2020 Uprising: Enough is Enough

Oh, my mistake. I thought the congressional election was done at the same time as the presidential election in November. Didn’t realize that if the November election was canceled, there would still be a congressional election. How does that work?

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That would be Patrick Leahy (80, term ends in 2022), then Ben Cardin (76, term ends in 2024). I think it is safe to assume that Bernie Sanders (78, term ends in 2024) would be skipped as he isn’t a member of the Democratic Party. I don’t know what would happen if Sanders did join and something happened to Leahy, other than a lot of centrist tears.

he’s been pretty effective in getting the whole “bunkerboy allowed russians to pay the taliban for bounties on us troops” out of the news

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The actual military is rather fed up.
The problem is this personal police force he’s set up under executive order. Check out section 5. That spawned PACT as outlined here.

It’s scary.
It’s arbitrary.
It’s valid for 6 months, or until the president says so.
That means through the election season.

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Elections are run by the states, not the feds. The Executive Branch could talk about canceling the election until they are blue in the face, but they have no authority to do so. I guess hypothetically, they could fail to recognizing the results for federal positions (just Prez and VP), but all that gets them is President Pelosi.

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All the House members’ terms end before the president’s and vice president’s, so by Jan. 20th there wouldn’t be any Speaker of the House either. The system is not designed for “no election.” It all just evaporates pretty quickly if things don’t happen on schedule.

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Ah, so if hypothetically, some states cancelled elections then there would still be a House of Representatives with Reps only from the States that had elections? The states send representatives to congress and the president can’t legally declare those results to be invalid, I guess?

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Nope. Separation of Powers and all that.

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The House terms begin just after the first of the year and the Speaker is chosen at that time. So there is a Speaker on Jan 20.

I think @anon67050589 is referring to the Presidential election. The President has nothing to do with Congressional elections.

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They’re on the same ballot every time I’ve ever voted

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They are, but the states count the ballots. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you? The electors meet to select the president only. His term begins Jan 20 and the previous term expires on Jan 20. If there is a hiccup, the President’s term will still expire and the Speaker of the House steps in.

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If the hypothesis is that Trump would try to cancel the Electoral College, specifically, but not the election of representatives and senators, then, uh, yeah I don’t know anything about that

But it seems kind of unlikely

If there’s an election, at all, then removing the presidential candidates from the ballots but leaving everything else on there would be so blatantly unconstitutional I can’t really imagine the states going along with it

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Yeah. He really has no control over the ballots. Each state runs their own election. He can’t even suspend the election.

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Right, and the actual military will, rightly, hopefully, do everything it can to stay out of a domestic political crisis.

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Right? I mean, anything could happen, these people are crazy for sure, but it’s hard to distinguish between the different crazy scenarios, almost certainly there will be an election and it will get counted, the issue is whether it gets counted accurately or not

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Yeah, that’s a whole other issue. I could totally see some ballot-counting shenanigans in purple states.

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And whether access to the ballot is even more restricted than the American norm.

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“ “My dad volunteered and served in World War II to fight fascism, like most of my uncles, so we would not have an American president brutalizing and kidnapping Americans for exercising their constitutional rights and trying to make America a better place, which is what patriots do,” Krasner wrote.

“Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office. At trial, they will face a Philadelphia jury. It’s the least we can do to honor those who fought fascism, including those who are fighting it even now.”

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Someone bought this URL and did something wonderful with it:

(Wait for it)

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