Since 1845, the U.S.
presidential election has always taken place on the same day, the
Tuesday following the first Monday in November.
It has continued throughout wars, a historic economic recession and
past pandemics.
However, in 2020, President Trump suggested that might change.
Facing a surging pandemic and struggling in the polls, President Trump
today for the first time is suggesting that the November election,
just 96 days away, be postponed.
Tweeting, "With universal mail-in voting, 2020 will be the most
inaccurate and fraudulent election in history."
This would be unprecedented.
We have never had a presidential election delayed.
Americans have come to expect the routinization of our elections.
Both the Democrats and Republicans immediately dismissed the
suggestion, including several top Republican officials who have also
expressed concerns about the possibility of voting fraud.
Never in the history of the country through wars, depressions and the
civil war have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on
time. And we'll find a way to do that again this November 3rd.
I don't want to delay. I want to have the election, but I also don't
want to have to wait for three months and then find out that the
ballots are all missing and the election doesn't mean anything.
So what would a delayed election actually look like and what impact
could it have on the American economy?
Although a delayed election could mean a number of changes, it's
unlikely that it will affect the process of voting.
It wouldn't necessarily change how we vote.
In the event that Congress changed Election Day,
that would only change the final deadline, but it wouldn't reset the
conditions for the election period that we're used to.
Postponing an election by just a couple of weeks or even a month would
simply mean a later result.
However, it becomes complicated if the election is moved past January
20th. The Constitution's vague and ambiguous on a lot of things, but
this one is crystal clear that at noon on January 20th, on
Inauguration Day, president's term is over and the vice president's
term is over.
For some reason, we don't have an election at 12:01.
He is out of office, period.
The person who is empowered to gain office at that point is the person
who won the 2020 election.
Both the U.S. Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947
clearly established the order in which officials assumed the duties
of the presidency if the position is vacant.
Right now, unless Congress changes the rules,
the Speaker of the House at that point would take over.
Now, we also have elections coming up this November for every member
of the House. So it's not a foregone conclusion that it's going to be
Nancy Pelosi. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution also specifies
that the terms of senators and representatives must come to an end at
noon on January 3rd.
If the general election is also delayed for some reason beyond this
date, chances are there won't be a speaker of the House to take up
the position. In which case, the position would then be passed down
to the President pro tempore.
Technically, the vice president is the president of the Senate,
presides over the Senate most of the time.
But if there is no vice president or the vice president is absent,
the person empowered to run Senate procedure is called the president
pro tempore or the president pro tem of the Senate.
And that has, at least for the last 60 years, been the longest
serving member of the majority party.
Right now, that's Charles Grassley, senator from Iowa.
However, with 23 Republican seats and 12 Democratic seats up for
election this year, a postponed election after January 3rd would mean
that the Democrats could have a majority in the Senate once those
seats are vacant, in which case Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont
would then assume the role of presidency.
To make matters even more confusing, there's no guarantee that
Democrats will have a majority in the Senate since the 17th Amendment
to the Constitution also allows individual states to appoint
temporary members of the Senate once the seat is vacant.
So if delaying the election affect all elections,
we have severe chaos.
A political chaos caused by a postponed election could also bring
major disruption to the U.S.
economy. Well, presidential elections in a place like the United
States are really important because the entire administration
changes. Important aspects of policy making, such as trade policy,
foreign policy, more broadly like the relationship between the U.S.
and China, and also something that has a big impact on businesses,
which is immigration policy may change almost overnight.
Historically, since 1948, the U.S.
economy has performed better during election years, with the GDP on
average growing zero point three percent higher compared to
non-election years.
However, that's only been the case with a clear election outcome.
Delaying the results could mean adding an additional pressure of
uncertainty on the American economy that is already fragile from the
effects of covid-19.
When we see uncertainty go up, we see that economic actors, including
investors, but not only investors, also consumers, workers, they stop
making decisions and it is precisely putting decisions on hold, which
has potentially such devastating consequences.
Because essentially investments are postponed, because consumers
essentially say, I'm going to save the money and not spend it, and
because more broadly, everything freezes.
Experts warn that the market will show clear warning signs once the
election does show any real signs of postponement.
You can either have the vaccine come out and have a good election or
you must note that the vaccine is not going to come out and you're
going to have what you just tweeted.
But whatever, it sows, chaos and chaos is bad for the stock market.
So the element of surprise, if now we were to postpone the election
would be so big that I think the markets, I think economic decision
makers would be so shocked that I think we would have a
period of some chaotic developments in the markets and in the
economy. So how likely is it that President Trump will delay the
election? In lots of other places,
he actually does have a lot of authority, mostly because Congress has
given him a lot of authority.
But in the elections sphere, the president is a participant and has
no authority whatsoever to change the rules.
The federal government does not run statewide elections.
That is up to the states and that is also up to Congress.
Postponing an election would require a majority approval from
Congress, an unlikely event considering both the Republican and
Democrats response to delaying the election.
It's up to Congress.
Both the House and the Senate have to agree to change Election Day in
order for that Election Day to change.
And there's an awful lot that Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell don't
necessarily agree on.
It's extremely unlikely that they're going to agree to move Election
Day for any reason whatsoever.
It's also important to note that Election Day has been held on the
Tuesday after the first Monday in November since 1845 when Congress
passed a law choosing that day.
Well, postponing the presidential election is something that, as you
know, would be completely unprecedented.
And this crisis, as bad as it is, I don't think is as bad as a civil
war or even World War two.
So we should be able to stage this election.
However, the 2020 primaries in New York and Puerto Rico faced
significant issues, executing mail-in balloting.
Congressional candidate
Suraj Patel doesn't know if he won or lost because election officials
have yet to announce a winner.
Experts share mixed suggestions as to whether the U.S.
is truly ready for a mail in election.
I think there is a slight reason to be concerned regarding whether
states who have different procedures and states have different
technologies that whether they can handle the huge
onslaught of American citizens voting that way.
The fact that these problems happened in a primary does not make them
unimportant, but it does mean that both election officials and voters
have time to learn and to get better before November.
Nonetheless, a decision to change the date of an election could
potentially determine the ideas that a democratic election stands for
in the United States.
We want all of the electorate to know that when they make their choice
reliably, it's not going to be ignored.
It's not going to be postponed.
It's going to be listened to.
And in order to maintain that confidence, we need the schedule to be
set.