Can Trump force Congress to delay the Nov. 3, 2020 general US elections?

Question

This is related to today's news that Trump mentioned the idea of delaying the election in one of his tweets.

I understand that the president cannot legally change the election date, but according to the Washington Post:

The U.S. Constitution gives the power to regulate the “time, place and manner” of general elections to the U.S. House and Senate, with Congress also empowered to alter the rules.

Even though the president can't change the election date, how can he force Congress to vote on the issue of delaying it?

And worst-case scenario, Congress decides to vote on the issue, so the Senate approves and the House rejects. How would the votes be counted and what would the end-result be?

I relate it to selecting a supreme court judge: the president nominates someone and the Senate votes on it. The difference here is that the house and the senate would have to vote.

Btw, Hong Kong delayed their elections due to the pandemic. I'm not saying it's the same thing, but there's precedent: Hong Kong delayed its September election by a year, citing the pandemic.

Answer 1

The President has no legal power to force Congress to do anything of the sort besides his soft-power "bully pulpit" to try and force them to come to vote. It's important to note that in the US system, elections are not rescheduled with the ease or frequency of parliamentary systems, making changing the election date difficult for even a highly popular president.

In order to change the date of the federal elections, Congress would have to vote, as it is set in federal law. However, it has not been changed since 1845. Because this is a regular federal law, it would need to be passed by both the Republican-led Senate and the Democrat-led House, then signed by the President. Considering the Republican Senate delegation cannot come to an agreement on pandemic aid after having months to consider it, moving fast on the election date seems unlikely, and would no doubt be opposed entirely by the House in favor of aid for mail-in ballots.

Furthermore, the date of the new president's term is set by the Constitution, in the 20th Amendment. There is no way for this to be changed, since a change needs to be passed by both houses of Congress then ratified by three-quarters of the states.

If states were to not hold elections because of a state of emergency, the president would be chosen by the rump Electoral College, presumably comprised of the states that conducted their elections, or appointed electors; perhaps those states that already had entirely vote-by-mail and those that expanded it. Since these states are mostly blue, red states would be shooting themselves in the foot by skipping the election.

In other words, it's not going to happen. See also.

Answer 2

Article 2, Section 3 of the constitution details the two things a President can force Congress to do (emphasis mine):

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

And that's all he can do. He can say "hey, I think we urgently need to deal with X, so I shall convene you to do so", but the Houses are under no obligation to do anything other than to convene and hold session. They aren't even obligated to talk about the issue. They can simply convene the session, decide there's nothing they need to do, and then close the session immediately afterwards.

The adjournment power has never been exercised to date, but the convening one has. In the modern operations of the Houses both powers are minor to irrelevant anyway. You may have heard the adjournment clause get brought up recently, but merely as a proposed tactical move involving an intentional failure to agree by the House, all so the President could then shove in some recess appointments past an uncooperative Senate.

Originally the travel time between the capital and where the various Congressmen resided was substantial. Indeed, "Congressman" was originally expected to be a side gig that you did in addition to more traditional work, not a well-paying, all-year-long time-consuming career of its own. As such it was expected that Congress could and would not be in session for months at a time. But the founders knew something urgent could happen during that span, or any other span when Congress was adjourned, so they made sure the Executive had the power to pull Congress back into session.

Other than that, the President's sole power over Congress is political in nature. We have seen President Trump, for example, wield his political influence to undercut the re-election campaigns of (Republican) Congressmen who do not 100% support him, to varying degrees of success. Given that the House is currently under Democratic control, however, he is unlikely to be able to force his way on the matter. Best he could do is try to jeopardize some other piece of legislation and offer up not doing so as his concession for the House doing the other thing he wants (budget laws are modern day favorites, with government shutdowns becoming somewhat regular as a result). However, it is hard to imagine this particular matter as being something the House Democrats won't be completely resistant to.

Answer 3

Yes, he can.

Other answers are assuming a slightly different question of "Can Trump force the Congress by legal means?". But the question has no mention of "legal means". Considering how many times the current administration broke the Constitution and other laws, it's naive to assume they will limit themselves only to constitutional means.

So what can Trump do? Many things, here is one for example. He is still the Commander in Chief of the US Army. He has relatively high support among parts of the military, so it's not impossible that when he orders to move some tanks into Washington, his orders will be followed. And then the Congress would either accede to his demands, or be shot at and the survivors would accede to his demands. That's how the previous president of my country acted when he was threatened with losing his post.