# Could Trump's invoking the Insurrection Act be a stepping stone for delaying the November Election? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 2, 2020, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924 "2020-06-02T14:14:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/1 "2020-06-02T14:14:03Z")
Hi Could Trump’s invoking the Insurrection Act be a stepping stone for eventually delaying/disrupting the current election campaign and the November Election? It seems that that is what he may be planning. I look forward to your feedback. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/2 "2020-06-02T14:42:21Z")
Off the top of my head, I’d say yes. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/3 "2020-06-02T14:49:24Z")
What about the past 4 years of Trump’s political ascendance suggests that he has a “plan”, ever? Trump is Eric Cartman - he lashes out. His Via Dolo-Racist walk was him lashing out at being called a “Bunker Bitch” across social media. The Insurrection Act threat is him lashing out at the Governors who oppose him at every turn. Even if he could conceive of a plan, he hasn’t got the intellectual capacity or discipline to carry it out. He’ll do a half dozen other outrageous things between now and the election just to change the subject of his inevitable crushing defeat. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/4 "2020-06-02T14:53:27Z")
How? The Insurrection Act is designed to ensure that law and order is maintained and civil rights protected. How would cancelling elections come under that. And if he wanted to do so this is not the method. All tye elections do is select electors. Congress has refused in previous elections to accept the returns from specific states, why bother “cancelling elections” if they can simply refuse to accept any return from a Democratic voting state. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/5 "2020-06-02T14:53:49Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > What about the past 4 years of Trump’s political ascendance suggests that he has a “plan”, ever? Trump is Eric Cartman - he lashes out. > > His Via Dolo-Racist walk was him lashing out at being called a “Bunker Bitch” across social media. > > The Insurrection Act threat is him lashing out at the Governors who oppose him at every turn. > > Even if he could conceive of a plan, he hasn’t got the intellectual capacity or discipline to carry it out. > > He’ll do a half dozen other outrageous things between now and the election just to change the subject of his inevitable crushing defeat. Y’know, we all thought he was gonna get crushed the last time out, too. I agree that he’s got a higher hurdle for reelection than most incumbents. He has to deal with there not being an “anyone but Hillary” faction, his own miserable record, and various and sundry other things, but let’s not get too overconfident here. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/6 "2020-06-02T14:54:15Z")
No. [The president does not have the power to delay an election](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/24/can-president-trump-delay-election/). Congress theoretically does, but the current Congress wouldn’t (for this reason, anyway – it’s conceivable they might vote to do so for public health reasons if there is a huge outbreak of coronavirus in the fall and extra time is needed to coordinate mail-in voting, but they certainly wouldn’t cooperate with a Trump-led plan to impose martial law!) Also, if for some reason no election is held, it doesn’t stop elected officials’ terms from expiring, so Trump still wouldn’t be president after noon on January 20. Meanwhile, presumably we wouldn’t have had Congressional elections either, so the entire House of Representatives’ terms would have expired on January 3, along with 1/3 of the Senate. I guess that means the next person in line would be the president pro tempore of the Senate (Chuck Grassley right now, but maybe Patrick Leahy if enough Republican senators’ terms expire to leave the Senate with a Democratic majority?) ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/7 "2020-06-02T15:27:07Z")
There are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats (including two independents). There are 35 seats up in 2020, including special elections in Arizona and Georgia. The breakdown of those up for reelection are 23 Republican and 12 Democratic. So with no election we’d have 30 Republicans and 35 Democrats. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/8 "2020-06-02T15:45:32Z")
> [@Superdude](#): > > Y’know, we all thought he was gonna get crushed the last time out, too. I agree that he’s got a higher hurdle for reelection than most incumbents. He has to deal with there not being an “anyone but Hillary” faction, his own miserable record, and various and sundry other things, but let’s not get too overconfident here. I hope I’m right and that he loses. But much more importantly and expositorily, Trump thinks he’s going to lose. That is what’s making him lash out. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/9 "2020-06-02T17:46:30Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > There are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats (including two independents). There are 35 seats up in 2020, including special elections in Arizona and Georgia. The breakdown of those up for reelection are 23 Republican and 12 Democratic. So with no election we’d have 30 Republicans and 35 Democrats. So after a lot of drama and an epic Constitutional crisis, we would end up with President Leahy, who would be … amazingly similar to President Biden. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/10 "2020-06-02T17:47:11Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > …Trump still wouldn’t be president after noon on January 20. … Allow me to refer you to [this thread.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=851368) ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/11 "2020-06-02T18:01:06Z")
Of course I just remembered that many states allow the governor to appoint a Senator to fill an empty seat so the governors might be busy filling the senate up. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/12 "2020-06-02T18:09:42Z")
> [@ThelmaLou](#): > > Allow me to refer you to [this thread.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=851368) I don’t recall that thread ever concluding that Trump would and could just stay President by acting like a child. It was controversial even there. Suppose this scenario happens. Someone from the Pentagon has highly classified info that needs the President’s attention. Who is going to direct him to Trump? Who is going to direct him to the former Speaker of the House? Who is that person more likely to follow? What about the next person who needs the president’s input? The next? Trump-the-not-President makes personnel changes in some department. Who is going to tell that department to implement the changes? Who’ll tell them to ignore him? Who is the department more likely to listen to? Military and federal law enforcement directly strong arming other governmental entities is the only way I can see it happening, and that’s not usually part of these hypotheticals, for good reason. It could be a huge fucking mess, granted, depending on what Congress’s position was, but I just don’t see it happening this particular way. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/13 "2020-06-02T21:42:45Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Even if he could conceive of a plan, he hasn’t got the intellectual capacity or discipline to carry it out. He also lacks the self-control to keep any secret plan a secret. If Trump was planning on using the Insurrection Act to interfere with the elections, he would have already posted it on Twitter. I’m pretty sure Republican party leaders have plans for interfering with the election. (Why would this election be any different?) But they’re not dumb enough to share them with Trump. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/14 "2020-06-02T22:00:08Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > So after a lot of drama and an epic Constitutional crisis, we would end up with President Leahy, who would be … amazingly similar to President Biden. Probably not. The tradition is the longest serving Senator in the majority party is chosen as the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. But there’s no requirement for that. The office is usually mostly ceremonial. But in this scenario of no election, the person elected President Pro Tempore of the Senate would become the President a couple of weeks later. So with all due respect to Pat Leahy, I think the Democrats in the Senate would choose somebody they feel is more Presidential. By coincidence, a lot of the women who have been speculated about as possible Democratic VP choices happen to be Class 1 or 3 Senators: Tammy Duckworth, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren. So any of them would be eligible for the office. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/15 "2020-06-02T22:20:30Z")
Trump does a lot of things that “can’t be done” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/16 "2020-06-02T23:37:22Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Trump does a lot of things that “can’t be done” Trump tries to do a lot of things that are beyond his abilities and fails. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/17 "2020-06-02T23:48:37Z")
There is no federal election for him to disrupt. There are 51+ states and other jurisdictions that hold elections. Maybe some of the red states would kneel before Zod, but the blues states won’t. There will be an election, and there will be a result. What happens after that is anyone’s guess, but postponing the election ain’t gonna happen. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2020, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/18 "2020-06-03T01:16:44Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Trump does a lot of things that “can’t be done” > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Trump tries to do a lot of things that are beyond his abilities and fails. I suspect Bijou Drains wasn’t referring to Trump’s abilities, but to the inescapable fact that he gets away with stuff. Stuff such as having a massive buildup of US military forces, poised to shoot down anyone who protests: Their remarks followed the build-up of troops in the capital region on June 1-2, in anticipation of deploying them in Washington, D.C., where presidential authority does not require additional steps before troops are deployed. National Guard helicopters flew low over Washington to disperse protesters who remained on the streets after a 7 p.m. curfew, while Esper and Milley walked through downtown D.C. observing the Guard’s work. > [@](#): > > … The Associated Press reported June 2 that military aircraft over D.C. were acting under Trump’s orders in a “show of force” mission named Operation Themis—a figure in Greek mythology known as the titaness of divine law and order. > > As the night went on, a line of KC-135s, C-130s, and C-17s carried in Army and National Guard personnel to Joint Base Andrews, Md., from Utah, South Carolina, Kansas, and New York. > > About 700 members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division landed at two military bases near Washington, the AP reported. Another 1,400 soldiers are ready to be mobilized, and are armed with riot gear and bayonets. > > More than 20,400 National Guard forces across 28 states and the District of Columbia were activated to back up law enforcement as of the morning of June 2, according to the National Guard Bureau. Their ranks swelled by around 3,000 personnel, and added people from five states—Iowa, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, and Nebraska—since the previous day… > **[Lawmakers Question Using Active Military to Quell Protests | Air & Space...](https://www.airandspaceforces.com/lawmakers-uneasy-deploying-active-military-to-quell-protests/)** > > Some lawmakers raised concerns about the prospect of sending to Active-duty service members to quell police brutality protests across the United States. Many, many people are saying that Trump can’t do this. But it’s done. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2020, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/19 "2020-06-03T01:39:04Z")
Trump doesn’t want to delay the election. The sooner we have the election, the sooner he can declare victory. Why wouldn’t he want that? If the Associated Press projects Biden won, he won’t like that. But then he’ll ask for his elector slates to be sent to Washington regardless. And then, Mike Pence, when he presides over the counting of the electoral vote on January 5, 2021, gets to say who he thinks won. Why would Trump want to delay that? Trump doesn’t like being called a coward. That’s why he got out of his bunker and walked over and made sure that, for the second day in a row, St. John’s Episcopal Church would be desecrated. Delaying the election he’s determined to win, one way or the other, is the kind of cowardly deed he will avoid. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2020, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924/20 "2020-06-03T01:49:56Z")
Correction to #19 – counting of electoral votes, before a joint session of Congress, is scheduled for January 6, 2021, not the day before. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-trumps-invoking-the-insurrection-act-be-a-stepping-stone-for-delaying-the-november-election/854924.md?page=2)