In for a penney, in for a pound. More on that war game exercise I mentioned earlier. Doesn't look good for anyone
Where the System May Break
A war-game exercise simulating the 2020 election unmasked some key vulnerabilities.
JULY 31, 2020
David Frum
Staff writer at The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-2020-election-could-go-wrong/614842/
On the same morning that the United States government reported the steepest economic collapse in U.S. history, President Donald Trump mused on Twitter about postponing the 2020 election. Trump is getting desperate, more desperate by the day. What might he do? What should Americans fear?
Earlier this summer, 67 former government officials and academic students of government gathered over four sessions of the nonpartisan Transition Integrity Project to analyze those questions. They included Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee; John Podesta, the former White House chief of staff who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign; former Republican members of Congress; and a host of former elected officials, government staffers, consultants, and even journalists. I joined two of the sessions.
The sessions began with scenarios of what might happen on Election Day—a big Biden win, a narrow Biden win, a Trump win in the Electoral College coupled with a loss in the popular vote—and then played war games to ponder what might follow. The goal was not to make predictions, but rather to test scenarios and identify potential weak points in the system. The approach is common in the national-security world, but has not often before been applied to domestic politics.
The organizers of the event will in time produce a formal report on the results. But in light of the president’s ominous tweet yesterday, it’s worth summarizing some of what we found, while respecting the rules under which the event was held—which allowed for the disclosure of the substance of the exercise, but not what individual participants said.
The good news is that Trump cannot postpone the election or the next presidential inauguration; he has no means to do either of those things. Those dates are set by law or in the text of the Constitution.
Nor can Trump somehow cling to power after Inauguration Day once the electoral vote is certified against him. If the Electoral College certifies Joe Biden the winner when its votes are counted in Washington, D.C., on January 6, then at noon on January 20, Donald Trump ceases to be president. His signature loses all legal effect, the officer carrying the nuclear football walks away, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff does not take his call.
The bottom line: There do exist outer legal boundaries to the mischief that can be done by even the most corrupt president.
The bad news is that there is a lot of mischief that can be done within the legal boundaries by a determined president, especially with the compliance of the attorney general and enough political allies in the state capitals.
Full article at
The Atlantic
