Former US President Donald Trump denied his defeat, on 7 November, as Joe Biden became the US President, and seemed to intent on waging a strong war to stay in power.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mentioned, on Tuesday, that "There will be a smooth transition of power," but this transition would be for a " Second Trump administration.”
"We're ready. The world is watching what's taking place. We're going to count all the votes," Pompeo said. "When the process is complete, the electors will be selected — there's a process. The Constitution lays it out pretty clearly."
All indications showcase that Trump will resort to all legal tricks to stay in power, while continuing to insist on rejecting the presidential election results and doubting Biden's victory.
The Electoral Commission shall meet on December 14th to cast a vote for the presidency. Technically, every state uses the popular vote to select its electors.
Ignore the “Popular Vote”
Although Biden is expected to win more than 270 electoral votes, which is what he needs to become president, the Republicans developed a legal theory before the elections which states that Republican-friendly legislatures in places such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania could ignore the “popular vote” in their states, and appoint their own electors, according to “The Guardian.”
Federal law allows legislatures to do so if states have “failed to make a choice” by the day the electoral commission meeting, but there is no evidence of systemic fraud of wrongdoing in any state.
“If the country continues to follow the rule of law, I see no plausible constitutional path forward for Trump to remain as president barring new evidence of some massive failure of the election system in multiple states,” Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in elections, wrote in an email. “It would be a naked, antidemocratic power grab to try to use state legislatures to get around the voters’ choice and I don’t expect it to happen.”
“There’s a strange fascination with various imagined dark scenarios, perhaps involving renegade state legislatures, but this is more dystopian fiction than anything likely to happen,” Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University said. “The irony, or tragedy, is that we managed to conduct an extremely smooth election, with record turnout, under exceptionally difficult circumstances – and yet, a significant portion of the president’s supporters are now convinced that the process was flawed.”
A split within the Republicans
Not all Republicans agree with Trump in his bid to regain power. Shortly after Election Day, Jake Corman, the top Republican in the Senate in Pennsylvania, indicated that his party would "follow the law" in the state, which requires electors to be selected by the winner of the popular vote.
“The state legislature does not have and will not have a hand in choosing the state’s presidential electors or in deciding the outcome of the presidential election,” Corman said in an article published last October.
However, Republicans, on Tuesday, in the Pennsylvania legislature have expressed their desire to investigate allegations of voter fraud.
Although there’s no evidence of widespread malfeasance in the state, the move is alarming because it could be the beginning of an attempt to undermine the results of the popular vote in Pennsylvania.
Deadlines
Each state has its own deadlines for certifying election results, which are then used to allocate its own electoral commission votes, and the Trump campaign seeks to prevent officials from certifying results in Pennsylvania and Michigan, at least.
Pildes indicated that even if that is the Trump campaign’s hope, courts are unlikely to step in.
“States are going to start certifying their vote totals beginning in less than 10 days,” he said. “There is no basis in the claims made thus far for the courts to stop that process.”
Acting President
Trump faces other obstacles, the most important of which are state governors. In Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada, which are crucial states, Democratic governors refuse to bow to the Republican-led legislatures.
Despite the length of this conflict, the constitution sets a single deadline even if the count continues, as the terms of president and vice president end at noon on January 20. At this point if there is no final result in the race, then House Speaker, most likely Nancy Pelosi, will become the acting president.
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