TLDR: Biden is winning, but Trump has a few options to steal it anyway, all of which would undermine our democracy without “technically” breaking any laws. This would be very, VERY bad.
Trump is losing in Wisconsin and Michigan, and just barely ahead in Pennsylvania, but those states are all still counting mail-in ballots which skew predominantly Democratic. Biden will almost certainly win all three, which will clinch him the presidency, and Trump is throwing a shit fit over it. Because he led in same-day votes, he wants to stop the states from counting the mail-in ballots entirely; now keep in mind, these ballots have already been cast, they’re legal votes that arrived on time, they just haven’t been counted yet. Trump is calling for hundreds of thousands of legal votes to be thrown out because he doesn’t like the results; he’s going to appeal to the Supreme Court to decide on this, and in any other election the decision would be clear cut in Biden’s favor. Trump would have to show definitive proof of widespread voter fraud or systemic irregularities to invalidate this many votes; the Florida recount was stopped in 2000 because different counties were using different recount standards. The conservative majority Supreme Court decided 5-4 that this wasn’t fair, and there wasn’t enough time to have a standardized statewide recount, so Bush was able to run out the clock and win on a technicality. 2020 isn’t a recount! Trump isn’t trying to stop a REcount, he’s trying to stop THE count! The first and only count! He has no standing, his case should be thrown out just like the Texas curbside ballot fuckery, BUT Trump appointed three of the nine justices, so it’s packed in his favor. They could delay the count until it’s too late, run out the clock yet again and let the results stand.
If they did this, if all the states were paused where they are now, Biden would just barely eke by with a 270-268 victory, the closest election in history, even closer than 2000 (271-267), only one point away from a dead even tie. If this happened, Trump would immediately appeal to faithless electors to abandon Biden and vote for him instead, because he would only need 2; in 2016, there were 7. Now, all 7 of these electors voted for third party candidates, none of them flipped from Clinton to Trump or vice versa, but there’s a first time for everything. Trump would only need 2 faithless electors to flip his way to give himself an automatic victory; hell, he’d only really need 1 to vote against Biden for ANY candidate, and it would cause a 269-268-1 deadlock. Because neither candidate won the 270 majority, it would trigger a contingent election in which the House would pick the president and the Senate would pick the vice president. Democrats control a majority of seats in the House, so no problem, right? Wrong. In contingent elections, the House doesn’t vote as 435 individuals, but as 50 state blocs, meaning either candidate would need 26 states to win. There are more, smaller red states than blue states, so even though they represent a minority of voters, they control a majority of states, and would give the presidency to Trump. If the Democrats don’t flip the Senate, then the Republicans would unanimously re-elect Pence; if the Democrats took 50 seats, the vice presidency would remain vacant until the tie was broken or the House-appointed president nominated a new one (which would require the advice and consent of both the House and the Senate, which is even more gridlock); if the Democrats somehow managed to pull 51 votes out of their ass, they would wind up with a Republican President Trump and a Democratic Vice President Harris. A contingent election would be VERY messy.
It all hinges on Pennsylvania. If Biden pulls ahead before Trump steps in to fuck it up, then his victory is assured. If Trump is still in the lead, then the fate of the country is up in the air until sometime between December 14th (when the electors cast their votes) and January 6th (when the new congress counts the votes and would hold a contingent election if necessary). If Trump takes this, he will be an illegitimate president twice over, the only one to lose the popular vote both times.
The rest of this post is rampant speculation born out of fear and pessimism, so read at your own discretion
