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by adamsea 2153 days ago
What if votes are still being counted? What if so many votes are lost because of screwups that it's hard to know who won in certain counties? What if Trump lies, as he does, and says he won in places where he didn't?

Also I'd like to point out that the orders to create concentration camps for immigrants which Trump issued to ICE may very well have been illegal. Federal agencies receive orders all the time from various folks and sometimes those orders are later acknowledged as illegal.
1 comments
iso1631 2153 days ago
It's tricky for an officer to know if an order is legal or not, hence the issues. What an chief of staff is sure of is that a legal order can only come from the president, and at 12:01p on Jan 20th the president will be whoever the joint session of congress says it is.
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adamsea 2153 days ago
I think you're missing me point. Most likely you'll be correct.

But if all the votes aren't counted yet - like what happened with the Bush/Gore election - then the Supreme Court or whomever makes these decisions could legally extend the timeline (however it happened before). Trump remains President then until it's sorted out.

And it probably would get sorted out. But my point is that there is historical precedent for a gray area of when an election is over - I mean come on, the Supreme Court had to decide when the Bush / Gore election was over, and Gore could have contested that, if he had chosen to.

So it's obviously a possibility considering how messed-up our electoral process could be this year from a combination of covid-19, neglect, and deliberate neglect. And possibly foreign sabotage though I'd put that at the bottom of the list.

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iso1631 2151 days ago
The 20th amendment literally says

> The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January

It could not be plainer.

Supreme court can rule about the process of counting, when the joint session to verify the votes happens, when a given state has to appoint its electors etc, but can't possibly interpret this as anything other than the plain text it says.

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adamsea 2150 days ago
Thanks for the info on that. :).

What if on January 20 there is disagreement about who the President is?

I actually don't know how that works.

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