Donald Trump's Narrow Path to Victory
Donald Trump, by my read, still has a possible path to victory. No, I don’t mean his lawsuits – American judges are not stupid or corrupt enough for those to work. I don’t mean corrupting the electors in the electoral college either, which is theoretically possible but also has about zero chance of success. No, there’s another path. It’s a narrow, insane path, and it might start a civil war, but if anyone can pull it off, he can.
Strategy #1
You already know that the final choice of the next President isn’t made by the citizens; citizens only vote for electors in the Electoral College. But the Electoral College vote isn’t the final stage either. Per the Electoral Count Act of 1887 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/15), the EC will send its votes to Congress. On January 6, Congress, in a joint session of the House and Senate, presided over by the President of the Senate – i.e., Mike Pence – will count the EC votes. At that time, Congressmen can raise objections to the electoral votes from any given state. The objection has to be submitted in writing and signed by a member of the House and a member of the Senate. I assume Trump would have no difficulty getting a House member and a Senate member to sign frivolous objections to any state’s votes. Here is the relevant text from the Electoral Count Act:
"[N]o electoral vote or votes from any State which shall have been regularly given by electors whose appointment has been lawfully certified to according to section 6 of this title from which but one return has been received shall be rejected, but the two Houses concurrently may reject the vote or votes when they agree that such vote or votes have not been so regularly given by electors whose appointment has been so certified."
(my emphasis). So Trump gets two stooges in Congress to say that the votes from, say, California were “not regularly given”. Now, maybe you’re thinking, “That’s ridiculous. There’s no basis for that.” But that’s completely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if there is any rational basis for the assertion. They just have to make the assertion, and then the law allows Congress to vote on whether to accept the EC votes. By my read, to reject California’s votes, Trump would have to get both the House and the Senate to vote to reject them. This would be the incoming House and Senate. The Senate is Republican-controlled, so they might well vote with Trump. Fortunately, however, the Democrats still narrowly hold the House, so it’s highly unlikely that Trump would get the votes in the House.
Strategy #2
There’s a slightly different strategy available, though. First, Trump identifies some Republican governor whose state voted for Biden. He convinces the governor to appoint a slate of Republican electors, in defiance of the actual election outcome. The governor then sends to Congress a (false) report of his state’s EC vote in favor of Trump. Meanwhile, the legislature of that state, I assume, sends the true report of the state’s EC vote in favor of Biden. What happens if Congress receives two conflicting reports of a state’s EC vote? The Electoral Count Act provides for that:
"[I]n case there shall arise the question which of two or more of such State authorities determining what electors have been appointed … is the lawful tribunal of such State, the votes regularly given of those electors … shall be counted whose title as electors the two Houses, acting separately, shall concurrently decide is supported by the decision of such State …"
In other words, Congress votes on which set of electors to accept. In this case, I suppose, the Senate votes (dishonestly) for the Trump electors; the House votes (correctly) for the Biden electors. What then?
"But if the two Houses shall disagree in respect of the counting of such votes, then … the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted."
So the governor’s electors get counted. Trump would need to pull this off for a few states in order to flip the election outcome. This plan assumes, of course, that Republican officials are essentially mindless tools who will do anything Donald Trump says.
Outlook
I don’t actually think this is going to happen, though. One reason is that the plan is probably too complicated for Trump to grasp. If one of his lawyers tries to tell him about it, he’ll probably wander off while the lawyer is talking. Another reason is that I’m not sure Trump really wants the job. He might prefer to tweet from Mar-a-Lago for four years about how the election was stolen from him, without having all the responsibility of the Presidency. Also, I’m not sure even a Republican governor would go along with the plan, since that governor could then expect to be voted out in the next election. Trump has been pretty good at getting people to break the law and go to jail for him, though, so who knows?
Of course, if Trump pulled off this plan, there would be riots in the streets of every major city, and possibly a civil war. Trump would have no problem with the riots, but he probably wouldn’t like the civil war, because then people would keep taking up his time with questions about the conduct of the war.
Edit: My Solution
To close the loophole in Presidential election law, I am proposing the following Constitutional amendment:
Amendment 28:
Section 1: Donald J. Trump is not the President.
Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.