“We need to clear up what exceptional cases there are” that could ever allow state legislatures to intervene on the basis of a “failed election,” how such a determination would be made, and how judgments by legislatures would be subject to review by other political authorities and courts. It was one more case of how Donald Trump’s denialism about his electoral defeat, and his continuing attempts to retain power by conjuring a constitutional crisis, have brought Americans into anxious acquaintance with the anachronistic mechanisms of a democracy that they can no longer take for granted…If Democrats were to win control of both the House and the Senate, following next month’s runoff Senate elections in Georgia, “It would be super-wise to rewrite the E.C.A.,” Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard and a democratic-reform activist, told me. That vote is a ritual typically of interest only to the electors and their friends and families, but this year the major wire services moved news bulletins as the states tallied their counts. On Monday, amid heightened security measures spurred by threats of violence, the electors of the Electoral College cast their votes to affirm that Joe Biden will become the forty-sixth President of the United States. They did not want the vice president, who might well have a rooting interest, to settle the outcome of a presidential election. Constitution and those who followed them were acutely aware of the risk of bias and self-interest in politics. A central reason is that the drafters of the U.S. He has no power to overturn the results of a presidential election. What is he permitted to do on Wednesday? Under the law, the simplest answer is: Not very much. An obvious question is the role of Vice President Mike Pence, who serves as president of the Senate and can break deadlocked senate votes on ordinary matters, now that he has “welcomed” the senators’ electoral vote challenge. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, joined by at least 10 other Republican senators or senators-elect, is mounting a challenge, seeking to delay and perhaps to reverse the result. Bush, federal judges have shown fidelity to the law by rejecting frivolous and evidence-free efforts by Trump to overturn former Vice President Joe Biden’s victory. Congress will meet on Wednesday to finalize that victory. Whether they were appointed by Presidents Donald Trump or Barack Obama, by Presidents Bill Clinton or George W. 2, the rule of law has held. That is one of the most noteworthy, and inspiring, developments in the entire history of U.S. An op-ed by Cass Sunstein: Since the presidential election on Nov.