Postpone the 2020 Election? Many GOP Voters Say Yes
The 2016 election cycle brought accusations of fake news and phony polls. But are voters really ready to put Democracy itself on hold?
Research by two professors finds that 52 percent of Republicans would be OK with postponing the 2020 elections if President Donald Trump told them it was the only way to ensure that only eligible American citizens voted. Other questions in the survey reveal the thinking behind that very startling statistic: While Trump won the the Electoral College, nearly half of Republicans surveyed believe Trump won the popular vote, too -- even though Hillary Clinton beat him by about 3 million ballots.
Further, 68 percent of the GOP-inclined voters surveyed June 5-20 believe millions of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election, and 73 percent believe voter fraud occurs somewhat or very often. Those numbers are at odds with legions of studies indicating that non-citizen voting is very rare.
The poll’s authors, Yeshiva University psychology professor Ariel Malka and University of Pennsylvania assistant professor Yphtach Lelkes, aren’t sounding too many alarm bells. The situation is highly hypothetical, the two acknowledge in awrite-up of their survey, and it’s likely there would be a small-d democratic backlash if anyone indeed seriously discussed postponing the next presidential election. Nor has anyone in the Trump administration publicly suggested delaying the 2020 election is up for discussion.
Trump couldn’t delay the election even if he wanted to, says Steven F. Huefner, a law professor at The Ohio State University. States run their own elections, for starters, and the U.S. Constitution clearly says a president’s term is done on Jan. 20 at noon – no extensions. Congress has ways of installing a new president if one is not chosen through the November contest for some reason, but the president can’t hang on at his own discretion. “There’s no way around that,” Huefner says.