Ok, the vote on Trump will take place in the LOWER HOUSE. That's the House of Representatives. That's the House where Pelosi rules.

Trump will have the majority in that house on the Twelfth Amendment vote (since it's a delegations vote).

So the only way she can stop him is by denying the vote a quorum, or clearing the House, or whatever.

But she does not rule in the Upper House. THE SENATE. The person who rules in the Upper House is Pence.

Pelosi cannot deny Pence a quorum in the Upper House.

So, his vote goes through. He is appointed VP Elect. And by virtue of there being no President Elect, as they blocked Trump's vote, PENCE is the one who is sworn in on 20 January, due to a mechanism in the Twentieth Amendment that was originally to be found in the Twelfth Amendment.

It may be that Senate Democrats try in any event to deny Pence a quorum in the Senate. BUT HE RULES IN THE SENATE. This is the point of my recent post. The only way for the Republicans to break any quorum block that is imposed on Twelfth Amendment votes is to do it in the Senate. Because Pelosi has the final say in the House where they vote on Trump. Not so, Pence. The person who makes the rulings in the Senate as to what is and isn't quorate, as far as I'm supposing - and I am not holding my suppositions out as anything other than intelligent suppositions, is Pence.

This is what the Betfair market is missing. Under this analysis, Trump shouldn't be 14, he should be 50, because if his stringing-out gambits work, he's going to come up against a brick wall in Pelosi and her being in charge of the vote to appoint, or block, him.

Whereas Pence won't. Pence doesn't have it all his own way, he still has a quorum issue. But the person who rules on his quorum issue is ... him. If he's faced with an "elastic" manoeuvre or just sitting there and watching Pelosi take the oath, what do you reckon he'll do?

I think Pence should have Trump's odds. Trump is not going to get the electoral college. They'll block his electors. And once that's blocked, they'll block his Twelfth vote too.

Whereas what justifies Trump's current odds, 14, are his chances of stringing it beyond December. And because of the weird way procedure and laws and the politics of the situation are going to work once we hit January, it's not Trump but Pence who's going to benefit.

Maybe we could have an award for the fanny of the year? Could be called the Golden Teabag after the original tea boy winner who wasted everyones time with multiple ludicrous long posts recommending first Kamala Harris then Nancy Pelosi then Mike Pence then god knows who at 1000.0 to win the 2020 Presidential Election market.

Well, I'd changed my mind, but it only goes to show that steadfastness is a virtue.

If you miss out on this 1000-1 (sic) bet, politicspunter,

I wonder if you'll spot any other 1000-1 bet you're getting wrong in 2020.

:-)

Recount in Pennsylvania and then referral to SCOTUS

And why would the SCOTUS need to be involved in any way?

Sure, that will be just votes for Biden is it?

God knows,but I see Biden is now 1.08 to win on here

There are two stages in the coming days.

The first is the end of the Georgia audit.

If Trumps falls short there, it's game over. He'll effectively concede, although in theory maybe he'll keep his campaign technically alive for a bit longer by continuing litigation in Nevada and Michigan.

If Trump does come up with the 15k unstamped, signature-irregular ballots he needs, then the second stage is the continuing litigation in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and the battle to win the hearts and minds of the Republican state legislatures in those two states.

There are two ways he could do this. One, get rulings that strike out hundreds of thousands of votes, which leave him with a conventional pathway to having electors chosen for him.

And the other is if the Supreme Court makes rulings which cast sufficient shadow over the result that the state legislatures rise up for Trump or refuse to rise up for Biden.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/state-legislatures-cant-ignore-popular-vote-appointing-electors

This link (above) discusses the issue of electors being appointed contrary to the popular vote, and it may or may not hold water. The idea has certainly been floated around.

But what I'm interested in is a scenario inadvertently triggered by something dave1357 said.

And - disclaimer disclaimer - this is just hypothesis, it's not a prediction, so calm down.

It might be the case that Trump doesn't actually need the Republican state legislatures to appoint electors for him and contrary to the popular vote.

All he might need is for the electors that are chosen to be chosen invalidly. That is to say, for the state legislatures to sit on their hands, refuse to certify, because of the fraud this yada that, Supreme Court ruling the other, and to say, well our governor just appointed some electors for our state, but while they accord with what the popular vote currently says, we regard this as an unsafe compromised election and we have not certified and will not endorse them.

It's a good look. It doesn't require the kind of brass balls you'd need to pick alternative electors contrary to the standing popular result.

It exudes a kind of moral piety, faux or otherwise.

It's one thing picking electors.

But the presence of electors and their votes only means anything if, once the votes are unsealed and counted on 6 January, Congress agrees that they are valid, in order and a correct basis for appointing a President.

The point was made in Bush v Gore that Democrats in Congress still had the opportunity in January to raise queries about Bush's Florida electors, but nobody did. Those were different times. Gore conceded, and with him House Democrats did too.

But this time around, if Trump is still contesting, and if Biden's majority has a question mark over it prompted by the state legislatures' abstention, then procedurally it may be possible for House Republicans to raise questions over Biden's electoral votes and force a vote to make sure both Houses agree on a majority holder.

They have to agree, otherwise the electoral college method is discarded and the two straight Twelfth Amendment votes take place.

This is just a hypothesis, and a lot depends on how much scope the Republicans would have to derail Biden's electors on 6 January, whether some might split for Biden, or whether Pelosi could railroad them. But the key point is that the norms we take for granted don't necessarily apply, and Trump may not, on one line of reasoning, necessarily need to get fifty thousand votes struck out and win the electoral college. Polluting Biden's electoral votes by procuring Republican legislatures to withhold certification might be enough.

As for Betfair, well, I can see a situation where Biden gets 270 electors on 14 December, they are not contested, but they are, as I termed it, polluted, ie embedded with a pretext that allows for them to be refused in January. Betfair might yet pay out on a 14 December "received majority" that does not turn out to be received after all, in the final analysis, on 6 January.

From the perspective of Trump's post-election day strategy to leverage his party, the below position in the two Georgia Senate runoff races due to take place on 5 January is probably the perfect scenario:


DATES    POLLSTER    SAMPLE    RESULT    NET RESULT
U.S. Senate        Ga.       
NOV 8-9, 2020
C-
Remington Research Group
1,450    LV    Warnock   
48%
49%
Loeffler    Loeffler    +1
U.S. Senate        Ga.       
NOV 8-9, 2020
C-
Remington Research Group
1,450    LV    Ossoff   
46%
50%
Perdue    Perdue    +4

If a quorum fails to vote, the Senate can, by motion, direct its sergeant at arms to compel the
attendance of absent Senators or even to arrest absentees in order to establish a quorum.12 The
Senate rarely finds it necessary to take this step.

https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/577d2a5e-2b47-4045-95fa-a76398e41461.pdf

Holy fxduck.

Recounts, unless the margin is close, can't just be requested. They need to be paid for and Trump isn't going to waste money on a pointless recount.

Biden will have the 270 EC votes he needs soon enough, and when the state markets are settled, the Next President market will settle per their rules "This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2020 presidential election. Any subsequent events such as a ‘faithless elector’ will have no effect on the settlement of this market."

They don't want recounts they want audits

Georgia is getting one, it needs to happen in Michigan and Penn too

Trump wins when he flips those three

Has anyone apart from Betfair not paid out ?

https://twitter.com/CodeMonkeyZ/status/1326902944063741960?s=20

They are desperate for trump to concede before this Dominion **** hits the fan

The contents of this letter suggest to me that the Georgia audit will not uncover 15k Biden ballots to strike out:

https://gagop.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Deficiency_Letter_1_.pdf

I think that if they do full signature matching checks, they will get their 15k.

Trump is probably going to have to ask the Supreme Court to step in and order what he needs.

Whether he gets it is a different question.

I wrote that sentence very carefully. It is based on the outcome of a lot of thinking about the Twelfth Amendment (and the Twentieth Amendment that derived from and flows from it).

Once more,

If you are laying Pence at 999-1, what you are really laying is the chance that Trump will cause the Republican Senate on 6 January not to agree that Biden has 270 valid electors.

Multiplied by the chance that your incredibly detailed and convoluted analysis is either wrong technically or wrong politically. I have not dived into the technical detail in the way that you have and have neither the time nor inclination to argue specific points. Equally, it’s apparent that you are describing what would be a violently contested and complex process, with various stages at which wheels could fall off your specific scenario and multiple parties who might interfere. Perhaps you could describe what you think the probability is of your technical analysis being correct in predicting how the disputes would run, given the senate not agreeing that Biden has 270 electors.

It’s also dubious politically, in that people could choose not to behave purely in party interest but might take a moral stance based on the election result as apparent to them. Bear in mind that several Republican senators have already congratulated Biden on wining. Mostly this would operate at the stage before the Senate took a view on the electors but there could very easily be further decision points thereafter that might lead to dissent or abstention. This is not simply a technical issue, what you are discussing would be stealing an election, by the use of abstruse points of law and custom. The consequences to the US and to individuals facilitating this would not be trivial.

That's Smarkets paid out on everything including exact number of Electoral College votes for each candidate.

Final score was 306 Biden, 232 Trump.

As I say, I’m not really engaging on the technical details, beyond raising the, I think entirely valid point, that you are describing an extremely complex process as if its outcome is fairly linear once it’s properly thought through. That isn’t my experience of complex processes. Some of the parliamentary process issues over Brexit might be an interesting comparison. Nobody had a clue what would happen half the time!

You aren’t correct about what a Biden administration would do, either, in passing, probably in terms of his intent but certainly in terms of traction. He probably wouldn’t even get all the Dem senators to agree to creating new states or packing the court.

I think you’re also overestimating the chances of tying up what aren’t very close state races in procedural or court battles. So far Trump’s legal team is getting absolutely nowhere. For example, I think it’s both very unlikely that he would manage to get signature matching through a court after a recount is conducted and finds Biden still the winner and also unlikely this would change the result significantly. You’re basically saying that the election officials have failed dramatically to follow procedure.