It is important to remember that Donald Trump was trained from birth to cheat. His father had him on the company payroll as a “executive” at age 3, and he was a millionaire by age 7. Bone spurs, and paying someone to take his SAT for him, and cheating on his wives … it started young, and never stopped. In fact, I think one of the reasons he lies so often is that being able to lie to someone is its own reward — he feels, briefly, like a success if he can sell a lie.
Now, not having the “advantage’ of his lifelong depravity I can’t imagine everything he might try. But there are at least two more paths now that the Supreme Court has shut lawsuits down for good.
The Electoral College
He can try to corrupt electors. He’s got the resources of the Federal government behind him — he can pull tax forms, credit reports, criminal records, and so on. Having that information, he can attempt to blackmail, coerce, or bribe Biden electors. This effort is probably happening right now. Will he flip 30 electors? Probably not, but that won’t stop him from trying.
He can try to physically prevent electors from voting Monday. Armed mobs? Federal agents with no visible ID but with very visible firearms? Arrest them on trumped-up charges?
Congressional Certification
The process is complicated.
A step that has never drawn much attention before, Congress certifies the results of the Electoral College vote. The reason it’s never drawn much attention in previous elections, even close ones, is that we’ve never before had a President and a Party willing to destroy democracy in order to retain power. The key paragraphs:
Counting Electoral Votes in Congress: The Congress meets in joint session to count the electoral votes. The President of the Senate is the presiding officer. If a Senator and a House member jointly submit an objection, each House would retire to its chamber to consider it.
The President and Vice President must achieve a majority of electoral votes (270) to be elected. In the absence of a majority,the House selects the President, and the Senate selects the Vice President.
If a State submits conflicting electoral votes to Congress, the two Houses acting concurrently may accept or reject them. If they do not concur, the votes of the electors certified by the Governor of the State would be counted in Congress.
The third paragraph I believe is irrelevant. Only one set of votes is being submitted from each state. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone with absolutely no standing to do so sent a slate of electors, e.g., the “Proud Boys Militia of Sheboygan, Wisconsin submits these electors”, but that’d be a bridge too far even for the Republicans. I hope.
However, there’s no description of adjudication of objections in paragraph one. There is no question that there will be at least one Senator and one House member seditious enough to object to every state that Biden won, or at least the 4 most heavily litigated. Which is odd, because those 4 states have resolved every factual claim and found no evidence of fraud — but facts are not necessary for those possessed of a lust for power. What happens if objections are entered, McConnell holds his caucus together (Collins, Murkowski, and Romney betray us all), and the Senate declines to admit Biden’s votes? It is not clear to me.
Two thoughts:
- If Biden still has a majority of the votes accepted, I think he still wins. Subtract GA, MI, PA, and WI [16, 10, 16, 20], then Biden has 306-62 = 244, and Trump still has 232. The Republicans would have to argue that a majority of the possible votes was required, not a majority of votes received. The text of the Constitution says: “The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed”, so they’d have to argue that the 62 electors were appointed but did not count. That’s pretty brazen, even for Republicans.
- Mike Pence presides over the counting. I don’t know what power he holds, but he would be the tie-breaking vote in the Senate even if we win both seats in Georgia. That would be, again, pretty brazen for the guy who lost to decide not to count votes as the tie-breaker of a 50-50 split, but, hey!, these people do not have much in the way of respect for the Constitution.