What Happens if a President Refuses to Leave
What happens if a president loses an election only won't leave the White House?
President Donald Trump has suggested he would not accept the results of the 2020 presidential election if he were to lose. Let's say he does lose and he refuses to leave the White House. What so? Nothing like this has ever happened in American history, and then information technology'due south difficult to know for sure. However, political scientists and historians told Live Science they're reasonably confident information technology wouldn't work.
In ane scenario, assume that challenger Joe Biden wins by a wide enough margin in enough swing states to put the actual election results across doubt. Information technology'due south reasonable to wonder whether Trump, who has said that he could merely lose if the election were "rigged" against him, would ever accept the results of an ballot he lost.
According to the 20th Amendment, if Trump loses the ballot, his term would stop at noon on Jan. 20, 2021, at which fourth dimension he would officially pass his commander-in-chief dominance to Biden.
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Even if he disagrees with the results, if Trump loses, he'd almost certainly be removed from the White House, according to Robert Shapiro, a professor and the sometime acting director of Columbia University'south Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy.
In that location's no reason today to assume things volition ever get to that betoken. Trump might simply win the election, confounding polls for a second time afterward 2016. He might lose the election, then agree to leave office. And he might be able to hang on to his role by putting his thumb on the scales in the courts, as he has said.
Trump'south stated strategy is already unprecedented
Trump has repeatedly said in public that he expects to win the election through court battles (as opposed to victory at the polls).
This, on its own, wouldn't exist entirely new. In the 2000 presidential election, Texas Gov. George W. Bush defeated Vice President Al Gore, not by clearly having the nearly votes cast in his favor, merely past more finer fighting court battles following a Florida result so hazy that — as Leon Nayfakh reported in the podcast serial Fiasco — the true winner may take been unknowable.
That doesn't mean a court fight for the presidency is the new normal. Bush five. Gore, the v-4 Supreme Courtroom decision that ended the 2000 election, was supposed to be an aberration. The conservative majority that handed the election to Bush wrote that the doctrine they used should never exist used as precedent. One of them, former Supreme Courtroom Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, later wondered publicly whether it was a fault.
And at that place are important differences between 2000 and 2020.
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First, Trump has undertaken a tremendous (though not entirely successful) attempt before election day to prevent people from voting in key swing states, according to The Center for Public Integrity and the sometime Republican speaker of the Texas House. GOP lawyers have fanned out across the state to brand absentee voting more than difficult and tried (thus far unsuccessfully) to toss out votes already cast.
Second, though Gore was vice president to President Bill Clinton, who supported him, and Bush was brother to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, neither man was president at the time they were fighting to overturn election results. If Trump uses a Supreme Court claiming to win the election as he has suggested, he'll be doing information technology equally the sitting president. And he will take personally installed iii of the nine justices who could decide the case.
And of grade, neither Bush nor Gore threatened legal challenges earlier the election had actually happened. Only when a huge, decisive swing land came down to a few hundred uncertain votes did Gore fight for recounts and Bush fight to cease recounts.
Stealing an election is hard
Trump has struck out into uncharted territory with his threats of a legal battle for the presidency, Shapiro said. But despite all the noise, Shapiro expects that the bodily winner of the ballot volition become president.
"In the 2000 election, Florida was caught off-guard. Nobody knew that was coming," he said. "Everything that's going on right at present, everyone knows is coming."
Ultimately, the bureaucracy of elections is beyond Trump's achieve.
"Each of the land election bureaucracies are feverishly trying to complete the running of their elections and the counting of the votes. They know what'south coming and they know what they take to do," he said. "These are election professionals who do vary in quality across states. … They take pride in making elections work. At that place's no shenanigans among the actual civil service vote counters."
And whatever shenanigans are attempted, at some indicate they take to end.
Federal constabulary says that the states have to finalize their choices of electors on Dec. viii of the year of elections. And on Dec. fourteen, the electoral college casts their votes — typically with each group of electors meeting separately in their own state. At that bespeak, Shapiro said, the affair is settled. If more electors vote for Trump, he will go a second inauguration. If more vote for Biden, he volition be the legal president-elect, beyond the reach of a court challenge.
U.S. presidential candidates have ever accepted election results
Still, what if Trump yet refuses to leave?
Information technology's worth saying over again that while Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of ability, he hasn't explicitly said he would refuse results even at this point. And it would be a true get-go in American history.
Asked if any president had always hinted at refusing to accept election results, Bruce Schulman, a historian at Boston University, said no.
"There is no such precedent or anything really similar it," Schulman told Live Science.
Twice, in 1824 and 1876, presidential elections accept ended in the House of Representatives after no candidate managed to secure a majority of the electoral college, he pointed out.
In 1824, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Dirt and William Crawford all ran for the presidency, none won an electoral higher majority, and the Business firm selected Adams as as president.
The 1876 congressional contest ended when Republican Rutherford B. Hayes promised congressional Democrats that he would stop Reconstruction in render for their votes. That remains one of the most pregnant events in American history, every bit The Atlantic reported. Just in each example, the loser accepted the final result.
(The 1860 election, though it led to a ceremonious war, did not spark whatever disputes virtually who had been legitimately elected President, Schulman noted.)
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A more than relevant precedent, said Noah Rosenblum, a legal historian at Columbia Academy in New York Metropolis, may be the election of 1800, between President John Adams (a Federalist) and Vice President Thomas Jefferson (a Democratic-Republican).
"That election, as you may know, pitted the Federalists against the Autonomous-Republicans, and the competition was trigger-happy," Rosenblum said. "Each side expressed its sense that, if the other won, information technology would mean the end of the Commonwealth. And the Federalists, who were in power, took action explicitly designed to weaken their Democratic-Republican opponents, including passing the notorious Conflicting and Sedition Acts under which they imprisoned Autonomous-Republican newspaper editors."
In other words, commonwealth was on the ballot.
"All the same, after the Federalists lost the (very close) election, John Adams peacefully stepped down in favor of Thomas Jefferson," Rosenblum said.
Then a scenario where Trump refuses to accept a decided ballot event would exist outlandish, even by the rough and tumble standards of the 19th century.
But still, what if?
"Y'all're talking most the situation where the vote has been counted, all legal challenges to the vote have been taken care of, the electors meet on the 14th and cast their votes," Shapiro said.
The procedure then is clear.
"At that point it gets passed on to Congress [unremarkably by Dec. 23] and certified in Congress on Jan. half-dozen by the [approachable] vice president," Shapiro said. "Now, on the 6th, permit's say that the Firm and the Senate accept that the new president of the United States is Joe Biden. At that juncture, if Trump doesn't want to vacate the White House, this is very like shooting fish in a barrel."
In legal terms, there'due south footling Trump could do to hold on to ability.
"Somebody swears [Biden] in as president. It could exist the main justice of the Supreme Court. It could exist his grandmother. As of Noon on the 20th [of Jan], he's the president of the United States. The entire Hush-hush Service reports to him," Shapiro said. "Donald Trump as the approachable president has a contingent of Secret Service. Biden goes to the White House and the Secret Service escorts Trump out. That's what happens. All the ceremonious service of the government, every employee of the United States reports to Joe Biden at that juncture."
This story of a straightforward resolution comes with its own assumptions: That the electors are able to vote and accept their votes certified; that institutions of the federal government — including Congress, with its curl in certifying results — part as expected; and that the Secret Service (besides every bit other armed federal agents) follow the constabulary. In that location are places in the globe and moments in history where transfers of ability accept broken downwardly along similar lines. Merely never before in the U.s.a..
Every bit Jonathan Gienapp, a Stanford University historian, noted in October, Trump'due south refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of ability calls the forcefulness of American institutions into question. The constitution itself has no direct safeguards to ensure peace, and instead assumes that everyone involved in an election shares a commitment to abiding by the issue.
"Nosotros have institutions that can be called upon to arbitrate disputes or deny unlawful usurpations of ability, simply the safeguards that will determine matters are more political than constitutional," he wrote. "It may autumn to elected political leaders, as it did in 1876-77, to work out some sort of compromise. Or, if necessary, the people will need to exercise their fundamental right to get together and protest in an endeavor to bring virtually resolution."
Still, Shapiro said he expects America'due south multi-century streak of turning over the presidency according to the rules to continue, if everything goes right up until that point.
"That'southward the easiest scenario," he said. "I call back the Hole-and-corner Service is going to study to the new president of the U.s.. The harder scenario is getting the agreed-upon vote count and the agreed-upon electors."
All that said, a recalcitrant Trump could do plenty in the months between today and inauguration to brand trouble for Biden, if Biden wins. Presidential transitions are catchy processes, Shapiro said. Thousands of political appointees across the federal government, from the NASA administrator to centre managers at important federal agencies to chiffonier officials, would have to be replaced equally the Trump assistants turned over to a Biden assistants. Typically, outgoing and incoming teams piece of work closely on this. But Trump could simply refuse to permit Biden staff through the doors before inauguration, making the handover unusually difficult.
In the end though, Shapiro said, it would happen — an entire transition conducted from a distance, unfinished until after inauguration would still be a transition. There would be a new administration, and the old assistants would accept to go away.
That is, assuming the institutions agree together.
Originally published on Live Science.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/what-if-president-rejects-election-results.html
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