Just like we’ve slowly accepted the fact that we can’t travel anymore, Donald Trump is slowly accepting his defeat in the 2020 US presidential election.
When Biden was first announced the winner with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, Trump claimed he had won instead, due to the supposedly widespread voter fraud.
I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2020
Despite knowing he lost, Trump has only made subtle concessions since the outcome was announced, and even then, they were retracted soon after.
But over the last couple weeks, there have been signs that the 74-year-old is starting to understand that simply saying he won won’t actually make him President again.
For one, he’s allowed officials to proceed with a transition to President-elect Joe Biden, after weeks of obstructing the process.
Now, he’s made a statement, which in Trumpenese-English, might be as close to a concession as we’ll get.
Trump Says He’ll Leave the White House if Electoral College Votes for Biden, Which Falls on 14 Dec
US president and the world’s most orange leader said he will vacate the White House if the Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
However, he couldn’t make such a speech without bringing in allegations of voter fraud, of which he still doesn’t have evidence.
“This election was a fraud,” he insisted.
This, he said, would make it hard to concede defeat.
When asked outright if he really would leave the White House if the Electoral College votes for Biden, Trump said: “Certainly I will. Certainly I will. And you know that.”
“But I think that there will be a lot of things happening between now and the 20th of January. A lot of things,” he said. “Massive fraud has been found. We’re like a third world country”, he added.
Trump’s legal team has desperately tried to prove voter fraud in several states, hoping to overturn results, but has not succeeded so far.
Biden is due to be sworn in as president on 20 Jan next year.
How the Electoral College Works
The US election process would be much simpler if the winner was chosen based on a majority vote, but as you’d know if you’ve ever tried eating just one potato chip, life’s not that simple.
See, in the United States, when Americans vote, they’re not voting for their president.
Instead, they’re voting for who their state votes for.
These group of electors are called the Electoral College.
Each state has a number of electoral votes, roughly equivalent to their population size.
Since there are a total of 538 electors, a presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win, because that gives him the majority.
Back when the US constitution was written, the Founding Fathers were wary of letting “the people” have too much representation, because they believed citizens weren’t adequately informed.
Electors usually vote for the candidate who received the most votes in that state, but this isn’t always the case.
Electors who vote against the choice of the people in their state are called “faithless electors”.
The 2016 presidential election saw an unusually high number of faithless electors as ten electors were disloyal or tried to be.
But of course, 10 out of 538 isn’t a lot and that’s already considered “unusually high”.
Trump’s plan, if his legal challenges failed, was to convince faithless electors to vote against the wishes of the people in their state, so he could win.
But this is unlikely for two reasons.
Firstly, many states have passed laws that require their electors to vote as pledged.
Secondly, as Trump enjoys saying about his victory over Hilary Clinton in 2016, Trump lost this election to Biden by a lot.
This means that an unprecedented number of electors would have to be disloyal for Trump to win, which is highly unlikely.
So, Biden will almost certainly end up getting elected as President by the Electoral College. And when that happens, we’ll find out if Trump really was sincere about his promise to leave the White House.
Image: Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com
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