48
It is highly unlikely that a recount will give Trump a chance to win the election. Recounts just don't move number of votes enough to change an election where Biden had such a raw lead over Trump.
It's entirely possible that Trump is going to fight any way he can, even if there are slim odds of the fight winning, to not give up presidency. That is not ...
26
Detroit was (and still is) one of the strongest heavy industry and port cities in the US: shipping, steel works, auto industries, etc. Because of that, Detroit also has some of the strongest union affiliations of any US city. Industrial unions have leaned Democrat since FDR and the New Deal in the 1930s. Combine union activity and the heavy African American ...
25
Nominally, there is no error, because every single vote is counted exactly once. There's no extrapolation involved (like with polls) or imprecision in the measurement (like with experimental results), so there's no need for a margin of error.
That said, in the real world, screwups can occur. People misplace the votes, or fail to upload them, or even just ...
25
(Contra to Brian's answer) there were a few clashes, like this one in DC on Nov 14:
The demonstrations unfolded peacefully for most of the day, but counterprotesters clashed with the president's supporters and violence erupted as night fell. Counterprotesters were seen overturning tables of vendors selling Trump merchandise, as well as stealing Trump hats ...
25
In Georgia recounts can occur in two ways:
An election official or the Georgia Secretary of State might request an audit or recount before certification, if there is some reason to suspect inaccuracies in the results.
A candidate or party may request a recount after certification, if it wants to dispute the results.
If a recount were to change the outcome ...
22
Yes.
According to the 12th Amendment of the US Constitution
The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot
for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be
an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in
their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct
ballots the person voted ...
15
No, there have been no such riots so far. (EDIT: The incident in Fizz's answer is the most notable exception I've seen so far.) For the reasons outlined in the question, an ongoing risk does exists to at least some limited degree. However, civil conflict is only likely if Trump takes actions to drastically intensify uncertainty about the transition of power. ...
12
Rules on faithless electors vary state-to-state. In many states, a faithless elector will be removed from their position and replaced with a more faithful elector.
If we assume the faithless electors are not in states where that rule applies, and there are enough of them to change the outcome, then yes, the outcome will change. What is important is the ...
10
The term for Senators is six years. Only about one-third of the seats have terms that expire on January 3 of odd years.
Kelly Loeffler was appointed to a seat previously held by Johnny Isakson. The term for that seat does not expire until January 3, 2023. Loeffler will hold that seat until the runoff is decided. Either Loeffler will continue or Raphael ...
9
Biden could bring a lawsuit in the U.S. District for the District of Columbia and bring an action under the All Writs Act directed at the official who makes the determination to compel the GSA to recognize him as President-elect under the federal transition statute. He would almost surely prevail.
If the GSA or other officials continued to refuse to ...
9
In most states, the candidate with the most votes will get the state's electoral college votes (or the district's electoral vote, in the case of Nebraska), regardless of whether or not this is a majority.
An exact tie is statistically very unlikely, and different states have different laws on dealing with them. Some states, such as California, will break ...
9
This happened in 1824. After the collapse of the Federalist Party, the US was left with just one viable political party: the Democratic-Republicans. Different factions within the party promoted different presidential candidates, with the following results:
99 electoral votes for Andrew Jackson
84 electoral votes for John Quincy Adams
41 electoral votes ...
9
Detroit is 79% African-American; "of all U.S. cities with 100,000 or more people, Detroit had the second-highest percentage of black people".
Since the LBJ-induced realignment of the two parties in the 1960s, African-Americans have overwhelmingly tended to vote Democrat.
In 2020 for example:
According to exit polls, Trump claimed about 18 percent ...
8
Under conventional wisdom, no, they can't. The certification deadline was Tuesday, 14 days of the election, by state law. Further, there's no apparatus I'm aware of by which they can rescind a vote that wasn't otherwise invalid (e.g. pressured illegally to vote a certain way), anyway. Even if they did rescind their votes, the state of Michigan would certify ...
8
The President's constitutional position is defined in article 2.
Section 1 states "He shall hold his office during the term of four years"
It then describes the process of electors casting votes and as amended by the 12 amendment states "the person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President; if such number be a ...
7
As @dsollen’s excellent answer says, it seems extremely unlikely that the recount could materially change the election result. That answer suggests another, somewhat cynical, possible motive: to raise more money for Trump to pay off campaign debts.
Another major possible motive is to promote the perception or belief that the election results are closer or ...
7
The report published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on the interim final rule with comment period (IFC) setting out the Most Favored Nation Model states on page 68 that the countries used to calculate the MFN price for the first quarter of year 1 will be Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France,
Germany, ...
6
Granting such pardon would create really dangerous precedent for any future wannabe autocrat: try to gain unrestricted power, and in the case of the failure, next president will grant you pardon to avoid divisiveness.
Instead, Biden is doing exactly right thing: let investigators to follow the law without any political interference, as Trump should have done....
6
It's an artifact of historical constraints that have not been (fully) adapted. The timetable for elections is a consequence of a largely agrarian American society at the end of the eighteenth century/beginning of the nineteenth century. Elections were timed to not interfere with the harvest nor with churchgoing (which is why they end up on a Tuesday in ...
6
The Republican party did promote some more legitimate candidates in the 2020 Washington Governors race – I heard a lot of buzz around Joshua Freed and Raul Garcia, not to mention perennial ballot-initiative gadfly Tim Eyman, but in the end Loren Culp was the one that Republicans (or more accurately, anyone who didn't want to vote for Inslee) wanted.
In this ...
6
Not really. The 1876 election in Florida for example meets the spirit if not the letter of such marked partisanship. It's actually a loong story, but the main points are:
a Republican-majority (2:1) state canvassing board excluded some Democrat county boards' returns from the totals, alleging fraud or "irregular" returns from such Democratic-...
6
No, there have not been any riots.
Since that may seem surprising considering there are a lot of extremely invested people on both sides you need to consider the current overall position.
At the moment both sides are being told "it's fine, the courts will take care of it."
So Biden supporters are not happy about the situation and there have been ...
6
There are two main committees responsible for planning the Inauguration and the surrounding events. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies is a bipartisan committee composed of members of congress (from both houses). It is responsible for organizing the swearing-in ceremonies. The Presidential Inaugural Committee is formed by the president ...
5
If the board had not acted, someone could have brought a mandamus action in whichever court had jurisdiction over the case (or the legal equivalent whatever it is called under Michigan law, in Colorado is it called a Rule 106 action) to compel the board to take a non-discretionary action that it is obligated to take under the law when certain facts are ...
5
There isn't an answer that is so general.
Certain kinds of false official reports are prohibited in particular contexts, but there is not a general rule that makes it illegal or a crime to mislead a President of the United States (that's what politicians and lobbyists do).
In the context of the quote it doesn't look like any false statements of fact were ...
5
First of all, it is strictly a question of etiquette and protocol. It does not have a justiciable answer that a court could resolve.
Custom and practice would be to always refer to someone by their current title if they currently hold elective or judicial office, and to otherwise refer to someone by their highest title if they previous title when their is an ...
4
What would have been the effect (next steps) had the tie not been resolved locally?
The Wayne County Board of Canvassers fails or refuses to certify the election results.
(2) If the board of county canvassers fails to certify the results of any election for any officer or proposition by the fourteenth day after the election as provided, the board of county ...
4
An important factor is that later counted ballots in Arizona favored Trump, a pattern that was the opposite of what was seen in many other competitive states. This pattern was unusual, but it was not unexpected. However, somebody who was not aware of the different conditions in Arizona may have been surprised.
There was a lot of discussion about Fox's call ...
4
According to the Associated Press, there are five lawsuits currently active that could potentially change the outcome of the election:
A lawsuit seeking to block certification of the results in Georgia (Wood v. Raffensperger).
A lawsuit seeking to block certification of the results in Michigan (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Benson).
A lawsuit ...
4
The highlights of Powell's legal career can be found on her Wikipedia page. She served as an assistant district attorney in Texas before starting up her own law firm. She has a penchant for taking on 'celebrity' cases — the Enron scandal in the 2000s, and Michal Flynn's case in 2019 — and has made numerous appearances on (primarily conservative) media ...
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