something to think about

 

 

The Atlantic has this article written by Barton Gellman.

headline:  The election that could break America

sub-head:  (If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result.  Who will stop him?)

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There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11.  As November 3 approaches, their screens are blinking red, alight with warnings that the political system does not know how to absorb.  They see the obvious signs that we all see, but they also know subtle things that most of us do not.  Something dangerous has hove into view, and the nation is lurching into its path.

The danger is not merely that the 2020 election will bring discord.  Those who fear something worse take turbulence and controversy for granted.  The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation's creaky electoral machinery.

Something has to give, and many things will, when the time comes for casting, canvassing, and certifying the ballots.  Anything is possible, including a landslide that leaves no doubt on Election Night.  But even if one side takes a commanding early lead, tabulation and litigation of the "overtime count" -- millions of mail-in and provisional ballots -- could keep the outcome unsettled for days or weeks.

If we are lucky, this fraught and dysfunctional election cycle will reach a conventional stopping point in time to meet crucial deadlines in December and January.  The contest will be decided with sufficient authority that the losing candidate will be forced to yield.  Collectively we will have made our choice -- a messy one, no doubt, but clear enough to arm the president-elect with a mandate to govern.

As a nation, we have never failed to clear that bar.  But in this election year of plague and recession and catastrophized politics, the mechanisms of decision are at meaningful risk of breaking down.  Close students of election law and procedure are warning that conditions are ripe for a constitutional crisis that would leave the nation without an authoritative result.  We have no fail-safe against that calamity.  Thus the blinking red lights.

"We could well see a protracted postelection struggle in the courts and the streets if the results are close," says Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the UC Irvine School of Law and the author of a recent book called Election Meltdown.  "The kind of election meltdown we could see would be much worse than 2000's Bush v. Gore case."

A lot of people, including Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee, have misconceived the nature of the threat.  They frame it as a concern, unthinkable for presidents past, that Trump might refuse to vacate the Oval Office if he loses.  They generally conclude, as Biden has, that in that event the proper authorities "will escort him from the White House with great dispatch."

The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome.  The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him.  If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress.  He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all.  He could seize on that uncertainty to hold on to power.

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