GABRIEL STERLING is preparing for trouble: “Do we have concerns? Yes. Do we have backup plans? Sure. I don’t want to get too deep into them, because I don’t want people to have backup plans to our backup plans.”
President Donald Trump has claimed without evidence that unprecedented numbers of mail-in ballots will lead to widespread fraud by Democrats in the November presidential election. The president has also repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if the vote count indicates he has lost to Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
The comments have Democrats worried that Trump’s campaign will seek to dispute the election results. That could set off one of many legal and political dramas in which the presidency could be decided by some combination of the courts, state politicians and Congress.
Early voting data shows Democrats are voting by mail in far greater numbers than Republicans. In states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that do not count mail-in ballots until Election Day, initial results could skew in Trump’s favor, experts say, while the mail ballots counted more slowly are expected to favor Biden. Democrats have expressed concern that Trump will declare victory on election night and then claim mail-in ballots counted in the following days are tainted by fraud.
A close election could result in litigation over voting and ballot-counting procedures in battleground states. Cases filed in individual states could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court, as Florida’s election did in 2000, when Republican George W. Bush prevailed over Democrat Al Gore by just 537 votes in Florida after the high court halted a recount.
Trump has pushed the Republican-held Senate to confirm Amy Coney Barrett as Supreme Court justice, which would create a 6-3 conservative majority that could favor the president if the courts weigh in on a contested election.
The U.S. president is not elected by a majority of the popular vote. Under the Constitution, the candidate who wins the majority of 538 electors, known as the Electoral College, becomes the next president. In 2016, Trump lost the national popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton but secured 304 electoral votes to her 227.
The candidate who wins each state’s popular vote typically earns that state’s electors. This year, the electors meet on Dec. 14 to cast votes. Both chambers of Congress will meet on Jan. 6 to count the votes and name the winner.
