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Comment by castratikron | Hacker News Reader

Even if the election were delayed or cancelled, he was still elected to a 4 year term. The term doesn't extend indefinitely just because there wasn't an election. Directly from the Constitution, "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January". It's actually very specific about when the term ends.

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> It's actually very specific about when the term ends.

And then what?

Let's be realistic - the election happens regardless of what the President wants.

For obvious reasons, he does not control the election.

...but for the sake of argument, if a comet hit the Earth and cancelled the election, then the terms of both the President and the Vice President would end, and the Leader of the Senate would become the President.

Hmm, if it's just by the order of succession, I thought that the Speaker of the House was 3rd?

The Speaker of the House's term expires every two years, as well, so we wouldn't have one of those, either.

Ah, right. Thanks :-)

The Speaker has no term, but the Representative does.

The Speaker for the House doesn't need to be a member of Congress (though always has been). It's not clear to me that we would not have a Speaker.

President, VP, Speaker, President of the Senate.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, it's an interesting thought experiment.

Here's a video talking about what might happen. Basically, if there were no election, all that would be left is 2/3 of the Senate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQLbNekBU1A

The supreme court decision after the Florida hanging chads debacle established that timeliness is more important than accuracy. So that's one possible playbook: dispute certain results (aka mail in ballots) and use the timeliness argument to get a decision without counting the disputed results.

Likely the vacancy clause would kick in and the Speaker of the House becomes President. The office won't be left empty.

On the one hand, Congress is out of office on January 3rd. On the other, technically the Speaker of the House doesn't need to be a member of Congress, so would presumably continue to hold the title?

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