1  Non-Worries

• There is nothing important that could go wrong on inauguration day, Jan. 20th, assuming we manage to survive until then.

  The new president is required to take the oath of office, but it does not have to happen on the 20th. In fact, presidents are not entirely stupid, so they generally take it the day before, or the week before. Biden could meet Judge Beryl Howell and a few friends at the Rock Creek Planetarium and take the oath on Sunday Jan. 17th.

  Re-taking the oath on the 20th is just theatrics. There does not need to be a speech. There does not need to be a parade. There does not need to be a ceremony of any kind at noon on the 20th. The president-elect becomes president automatically.

  We expect #orangemandias to debase and defile the ceremony, but that has zero long-term significance. No matter what he does, his term ends at noon on Jan. 20th.¹ I guarantee you that the military, secret service, and everybody else will take orders from the new president, starting at that moment. If no new president or vice president has qualified, Pelosi becomes acting president.^{1, 2}

• Although there is a long list of things that could go horribly wrong on Nov. 3rd, delaying the election (or outright cancelling it) is not high on the list, as discussed in section 2.2.

2  Election-Related Worries

2.1  Overview

Here are the dates we should be worried about:

1. Every day between now and election day, due to massive efforts to undermine the election.
   • This includes foreign misinformation campaigns.
   • This includes purging voters from the rolls, and interfering with efforts to register new voters.
   • This includes discouraging absentee voting by every means possible, including sabotaging the postal service.³.
2. Especially election day, Tuesday Nov. 3rd; see section 2.2.
3. Every day between election day and the end of the canvassing. Tuesday Dec. 8th is the deadline for counting all the votes and resolving any disputes.⁴ Remember Bush v Gore?
4. Safe Harbor day, Tuesday Dec. 8th (5 weeks after election day). Deadline for states to certify who has won their electoral votes. After this date, congress has more leeway to question the state’s certificate.^4,5
5. Electoral College day, Monday Dec. 14th, when the electors gather in their state capitals to vote and sign their ballots.⁴
6. Tally day, Wednesday Jan. 6th, 2021, when the congress meets to tally the electors’ ballots. This “ought to be” a purely ministerial task, but if there are disputes over the legitimacy of certain ballots, there are ungainly procedures for resolving them.⁴

The #pussygrabber is going to get arrested the day he leaves office, or shortly thereafter. He’s not very good at planning ahead, but even he can figure this out. Furthermore, Bljadimir Putain has figured this out and explained it to him. So he’s terrified. He will stop at nothing to get re-elected. Not even fomenting civil war. NOTHING.

This is a nasty business, and it’s going to get nastier.

2.2  Election Day Itself

On Nov. 3rd we can expect him to use civil unrest (real or imagined) as a pretext to block access to polling places in Tucson, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Miami, and a few other places — that is, blue areas in swing states. That’s all it takes to control the outcome of the election.

• He won’t cancel the election outright, because that would be harder to do and less advantageous for him.
• He won’t even change the date of the election, because that is fixed by law, and there’s no way the House would agree to a change.⁶

This is why he is so fixated on preventing vote-by-mail and in-person early voting. If enough Ds vote early, chaos on election day will mainly keep Rs from the polls, and his scheme will fail.³

Sending heavily-armed Brownshirts into the Michigan state capitol was partly a rehearsal for Nov. 3rd. Ditto for sending the Geheime Staatspolizei to snatch people off the streets of Portland.

I say “partly a rehearsal” because there is also a purely performative aspect to it. His base adores it when he bullies “those people” and "puts them in their place". The tough-guy shtick is what got him elected the first time, and he’s going to run the same playbook again. His goons are tasked with creating chaos, and also creating the appearance of chaos even when there is none.

Figure 1: Protester Grabbed in Portland (Nathan Howard photo)

2.3  Canvassing

We know #cheetoBenito is planning to have his supporters declare him the winner, no matter what the actual vote-tallies say. Part of his plan is to invalidate vote-by-mail ballots.³

3  Transition-Related Worries

The #toadstool did not participate in the transition process when he was on the way in, and stood to gain from it. This was administrative malpractice on an epic scale.⁷.

Now imagine how badly he’s going to screw it up when he’s on the way out. Malpractice compounded by malice.

As expressed by Bannon, the goal is the “deconstruction of the administrative state”. and sabotaging the transition is a good opportunity to finish the job.

A presidential transition is a big complicated undertaking. If it’s not done right, Bad Things will follow.⁷

4  Reference

1.

Terms of President, Vice President, Members of Congress: Presidential Vacancy
http://constitutionus.com/#x20s1

2.

3 U.S. Code § 19: Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President; officers eligible to act
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/19

3.

“Vote Early – Derail the Attack on our Democracy”
www.av8n.com/politics/vote-early.htm

4.

Reference as to electoral procedures and key dates:
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/the-electoral-college.aspx

5.

Wikipedia article: Electoral Count Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_Count_Act#State_determination_of_controversies

6.

3 US Code § 1: Time of appointing electors
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/1

7.

Michael Lewis
“‘This guy doesn’t know anything’: the inside story of Trump’s shambolic transition team”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/27/this-guy-doesnt-know-anything-the-inside-story-of-trumps-shambolic-transition-team

A lengty excerpt from his excellent book, The Fifth Risk