The United States has voted and it is not known who has won. What will happen now?

Electoral college in Pennsylvania, USA, on October 23, 2020. / Europa Press

The first thing, patience, although it is not easy.

The scenario the world feared is here: it is November 4 and we do not know who has won the United States elections.

The country has not gone to bed pending the vote count.

With the hours, nervousness increases in a country that has become used in recent months to talk about possible political violence with surprising naturalness.

And in this situation, President Donald Trump did nothing to reassure the population, quite the opposite.

In a moment that will go down in the history of this democracy, he proclaimed himself the winner with millions of votes without counting, said that fraud was taking place and threatened to go to court.

These are the scenarios that can be opened in the next hours and days if the count is not completely resolved in a clear way.

The president of the United States is not elected directly by voters but by the Electoral College, a 538-member body in which each state is represented proportionally by population.

Those members, or electors, are elected by states based on who won the election.

There is a fixed date to do it: the Monday after the second Wednesday in December.

This year it's December 14th.

Voter lists are due December 8.

If the delivery date arrives and it is not clear who has won, those sent to the Electoral College can be chosen by the Legislative of the State in question.

This opens the possibility of appointing partisan voters who may not reflect the state's trend.

That list is certified by the governor.

The governors of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are all three Democrats.

Finally, the Electoral College votes and one of the candidates has to reach 270 votes to be elected president.

The Electoral College vote is certified by Congress in a session on January 6.

The normal thing would be that the States in doubt are resolved in the next few hours, at least just enough to know if Donald Trump or Joe Biden reach 270 electoral votes.

The scenarios of judicial dispute of an election are very rare in the history of the United States (the most recent and famous, that of 2000).

In the largest state yet to come, Pennsylvania, about 1.4 million mail-in votes were to be counted tonight.

The reason is that more people than ever have voted by this method due to the pandemic, and also the laws of Pennsylvania do not allow these votes to be counted until the day of the election, so the electoral services are overwhelmed.

It would be understandable in another situation, but since they are votes that can give Biden the presidency, as the hours go by, the chances that Republicans will try to open judicial fronts to win this election beyond the polls increase.

They basically said it themselves.

Trump's statement from the East Room of the White House tonight only makes official what he was threatening.

During a rally on Saturday in Reading, Pennsylvania, the president said, "If we win on Tuesday or ... thank you, Supreme Court, shortly thereafter ..."

Trump thanked the Supreme Court in advance for not sure what.

The Republican candidate implied that he intends to denounce some aspect of the election, make it reach the highest judicial authority and that it hand over the presidency to him.

It's not the only one.

Senator Ted Cruz also said in a television interview that it was urgent to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme before the election, because she may have to decide on the vote itself.

The clues about what the president is thinking came from himself at a press conference at the White House in September, when asked if he would concede defeat in the election: “Let's see what happens.

I have complained a lot about the votes by mail.

Votes by mail are a disaster, ”said Trump, who has been airing the conspiracy for months without evidence of massive vote-by-mail fraud.

“If you get rid of the postal votes… there won't be a transfer of power actually, there will be a follow-up.

Votes by mail are out of control. "

The Supreme Court of the United States has had six conservative justices to three Democrats for a week.

It is the consequence of the seizure of one of the positions by the Republicans in the Senate in 2016 and the urgency that there was to confirm a month before the elections to Judge Barrett as a replacement for the progressive Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

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