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What Happens If There's No Clear Winner of US Presidential Election?

Rob Garver

   With the 2020 U.S. presidential election just two weeks off, political
   scientists and election law experts are gaming out a variety of
   scenarios the nation could face on Election Day and in the weeks that
   follow. The possibilities vary between a clear cut victory by either
   President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden, and an
   unresolved legal battle that leaves the outcome uncertain into January,
   when the new Congress is supposed to certify the election's final
   result.

   Experts say determining the winner of this particular election is
   especially fraught because of an unprecedented level of absentee voting
   due to the coronavirus pandemic. Variation in laws among the states
   about how and when to count absentee ballots means that a final count
   could take days or weeks to complete.

   In what he called the "nightmare scenario," political scholar William
   Galston of the nonprofit Brookings Institution writes that a closely
   contested election in which the outcome is in doubt would "[throw] the
   country into chaos under highly adverse circumstances."

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