An authority on election law, Richard Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, has this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: "Why It Will Be Harder for Trump to Challenge This Year's election." In one of my rare copy-and-paste jobs, I'm featuring his most relevant observations without, I believe, redacting any of importance. And I keep my mouth almost entirely shut. Thus, the post isn't a long one. Here's Hansen,
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The country is now in far better shape to avoid the kind of protracted mess we saw in 2020.... We can expect many more lawsuits in swing states in the months ahead, but the chances are low that any of significance will succeed.
Trump supporters may hope that by tying up some vote counts until Jan. 6 ... they can deny either candidate an Electoral College majority, triggering what some call a “contingent election” under the Constitution’s 12th Amendment, with each state’s House delegation casting a single vote. [This would be bad].... State legislatures set certification deadlines, which should override administrative foot-dragging even if sanctioned by state election boards. State courts and federal courts would likely intervene to make election officials do their jobs..
In addition, under the 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act..., if a state doesn’t certify its count, Congress must remove that state’s Electoral College votes from the tally of what counts as a majority. So a delay should not trigger a special election in the House to choose the next president. [That] same 2022 law [forbids fake electors].... The law also prevents the vice president who presides over the Electoral College count in Congress, from simply throwing out votes she doesn’t like, [as Trump wanted Mike Pence to do].
A fake electors gambit would hit another roadblock if tried in 2024. The Supreme Court [has] rejected an extreme version of the "independent state legislature" theory that Trump supporters had used in 2020.... The case involved a question of partisan gerrymandering, not Electoral College votes, but its logic is the same: State legislatures have no free-floating power to ignore their own laws and constitutions.
Nor should people be worried that Democrats, if they control Congress on Jan. 6, 2025, won’t accept a Trump victory by claiming that he is ineligible because he participated in an insurrection against the government. [That was outlawed by another ruling from the SC, which seems to be incapable of accurately reading the U.S. Consitution].... Democrats in theory could try to ignore this ruling, but leading Democrats have explicitly said that they will not use the Electoral College count to prevent a Trump victory. [Damn.]
In the 2020 election, what saved the country from the meddling of bad actors was enough Republicans and Democrats in power—as judges, state election administrators, governors, legislators and members of Congress—who did the right thing. The system held.
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But it won't if Trump is elected, which again would be by fewer votes than the democratic winner. "The system" will be no more. It'll be obliterated and then recreated in Donald's corrupt image.
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