As the nation is being told by most sources of information to move on and accept that a Biden administration will be coming soon to a republic near you, I decided to take a moment and point out that while the narrative is one of a White House occupant that is in denial of reality, as the winner of the 2020 election is doing all he can to get a transition team going, the actual story of this election may not be headed exactly in the direction we are all being told to think it is. The candidate with fewer electoral college votes has not conceded as of yet. The narrative shouldn’t be one of transition. It should be a story of an historic struggle for power in an already historic election year. This is where we are at this moment. Let’s look at the three directions that we could be heading before the next president is sworn into office.
Click the map to create your own at Biden wins 270 electoral votes
This is the scenario that most of the media and political experts are telling us is happening. It’s perfectly understandable when you consider the current vote totals in the battleground states and the narrative that is pushed across the board by the media, about the foregone conclusion, that Biden is the “President-Elect” and Trump is holed up in the White House living in a state of denial. While I don’t necessarily disagree with this mix of assessment and prediction by the mainstream media, I still see at least one way for Trump to serve a second term. I’ll get to that in a moment. But yes, this is what conventional wisdom is telling us is happening at this point about one week and a half after the election.
Trump wins 270 electoral votes
You know, I just can’t see this happening. Even if Trump flips PA via lawsuits (which is possible but not probable) and finds the votes in AZ and GA. He will still have to flip one or two other states via legal challenges or recounts. Historically vote totals are not changed through legal challenges but hey this is 2020 and precedent has taken a back seat this year anyway. Even though the Trump team is saying this will happen I just don’t see it.
No candidate wins 270 electoral votes – Contingent Election
This is where I’m reaching I admit. But it is a path and I believe a more likely one than Trump winning 270 electoral votes. Basically, when neither candidate concedes the election to the other, and neither candidate has 270 electoral votes, there is what is known as a “contingent election” in the House of Representatives. In a contingent election, each state delegation will have one vote for president. Given our current political layout, that would mean that Trump would get a majority of these votes since there are more red states than blue in that chamber. If Trump can use legal challenges to remove enough votes from PA and AZ goes red, this could indeed occur. Here is a wikipedia article that explains it in more detail.
At the moment, it most certainly appears that Joe Biden will take office on January 20th, 2021. I’m simply wanting to give you something to think about when and if things go sideways and the hand wringing starts about Trump stealing the election. If the highly unlikely scenario of Biden not reaching the projected 270 electoral college votes does actually occur, our nation has been there before and has a method in the constitution to resolve it.
