Lately, all I’ve been hearing is how anxious people are about the outcome of this election and how folks just cannot wait until it’s over.  (I share their anxiety.)  People also seem to recognize that a winner may not be declared by the media for a couple of days.  I am here to tell you that if Vice-President Harris wins, the battle will have just begun, because an increasingly desperate Trump team may try to block the Harris/Walz ticket from receiving 270 or more electoral votes.

It is beyond serious dispute that Trump will not slip quietly into the night if he loses.  Consider the attempted insurrection he instigated in 2020 when what he had to lose was power and prestige.  How much further will he go when he faces the loss of political relevance and  state and federal prison time?

Shortly after election day, Donald Trump faces sentencing on his 38 counts of conviction for fraud in New York state.  Ahead of him is a difficult trial on federal charges in the District of Columbia.  Although there are still legal issues to be resolved on the DC charges, if Trump loses, that case will be tried and there is a strong likelihood of conviction and a heavy jail sentence.  In Florida, a Trump-friendly judge dismissed the federal indictment charging him with failure to return classified document and obstruction of justice.  But Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has appealed the dismissal and the novel legal theory espoused by the district court judge is unlikely to be upheld.  (The charges in that case will be very difficult to defend on the facts.)  And in Georgia, the RICO indictment in which Trump is the lead defendant has survived a frontal attack.  Some of the counts against Trump were dismissed, leaving eight charges against him and a strong factual case

Assuming Trump does win one way or the other, it will be his hope and expectation that his hand-picked Attorney General “reconsiders” the pending DC and Florida federal cases that are pending, and dismisses them with prejudice.  As to the state case in New York, his hope will be that the judge will either postpone sentencing him indefinitely or decline to put a sitting President in jail.  Should a jail sentence be imposed, Trump will appeal it.  And Trump and his legal team are confident that the Georgia courts will be reluctant to make a sitting President stand trial while he is in office.

So given those stark alternatives, how far do you think Donald Trump will go to get elected?  I suspect he will shoot every bullet in his legal gun and then throw it at the opposition.

Learning from the 2020 playbook, what can we expect from Trump this time?

• As we are seeing now, the Trump campaign is raising allegations of voter fraud in various counties around the country, with particular emphasis on illegal immigrants.
• On election night, Trump will claim victory or announce that he will very soon be declared the President-elect.
• The Trump forces will mount a media campaign to disseminate as much misinformation as possible about election conspiracies.
• The Trump campaign may try to convince random members of Boards of Election in the swing states to slow down the process of certifying election results or bring about an impasse.
• Whether or not election results are certified, there may be an attempt to convince state legislators or the governors to pick alternative electors rather than those who were already elected by popular vote.
• Under the Electoral Count Act, on December 11, 2024, states are supposed to resolve any controversies over the selection of electors, and on December 17^th the state electors are to meet and formally vote for President and Vice-President of the United States. After what we saw in 2020, there may be aggressive attempts to interfere with that.
• On January 6, 2025, the electoral votes are to be formally counted before a joint session of Congress made up of the newly elected members. Depending upon the leadership of Congress at that point, Trump’s endgame will be to throw an electoral impasse into the House of Representatives,  where each state will have only one vote.  This would favor Republicans even if the Democrats take back control of the House by a slim margin.
• Finally, Inauguration Day will take place on January 20, 2025. Many citizens, myself included, will not rest easy until that occurs.

But here is the good news.  If Harris and Walz are elected, the Democratic leadership fully anticipates their potential attack on democracy and is prepared to defend against it and counter-punch in every jurisdiction.  The chief litigator for the Democrats is Marc Elias who practices in Washington, DC and has successfully represented Democratic candidates in federal and state elections for decades.  I have had some dealings with Marc, and know he has nerves of steel.

Further, the successful federal criminal convictions of the January 6^th defendants who invaded the Capitol, as well as the state prosecutions of false electors in Arizona and Michigan, will have a deterrent effect on all but the extreme zealots.  Those considering violence and/or fraud need only look at how the careers and reputations of Trump’s hard core stalwarts – ranging from Proud Boys to his “legal dream team” — have been ruined.

If the Harris-Walz ticket wins, fasten your seat belts.   Once again, the post-election weeks will be rough.  It will take months, not days, to bring about closure and preserve the victory.  We will need mental toughness to successfully finish this election marathon.

But there is no other choice, and as we buckle up, we should recall the line oft quoted by Dr. King, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”