President Trump on Thursday floated the prospect of delaying the November election, as he ramped up his attacks on mail-in voting, claiming without evidence that its widespread use would be a “catastrophic disaster” that could lead to fraudulent results.WaPO goes on to point out that Constitution gives congress the power to regulate the “time, place and manner” of elections. Only congress can change that. The constitution does not grant the president any power to change anything about elections. The constitution also specifies that a president’s term ends on Jan. 20 in the year after a presidential election, i.e., Jan. 20, 2021 in this case.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump tweeted. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
The president was unclear about how the election would be moved, either by congress according to the constitution or by unconstitutional executive order. If by congress, the chance of that happening is nil. If by executive order, the US would enter a period of intensified constitutional crisis relative to what it is now.
As usual, the idea was floated in a Tweet. The tweet came after a government report showed the U.S. economy shrank 9.5% from April through June. That is the largest quarterly decline since data began to be published by the government 70 years ago.
Given the president's bitter animosity to voting by mail (70 attacks since late March), it is reasonable to assume that he will intensify his efforts to throw the election into chaos in any ways he can. By doing that he can create false grounds to attack the legitimacy of the outcome if he loses.
This election is probably going to be ugly and messy.
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