What Happens If Trump Suspends the 2020 Election

There are widespread – and totally unfounded – concerns about Donald Trump cancelling the 2020 election by declaring martial law or through some other legal stratagem.  That will never happen because Title 3 of the United States Code, Section 19 Item A (1) states:

If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is neither a President nor Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, upon his resignation as Speaker and as Representative in Congress, act as President.

If no election was held prior to January 20, 2021, then NO ONE has been qualified as either president or vice president of the United States by the Electoral College (which is actually the sole function of the Electoral College) and the presidency of the United States would be automatically conferred on the Speaker of the House of Representatives…or at least that’s what would happen except for one minor detail:

The terms of office of all sitting members of the House of Representatives expires on January 3, 2021.

Therefore, if no election has been held prior to January 3, 2020….THERE WILL BE NO HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES because neither the Constitution nor any law ever anticipated the possibility that there might not be any election at all.

What happens then?

Under the  Presidential Line of Succession Act of 1947.  if the Speaker of the House of Representatives in not able to assume the presidency, the office goes to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, who is the senior sitting member of the majority party.

Right now, that’s Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa….except for one additional problem.

There are 23 Republican Senators running for re-election in 2020. All 23 of those Senators will no longer be members of the Senate after January 3, 2020.  There are 12 Democratic Senators who are also up for re-election. They will also be out on their asses on January 3, 2021.

There are currently 53 Republicans in the Senate. Subtracting the 23 disqualified Republicans leaves the Senate with 30 Republican Members. There are 47 Democrats (including the two independents who vote with the Democrats.)  Subtracting 12 disqualified Democrats leaves the Senate with 35 Democratic members.

Under this scenario, in the absence of a qualifying election, the Democrats would outnumber the Republicans and, therefore, the Senior Democratic Senator would become president of the United States.

So, if the Republicans are stupid enough to attempt to suspend the elections through martial law or some other device, the next president of the United States wouldn’t be Donald Trump, or Joe Biden, or Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Grassley.  This would also mean that Mitch McConnell would no longer be a United States Senator. He’s not going to like that very much.

As a matter of fact, if Trump were to attempt to suspend the election, there are 23 Republicans who would vote along with the Democrats to impeach and convict Donald Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors if he attempts to suspend the elections, the same 23 senators who would lose their jobs if no election is held in November.

Therefore, the next president of the United States would be Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, because he is the senior Democratic Senator and therefore automatically becomes President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate for around one minute, after which he would sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.

But wait, there’s still one more wrinkle: the governors of the states or, in some cases, their respective legislatures could immediately appoint replacements for the missing senators.  This complicates matters because the question would  then arise as to whether the governors of those states and their respective legislatures were legally entitled to serve in those capacities in the event that no election were held. In most states, the state constitutions have language similar to the federal Constitution to the effect that the terms of office of governors and legislators expire on the same date, usually the date that federal offices expire.

If there were no state elections either, then anyone who was running for re-election would be disqualified and would no longer be eligible to serve as either governors or members of the state legislature. There are actually only 11 governor’s offices up for grabs this year, which means that the legislatures of those eleven states would have to appoint interim governors before they could appoint interim senators. Nine of the eleven states are Republican. Two are Democratic.

This might bring us back to Chuck Grassley rather than Patrick Leahy because there are more states controlled by the Republican party than by the Democratic party

Despite that uncertainty, we know this much for sure: If no elections are held next November, Donald Trump will not be president on January 21, 2121.

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