How Donald Trump can still steal the US Presidential election 

By the time you’ll read this piece, it will be less than five days to the polls in the United States. However, it might still be several days before the results will be out. At least in some scenarios.

At the time of writing of this piece, Biden has a very comfortable lead in the national polls over Donald Trump. Different non-partisan polls put him anywhere between 7-10 points ahead. However, since popular vote means pretty much zilch in the US Polls, all eyes are on the Electoral College composition. And it is here that Donald Trump sees his chance. After all, he had lost the popular vote the last time as well.

Let’s look at different scenarios that can unfold on the day (s) of results. The most straight forward scenario is a clear-cut victory for either of the candidates. The lead is so clear that the other person has no chance of muddying the water. Under the circumstances, and even considering the polling errors and other factors, this scenario tilts heavily towards Biden. Even the most hardcore of Trump-Partisan pollster doesn’t dare predict a landslide for Trump.

How can Biden achieve this landslide? One has to look at two sets of three states each. These are Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, popularly known as the Rust-Belt States; and Florida, Georgia and Arizona popularly called the Sun-Belt States.

If Biden wins all of the Rust-Belt states and any one of the Sun-Belt, Trump is toast. There is pretty much no scenario in which Trump loses Florida and still wins the Electoral College. It is the same situation if he loses Pennsylvania.

Now that the landslide scenario is dealt with, let’s look at the photo-finish scenarios. Biden’s lead is very comfortable in Wisconsin and Michigan. Barring any tectonic breaking-news scenario that swings the vote heavily towards Trump, Biden will win those easily even with a 2016-like polling error.

That leaves Pennsylvania. And Democrats are sweating here even with an above five per cent polling lead. This is because Trump won the state last time by 0.7 per cent in a 4.4 per cent swing. Technically speaking, Biden’s lead here too is beyond that swing plus polling error scenario, however, mail-voting has made the calculation a bit dicey.

The state has a rather complicated process when it comes to mail-voting. Unlike most of the other states, the ballot here needs to be put in a smaller secret-ballot envelope before putting it in in a bigger envelope. And that’s not all. That envelope then has to be signed. You can see there are several scenarios where the ballot can be rejected.

Two other data add to Democratic misery. First one suggests thatmail-votes of younger people and African Americans—both vote overwhelmingly for Democrats—are rejected at a larger ratio than those voting for Republicans. The second one concludes that those voting for the first time—another Democratic demography—are expected to make more mistakes.

Democrats on their part have spent a lot of money in these Swing States on advertisements detailing voters how to go about mail-voting but even so, under all circumstances, there will be more vote spoilage this time than at any time in the past.

Republicans are also resorting to an Indiatype WhatsApp fake news deluge targeting seniors among the Indian-American community in these states, coaxing them to not vote for the Democrats who they have traditionally voted. In states where results were called by less than one percent of votes last time, every single vote counts.

Then there is the small matter of 50 states having 50 laws regarding mail-ballots. Sample this: Michigan law states that ballots can be counted as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 2 and reaches the counting centre by Nov. 17.

Wisconsin mandates that absentee ballots that are postmarked by Nov. 3 and arrive by Nov. 9 are valid. North Carolina, on the other hand, would allow ballots to count that are postmarked by Nov. 3 and arrive by Nov. 12. Are you still with me here? Ok, good.

Now come to all-important Pennsylvania. The State Supreme Court mandated that ballots can arrive by Nov. 6 if postmarked by Nov. 3. This was challenged in the US Supreme Court where it was upheld by a 4-4 split where one Conservative judge sided with the three Liberals. However, with Amy Coney Barrett confirmed as the 9th Judge, Republicans will once again file an appeal and will now win it now by 5-4.

Therefore, Democrats don’t want anything to be left to chance and want all late-voters to physically deliver the mail-ballot at the centre or vote in-person rather than trusting the mail service. Also, it’s not all gloom and doom for Democrats in this department. As many as 24 states have now laws in place that mandate notifying the voters regarding the issues with their mail-ballots and offers them an opportunity to rectify those issues.

However, do remember that in any photo-finish scenario, a repeat of 2000 Elections looms large. Supreme Court with 6-3 Conservative majority will in all certainty vote in favour of Trump ignoring rules, precedents and traditions. It will trigger a constitutional crisis, where Democrats will meekly bow down like they did in 2000. Republicans are far more likely to escalate the situation to a doomsday scenario.

And this is not all. There is the issue of sorting ballots. Here too, different states have different rules. Keeping in mind the aforementioned law in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, their result almost certainly won’t be called on the night of the result if there is a chance of a photo-finish because they will be waiting for the mail-votes to come for days and weeks to come.

These states also start sorting mail-ballots just a few days or on the day of the polls. That means they will take more time to tally the result anyway. In contrast, Florida, Arizona etc has the law where they start sorting mail-ballots way in advance and will call the result on the same night.

This has thrown a very interesting situation. Because Florida and Arizona will be able to call the result immediately, if Trump loses these states, he will lose the election right away. But if he wins, the reverse doesn’t stand true. Because Biden can still win the Rust-Belt and win the elections. But this means that the result will drag for days and weeks. Because most Democrats will vote by mail and those will be counted slowly, Republicans will likely take the initial lead in many states before Democrat votes start pouring late. This phenomenon is called “Blue Shift.”

If the results are within one percent margin, Republicans will run to the Supreme Court and ask the court to render the spoilt-ballot null-and-void as they managed to do in 2000 Polls. Technically speaking, Congress has the right to take a call, in times of such a constitutional crisis but since the Senate and the House will most certainly be controlled by different parties in the scenario of a photo-finish that it will pit the Senate against the House, and in further escalation, even the Vice President against the Leader of the House. And Trump will rejoice every single one of these scenarios.