Break Down: Conceding elections
President Donald Trump announced on Twitter his preparation to fight over the election results when the Electoral College meets in December.
On Nov. 7, Joe Biden became the projected president-elect after winning Pennsylvania. Currently, President Trump and most of his staff continue to talk publicly as if President Trump will remain in the White House for a second term.
President Trump and his campaign filed more than dozen lawsuits in several states, making claims of voter fraud.
President Trump’s actions raised fear among some observers, believing that he may refuse to relinquish power. There are constitutional laws that are in place in order to ensure that every president must leave office when his or her term is up, but if those protections were to fail, the country would be facing another issue.
There are two avenues for removing any president from office; one is impeachment and the other is the 25th Amendment. This allows lawmakers to remove a president who is sick or otherwise unable to fulfill his or her duties.
Rick Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at the New York University School of Law, shared his thoughts regarding if the president refuses to step down, and how it would be unprecedented in America history.
Pildes stated that the laws keeping a president’s power in check dates as far back as the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
In the end, the Constitution doesn’t specifically address such a scenario, but it does protect against the possibility.
A U.S President’s term technically ends on Inauguration Day, “January 20 with the 1933 ratification of the 20th Amendment, which states that the president and vice president’s terms ‘shall end at noon’ on that day. Even if a president is re-elected, there’s a clear line between his first and second term.”
This means that the election results from this year will take effect January 20, 2021.
Though the states are still certifying their counts, and the Electoral College will meet on December 14 to formalize the result, experts say that Biden’s victory is clear with 79.5 million of the votes cast compared with Trump’s 73.6 million, and a comfortable margin of electoral votes.
It is unlikely that the result of any presidential election will continue to be contested on Inauguration Day. Congress would be tasked with legal and judicial actions to fight against or support the contestations, and an acting president would step in temporarily under the Presidential Succession Act.
