Which is why, when the electoral college meets, the election will be decided. At the moment, therefore, it is a fact that nobody has won the election.
There is the formality, and there is reality.
The reality is not only that in modern US history, never has the US government - or anyone else for that matter - waited until the electoral college to meet before assuming who the next president will be, but that the law explicitly endorses this practice.
The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 dictates that the GSA Administrator ascertains the “apparent successful candidate” of the election, and then the transition kicks into full gear, per the law. “Apparent” is very clearly a different standard than “declared”, “confirmed”, or any other such term that conveys absolute certainty. So moving ahead with declaring the winner of an election is not just long-established tradition, it is also the law.
How is “apparent” winner defined? Well, until now, media projections - as often as not the AP - were taken as the real deal. So does, by the way, the Trump campaign - as long as he wins. When the AP projected Trump won Alaska - several days after the election, and after the claims of “the media doesn’t decide the election” and the “PRESIDENT GORE” silliness had long since begun, what did Ivanka Trump tweet out? The
AP call, that’s what.
The GSA Administrator is a Trump appointee who
appears to take her boss’ disposition more seriously than she does the law. There is no real controversy about who won the election: in court, Trump has won 1 case out of 25. He has lost by 5-digit margins in 5 states without which he cannot get to 270. The GSA Administrator sees this as plainly as anyone: per media reports, she is
sending her resume around, a move that does not exactly imply confidence in Trump being the winner.
At the outset, the Trump line was that “the media doesn’t decide the winner”. They even plastered across their HQ, and tweeted out a front page of the Washington Times that referred to “PRESIDENT GORE”, as “a reminder that the media doesn’t select the President”. (The only problem?
That front page was fake, the latest in a long string of fake front pages and
magazine covers). As that has started to wear thin, they have resorted to ever-more desperate measures, like having the GOP commissioners refuse to certify the results from Detroit because that city voted overwhelmingly for Biden (after an outcry, they backtracked 2 hours later).
None of this will succeed, but the very fact that someone dares attempt it is both a symptom of a diseased political system as well as incredibly corrosive to that system. They are willing to burn down the very democracy if it helps Trump.
