🇺🇸 Four More Years of Trump?

Surprise! It’s been 2020’s longest day. A president still hasn’t been declared, you’re drowning in election updates, and chances are you’re stress-eating fries (more on that later).

We wanted to do something to make today a little less chaotic. So welcome to a very special, mid-week edition of Legit.

Introducing The Election Issue. We’ll keep it short, talking you through the legal elephant in the room - i.e. Trump deciding DC is his forever home. We’ll also bring you quality entertainment like:

The American election system is kinda confusing.

Here’s how it works: each state is given a number of electoral college votes. The bigger the state, the more electoral college votes it has.

A candidate needs to win 270 electoral college votes (50% + 1) to win the election. In every state - except Maine and Nebraska - the candidate that gets the most votes wins all of the state’s electoral college votes.

In a nutshell: we might be here a while.

The race between Trump and Biden is nail-bitingly close, with Biden currently at 238 electoral votes and Trump at 213. But it looks like Election Day might turn into Election Week.

Why? This isn’t a normal election. 93 million Americans have cast pre-election ballots in a pandemic-driven surge. Most of these votes still haven’t been counted, meaning the outcome of today’s election might be TBD for the next few days.

Right now, here are the key battleground states to watch out for:

Zoom out: a few hours ago, a trigger happy Trump told everyone he already won the election. He hasn’t. NBC promptly cut off his speech and fact-checked the President in real-time. Biden, on the other hand, told his supporters to be patient as votes are counted.

Recap over. Let’s move on to the legal elephant in the room.

It’s the question that’s been haunting us for months. Can Trump make DC his forever home?

The backstory. In July, Fox’s Chris Wallace made his way to the White House to interview Pres. Trump. When Trump wasn’t bragging about acing a “very hard” cognitive test that asked him to identify an elephant, an alligator and a snake, Wallace asked if Trump would accept the election results. The President didn’t answer.

Since then, Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. Enough times to make people realize he’s not kidding.

It’s a familiar move from Trump, and a strategy he used against Hillary in 2016. But this year is a little different. A record number of Americans voted early, and Trump is gearing up to use mail-in ballots as the scapegoat for what he calls ‘voter fraud.’

More motive? Democrats are currently returning 3x more mail-in ballots than Republicans.

Will Trump challenge the results? Maybe. There are two ways this could go down.

Buuut… it’s not as easy as knocking on the SC’s door and telling them the election wasn’t fair. Trump would have to prove, on a precinct-by-precinct basis, there are enough fraudulent votes to change the election results.

Biden, on the other hand, is underestimating the level of hissy fit Trump will throw if there’s a Democrat win. He thinks it’s as simple as “escorting him from the White House.”

Has this happened before? Yep. The 2000 election between Bush and Gore came down to the vote in Florida, which was too close to call. Gore asked for a manual recount, sparking weeks of litigation. The winner wasn’t confirmed until mid-December, when the Supreme Court stepped in to hand the victory to Bush.

Coincidentally, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett helped Bush’s legal team at the time. They now sit on the Supreme Court and could decide Trump’s fate.

How long would a legal battle take? We don’t know. But if a lawsuit looms past 20 January, neither Trump nor Biden would be sworn in. According to law, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, may assume the presidency. Rest assured, a Pelosi Presidency is super unlikely.

The bottom line. Gear up for a few days of uncertainty. The following week will be a turning point for American courts.

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Or talk to us at crew@readlegit.com if you want more mid-week surprises!