What if Trump doesn't recognize a Biden win

A Trump supporter in Arizona.Ross D. Franklin / AP

The scrutiny is not closed, but as it advances in favor of the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, some envision that

moment

in which a team of weighty leaders arrives in the Oval Office of the White House to say to Donald Trump: “Mr. President, this is over. "

This was the case with the visit that Senator Barry Goldwater and several Republican leaders made to Richard Nixon in 1974 and that was the final push for the president to resign over the Watergate scandal.

Since 1797 and George Washington, all presidents have yielded power to the winner of the election without resistance.

But President Donald Trump's incendiary rhetoric about alleged electoral fraud raises questions about whether he will choose the path of not accepting the final result if victory goes in favor of his Democratic opponent.

That possibility is imaginable after what has happened in recent days, with a president proclaiming himself the winner of an election without the vote being concluded and subsequently ensuring that there is fraud in all the places where he has not won or lost the initial advantage he had before counting ballots by mail, more favorable to the Democrats.

Donald Trump talks about legal votes and illegal votes to grab a second term that seems to be slipping out of his hands.

So, given the background, it is foreseeable that he will continue the legal battle that he has already started to discuss the vote in various states, and continue his campaign of accusing the Democrats of stealing his re-election.

Nowhere is it written that there should be a speech granting victory to an opponent, but what is not subject to Trumpian interpretations and the Constitution includes is that the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, in the case of this year on the 14th, the members of the Electoral College of the 50 States - plus the District of Columbia - decide who will be the next president based on the votes obtained by the candidates in each territory.

In addition, on January 3, the new Congress begins its sessions, and on the 6th of that month, the House of Representatives and the Senate will meet to certify who the new president of the United States is. January.

In all the elections of the contemporary era, the process has been carried out without major incident.

But the attitude of the current president raises doubts.

Trump may never make the required call to Biden to tell him, in a gentlemen's agreement, that he has lost and that the victory belongs to the Democrat, if this is ultimately determined by the scrutiny.

It may be that the environment of the president - for now almost the entire Republican Party, with few exceptions, has avoided speaking out against Trump's offensive to question the basis of the democratic system - has the temptation to obstruct the access of a transition team of Biden to the White House until the last second of his term, or even to boycott on inauguration day.

All of this can be done by Donald Trump without going illegal, even if he breaks with decades of tradition.

What he cannot do is stay another second in the White House after noon on January 20 if he is not appointed president by the Electoral College.

It is true that if the election is very tight, Trump, as he is already doing, will call on an army of lawyers, and will continue to set fire to the networks and spirits on Twitter or any platform that serves as a speaker, and will turn to his allies Republicans in key states in the elections to reject the result.

Give up

In this sense, although the delegates to the Electoral College of each state are from both parties and their vote is traditionally awarded to the winner in their territory, it is possible that Republican state legislators in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin will opt this time for declare that they will support Trump.

The governors of these states could legally stand in his way, bringing before the new Congress a list of voters who support Biden, but all this creates a scene of chaos in the process.

There have been other candidates who have faced an uphill battle for the election, such as Richard Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000. But both ended up conceding victory to their opponent without forcing the process.

Nixon gave up fighting for the Illinois results, despite suspicion of fraud, giving John F. Kennedy free rein and avoiding a bitter fight — Kennedy's margin of victory in the Electoral College guaranteed him the election anyway.

In Gore's case, the Democrat accepted the tough decision of the Supreme Court that stopped the count in Florida and threw in the towel in front of George W. Bush even before the Electoral College met.

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