading into the weekend, the tide had turned in Biden’s favor as he moved through Georgia and Pennsylvania.
People in the United States react to a speech by President-elect Joe Biden on Saturday.
Source: Jacquelyn Martin
Pennsylvania turned out to be the decisive state in calling the elections, with outlets like CNN and the Associated Press calling for Biden’s victory after the state was called around 5 p.m. Saturday.
That puts him above the Electoral College’s magic number of 270 votes, and if he continues to win in other key states where counting continues, such as Arizona and Georgia, he could rack up 306 votes by the time the process concludes.
So if Biden’s win is a projection, when will it be official?
As a reminder, the winner of the United States presidency is not decided by popular vote, but through the Electoral College.
There are 538 members of the Electoral College, divided among the US states, and the number for each state is based on the size of its population.
A state has one elector for each of its members of the House of Representatives and one for each of the two state senators.
California, the most populous state, has 55 voters, Texas has 38, and New York and Florida have 29 each.
At the other end of the spectrum, sparsely populated Alaska, Delaware, Vermont and Wyoming have just three voters each.
Each elector is a real person and they are elected in a two-part process: first by political parties in each state and second by voters during general elections.
When voters cast their vote for a presidential candidate, they are voting to select the electors of their state.
The names of potential voters in some states appear on the ballot below the name of the presidential candidate.
Biden’s victory will be made official after the electors of each state cast their votes for the new president.
Voters must vote on December 14, and Biden is scheduled to take office on January 20, 2021.
Source: SIPA USA / PA Images
These votes must be received by the president of the Senate and the head of the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States no later than nine days later.
On January 6, Congress is scheduled to meet to count the votes. The result is announced by the President of the Senate, currently Vice President Mike Pence.
Once the minimum of 270 votes is reached, the president-elect and vice president-elect will take the oath and begin their duties on January 20.
What if Trump refuses to budge?
The award is not a legal requirement and is completely optional, but it has been the norm for losing candidates in the US.
Daniel Geary, associate professor of US history at Trinity College Dublin, said there has never been a time when a candidate prevented a new president from taking office by refusing to concede.
“This is really the only case where a president has clearly lost the election and refused to budge,” Geary said. TheJournal.ie.
There were the two contested elections in 1876 and then the 2000 elections, but we never had a candidate who refused to budge.
Donald Trump making a statement to the nation on Election Night from the White House.
Source: Kleponis Chris / CNP / ABACA
Before the election, Trump never said he would give in and in September he refused to guarantee that he would transfer power if he lost the election.
When asked at a White House press conference if he was committed to the peaceful handover of power, he said: “Well, we’ll have to see what happens.”
Trump also appeared to suggest nullifying the mail-in ballots, noting that in such a scenario, he would remain in power.
“Get rid of the ballots and you will have a very quiet one – there will be no transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. ”
Geary said: “It’s hard to see Trump making any concessions and saying ‘I lost the election’ … The narrative that Trump won doesn’t seem like it’s going to go away, unfortunately.”
The only thing that is close [to the current situation] It’s 2000, but I think this is different because in that case, Al Gore was willing to give in when things had gone against him.
The 2000 election between Al Gore and George W Bush was challenged in the Supreme Court, after a dramatic recount process in Florida, but Gore ultimately relented.
In 1876, the election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford Hayes resulted in Congress passing a law to decide the results of the disputed vote.
What are the legal challenges that Trump has presented?
Former New York Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliana speaking about legal challenges in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Source: john minchillo
The Trump campaign has raised legal challenges to the results in several states, but no evidence has emerged of widespread wrongdoing affecting the results.
Trump plans to file another round of lawsuits next week, according to his attorney Rudy Giuliani, who said he had “a lot of evidence” of fraud.
Giuliani told Fox News yesterday that Trump’s team would file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania today against officials “for violating civil rights, for holding an unfair election. [and] for violating state law ”.
“The first lawsuit will be Pennsylvania. The second will be Michigan or Georgia. And in the course of the week, we should fix everything, ”Giuliani said.
Last week, the Trump campaign team filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Nevada as Biden approached the presidency.
His team demanded better access for campaign observers at counting centers and also made unsubstantiated claims about absentee ballots.
The 2000 electoral battle between Bush and Gore was brought to the Supreme Court. The outcome depended on the outcome in Florida, where Bush led with just over 500 votes.
In this case, Trump has a much larger vote deficit in states like Pennsylvania, where he has lost nearly 50,000 votes. It has also dropped in many other states by a significant amount.
File image of the United States Supreme Court in Washington DC.
Source: Shutterstock / Phil Pasquini
The Supreme Court has been cautious about its involvement in voting matters decided by the states and is aware that it jeopardized its position as an independent body in the wake of the 2000 Florida ruling.
A case this time would bring into the limelight the political leanings of the court’s six conservative and three liberal justices, especially Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court just last month.
Trump said he rushed her appointment in part so she could be there to hear any election cases.
No news is bad news
Support the magazine
your contributions help us continue to deliver the stories that are important to you
Support us now
What about the stories?
Counts can be requested or, in some cases, triggered automatically if margins are small between the two top candidates.
Georgia announced Friday that it would recount electoral votes, as results showed Biden leading by just over 1,500 votes in the state.
On January 5, Georgia will also see two second-round races to decide which party, Democrat or Republican, will control the Senate.
The recounts have helped change the outcome of local elections in the United States.
“At the local level, yes, but the votes have to be very close for them to be annulled,” said Daniel Geary.
Trump has almost no chance of overturning this election. Even if it were successful in one state, it would not be enough.
Protesters in New York City took to the streets to denounce Donald Trump’s attempts to stop counting votes on November 4.
Source: Michael Nigro
What’s all this about “unfaithful voters”?
At the end of the day, voters overwhelmingly vote in line with the popular vote in their state and the projected presidential winner takes office in January.
However, nothing in the Constitution of the United States requires voters to vote one way or another.
If some states require them to respect the popular vote and they don’t, so-called ‘infidel voters’ are subject to a simple fine.
In July 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could impose punishments on such unfair voters by establishing laws that required voters to cast their votes in accordance with the popular vote in that state.
Between 1796 and 2016, about 180 voters cast votes against the presidential or vice-presidential candidate who won their status. But unfaithful voters have never determined the outcome of the American election.
Some voters voted or attempted to vote for a different candidate in 2016, but it is extremely rare for a voter to challenge the will of the voters in the state.
The issue of unfaithful voters hasn’t had an impact “in a long time,” Geary said.
Technically, voters can vote for whoever they want, but in practice they are chosen by parties to be loyal and there were some who parted ways with Trump because they felt he was unfit, but that is not going to happen this time.
In general, there are many ‘processes’ that need to happen between now and January 20 when, as planned, Biden will become the 46th president of the United States.
With AFP report
[ad_2]