Harris v. Trump may be remembered as a ‘judicial election’ – the world will hope to be decided tonight

Politicians and people around the world are holding their breath as they wait to see who will win Tuesday’s US presidential election. Will this be a second term for Republican Donald Trump? Or a victory for Democrat Kamala Harris, who will become the first female US president and the second person of color?

Unlike in Britain, where a prime minister can be kicked out of Downing Street overnight after a general election, there will be a transition period. The next president will take office no earlier than Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025.

But when will we know who the next president will be? Recent precedents suggest that we may find out not the night after polls close, but days or even weeks later – especially if the result is as close as many have predicted this time.

Recent delays – and what happened before

In 2000, Election Day was November 7, but George W. Bush did not become president-elect until December 13. That’s when his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, conceded after the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, overturned the Florida Supreme Court’s decision to halt the recount in the then-swing state.

We’ll never know who actually got the most votes in the Sunshine State – there were probably several hundred votes.

Florida famously gave Bush a 271 to 266 Electoral College victory, even though Gore received half a million more votes than he did nationwide.

In the last election of 2020, it was only on the Saturday after the Tuesday vote, four days later, that I was able to ‘call’ the election for Joe Biden on Sky News along with the other major news networks.

Donald Trump still insisted on winning. His supporters have filed numerous legal challenges trying to overturn election results in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. They failed, but on January 6, 2021, a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to prevent Vice President Mike Pence from officially certifying the result as a victory for Biden.

Despite these examples in recent years, in modern U.S. elections, the winner is often known within hours of votes being counted.

Traditionally, the result is accepted whenever one of the two candidates admits defeat and when the Associated Press (AP), America’s 170-year-old nonpartisan news service, “calls the winner.”

The AP will announce a total of 5,000 election results next week. He estimates that evidence of a clear winner of the presidential election could emerge about seven hours after vote counting begins on the East Coast – around 1 a.m. in Washington and 6 a.m. in London on Wednesday, November 6. This will only work if Harris or Trump has a comfortable lead in the election results across the country.

If Trump appears to have won a complete victory, expect Kamala Harris to concede in the wee hours like Hillary Clinton did in 2016. A shocked Mrs. Clinton called an equally surprised Trump to congratulate him and then made a formal speech to her supporters. a few hours later.

Close race could end in ‘judicial election’

This time, Trump said, “I want a landslide.” He also promised: “If I lose (lose) and it’s free and fair, I will absolutely accept the results.” Let’s see. He didn’t concede in 2020 and still erroneously claims he won then. Surprisingly, most Republican voters say they agree with him.

All polls show this will be a very close election. If Trump looks like he’s losing narrowly because one or two swing states go against him, he’ll do everything he can to sow distrust, delay the declaration of Harris as the winner, and ultimately possibly overturn his election loss.

That’s why insiders call it a “judicial election.” Both sides are assembling huge teams of lawyers ready to fight this. Trump’s campaign is recalling conservative lawyers who represented him in 2020. The headquarters claims that there are 230,000 volunteers under surveillance in swing states.

To lead her legal team, Harris hired Dana Remus, a former White House counsel, and Marc Elias, a tough litigation lawyer who has won cases, opening the door for Democrats to have their own “dark money” for legal cases to counter the cash. from pro-Trump billionaires like Elon Musk.

Of course, if Harris suffers a narrow defeat and Democrats suspect foul play, Democrats could also challenge some of the results. However, unlike Republicans, they did not openly discuss this as a tactic to snatch victory out the back door.

Trump and his supporters are laying the groundwork for distrust of this year’s results. They are already claiming “fraud” and “voter fraud” in early voting. They claim upfront that this is a “rigged election” against them.

More than 200 lawsuits have been filed covering voter identity, mail-in voting, voting machines, foreign interference and intimidation.

Voters must be US citizens. This year, complaints from Trump supporters have focused on allegations that illegal immigrants are being allowed to vote.

2020 was a chaotic and impromptu test that revealed tactics that could be used to challenge another Trump defeat. This time the Republicans are better organized.

Obstacles between elections and inauguration

There are options to cancel or stop the process at every stage in the weeks leading up to the inauguration.

Each state has until Dec. 11 to certify the results. This can be stopped either by successfully arguing that the vote was not conducted properly or that the ballots were cast by people who were not eligible to vote. But none of Trump’s complaints about voting irregularities were upheld in 2020.

Local election officials may also refuse to certify results. This was previously unknown in America, but since 2020 it has happened more than twenty times in eight states.

However, federal law has been reformed so that only state governors have final authority to issue certificates unless a court rules otherwise, and Congress is required to treat their certificates as final. So far, even Republican governors have been certified.

Technically, the votes cast by voters matter because they determine in each state who sits in the Electoral College, which “chooses” the president. It has 538 members, meaning a candidate needs 270 to win. All but two states allocate their electors on a winner-take-all basis to the candidate who gets the most votes in their state.

If no candidate reaches 270 points and the Electoral College as a whole fails to certify, the results of the general election will be invalidated. The House of Representatives elects the president in what is called a contingent election.

This is based on one vote per state. Republicans now control more state delegations and are likely to do so after next week’s elections. In a contingent election, the 100-member U.S. Senate elects a vice president, who may be from another party.

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Then comes the fateful date of January 6th, when the Vice President and the newly elected Congress meet to confirm the new President. Assuming Harris, say, escaped a conditional election, it is still possible that a Republican-majority Congress could refuse to certify her victory, even though she would preside as the outgoing vice president. That’s probably what Trump meant during his rally at Madison Square Garden when he said he and Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker, have a “secret… I’ll tell you what it is when the race will end.”

If the election results are contested, litigation at all levels is inevitable.

If the argument reaches the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court, all indications are that Trump will receive a favorable hearing; he appointed three of its members.

At the same time, if there is uncertainty about the outcome that lingers, there is a risk of widespread civil unrest.

This is the best reason to hope that the US presidential election will be decided tonight or shortly thereafter.