Here in Maine, candidate for senate Shenna Bellows just conceded the election with only 1% of precincts reporting. I do seriously believe that Susan Collins will win this race, but what if she doesn’t? Bellows is giving her concession speech as I type this, so what happens if she wins?
Then she wins. A concession speech is not an official withdrawal from the race or anything like that. This has happened before.
Al Gore withdrew his original concession in the 2000 election, once it became clear the Florida vote was actually too close to call. There’s no reason your candidate can’t do the same.
Since dead people have been elected to office, a mere concession speech can hardly determine who is officially elected or not.
Whoever gets the most votes will be declared the winner of the election. If Bellows gets the most votes, she’ll still win even if she has conceded.
Yeah, I doubt that a concession has a specific legal effect. It’s basically a social thing that lets people know that the losing candidate no longer considers themselves to be a real candidate and that they don’t intend to contest the results. It lets news outlets report “The Winner” ™, even though officially the winner may not be determined for days if not weeks as ballots are checked, rechecked, stamped, restamped, and sent for official archiving and the winning candidate is officially inscribed in the State Book of Official Election Winners and the entry is signed by at least three judges.
Yeah, if a concession speech was an official withdrawal, no one would give them until all there was no imaginable possibility of winning. In fact, I suspect the real point of a concession speech is to let your staff know it’s time to go home.
I’m speculating, but I imagine it also gives you a bit more control over your image and talking points. Once the other guy has officially won I bet there is less interest in what the loser has to say.
Did he actually concede and pull it back?
The whole mess would have been avoided if Bush had remembered to call “no backsies.”