Merry Covid Christmas and a Happy New Executive Branch

A quick timeline of what we can expect between now and Biden’s inauguration.

These are the Christmas decorations during one of Obama’s terms in office. What you’re seeing is the Center Hall of the ground floor of the White House. The arches are of architectural significance in that when the White House was originally constructed those arches were necessary to support the structure of the upper floors. However, they were refurbished in 1952 with a steel infrastructure making the vaulting unnecessary. Nevertheless, because it is aesthetic, the look was retained. (Photo Source)

Trump is currently losing his mind somehow simultaneously in slow motion and in fast-forward. I’m honestly not sure how that’s done, but I also feel like that’s an accurate description of what’s happening. And as a result I’m getting sort of inundated in multiple groups with people linking terrifying articles they found whilst doomscrolling. For instance yesterday there was an article in WaPo entitled, “Trump asks Pennsylvania House speaker for help overturning election results, personally intervening in a third state,” followed swiftly by, “Supreme Court denies Trump allies’ bid to overturn Pennsylvania election results.”

I do understand how this whiplash causes a lot of anxiety for people, but a.) it need not because as I’ll explain in the rest of this article Trump and his team cannot overturn an election and b.) I really wish you all would reserve your anxiety for things that make considerably less sense not because that’s healthy, but because it echoes my own anxiety and it is at least entertaining.

Before I get into a timeline of election related events I want to point out that contrary to what a lot of media outlets and randoms online have been saying, a state legislature CANNOT appoint a slate of electors after a vote has been held. To explain, the state legislatures do get to choose and control how elections are held. So at any time they can actually choose to change that, but once an election is underway they cannot change how the election is conducted. They can pass legislation right now saying that they’ll only ever send Republican electors, but because the general election has already concluded and at the time of the general election the law was that electors would be appointed based on the general vote, they still have to abide by that previous legislation. The imagined law where they only ever send Republican electors would apply to 2024 assuming it was never overturned between now and then, but not 2020.

But okay, so let’s timeline.

November 3: Election day. This is the last day people could cast votes in person and send their ballot in. In several states ballots had to…