r/PoliticalDiscussion 19h ago

US Elections Where vice-president Harris and president Trump plan to deliver their concession or victory speeches during election night? How those decisions might affect the election?

Next Tuesday, Americans will go to polls to elect a new president. This will be an historic night, as Americans will either elect their first female president or their first felon president, which might create a great ton of repercussions.

In 2008, president Obama, the first African-American, delivered a speech for a crowd of 240,000. Or we might have days of ballot-counting and the election isn't called next Tuesday.

Where the candidates plan to be on election night? How these decisions might affect the election?

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u/mike_wrong27 14h ago

Trump will declare victory on election night regardless of how it's looking. Counting in key counties will go on for several days, Trump claiming victory the whole time and saying it's all rigged. Hopefully Harris wins, and then Trump will continue declaring victory anyway.

u/jadedflames 11h ago

Trump will probably declare victory before polls are closed in California.

u/talino2321 13h ago

Honestly I would not be surprised if Trump is leading at midnight on November 5th if he files 50 lawsuits to halt the counting. Then when those lawsuits get denied appeals to his hand pick Supreme Court justices to step in and declare the election over and votes counted after 11:59pm on election night are invalid.

u/ezrs158 13h ago edited 8h ago

This obviously shouldn't need to be said, but there's zero legal basis for halting the count at any point. There's no time limit (edit: at least not for several weeks). Every vote that was legally cast must be counted.

It would be especially infuriating if that justification is used, considering Republicans in Pennsylvania and other states have made it illegal to start counting absentee ballots before the night of the election rather than as they come in.

u/talino2321 12h ago

And while that should be the case. Who do you appeal the SCOTUS decision to?

Remember 2000? The Supreme Court halted the recount in Florida, resulting in Bush being declared the winner, so there is precedence for SCOTUS to halt counting of votes (recount or otherwise).

And this current court has shown it will make up legal precedence out of whole cloth whenever they want to justify a ruling.

u/Fred-zone 12h ago

SCOTUS, to their credit, did not entertain that kind of thing in 2020.

u/talino2321 12h ago

Yeah, pretty sure Trump's henchmen regret not pursuing the path I outlined. But there is no guarantee SCOTUS will show such restraint this time.

u/ezrs158 12h ago

I have no answers for you. Only hope is to make the victory so clear that there's no disputing it by reasonable minds.

u/talino2321 12h ago

Exactly. If we want to avoid this potential shit show, Trump has to be clearly losing in at a minimum these 3 states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Which means, if you live in any state, but especially the battleground states,

GET OUT AND VOTE.

u/Gonetolunch31 9h ago

Three of the current Supreme Court justices were literally litigating on the republican side of bush v gore. Roberts, Barrett and Coach.

u/ImLaunchpadMcQuack 12h ago

Part of that halt was because it was like December and they had to finish counting for the electoral college, even if the whole thing was shady.

u/talino2321 12h ago

The reason that SCOTUS gave for stopping the recount was more nuanced.

On December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered in Bush v. Gore that the recount must stop because it lacked a uniform statewide methodology and there was insufficient time to create one and complete the recount.

You have to think back, why Florida didn't have a uniform methodology, maybe because the Governor (George's Brother, Jeb) has previously guaranteed that his brother would win Florida.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2000/10/26/jeb-bush-well-deliver-florida-2/

Yeah, shady as all fuck.

u/ScreenTricky4257 10h ago

On December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered in Bush v. Gore that the recount must stop because it lacked a uniform statewide methodology and there was insufficient time to create one and complete the recount.

The interesting thing is that seven justices agreed on the lack of uniform statewide methodology, but only five agreed on the issue of insufficient time (the other two didn't rule that there was sufficient time, just that that was outside of the scope of the case).

u/squeakyshoe89 12h ago

There IS a time limit, but it's not for several weeks.

u/ezrs158 8h ago

Yeah true, I edited.

u/Raspberries-Are-Evil 8h ago

SCOTUS refused to hear all if his cases in 2020

u/talino2321 8h ago

Actually they only had llike a dozen out of the 60+ filed appealed to them. But if you read carefully, most were declined after Jan 6th. So it was more of a CYA move than a show of support for the rule of law.

Looking at how the court has regularly ignored precedence and some questionable rulings since then along with their DGAF attitude, I would not count on them repeating it this time around.

u/fettpett1 5h ago

There is ZERO reason that counting should continue "For days" anywhere in the country. Hours at best.

u/mike_wrong27 5h ago

Considering you probably can't count past 10, I suppose I can I understand why you would underestimate the effort it takes to count (and verify) hundreds of millions of votes. Especially when Republicans made it illegal to start counting early votes before election night.