Five Mini-Scenarios for the 2024 Election

That mostly probably totally won't happen. Mostly. Probably.

Cassidy Steele Dale forecasts and contextualizes the present to equip us to make a better, kinder future…

… and one of those ways to think about possible election results in a different way.

Last week my car finally died and went to be with Jesus so after we compared the Chevy Nut with the Toyota Void with the Honda Impossible we went to the dealership and I told the salesman I wanted something sensible and reliable with enough back seat room for child seats but with a second mode that had fish hooks welded to the fenders that would strike fear into the hearts of my enemies and a third mode that would inspire civic virtue and shine like justice and he said In blue? and we said Yes, please. So we got a 2025 Expecto Patronus in hybrid. I’ve adjusted the seat and my wife has put blue painter’s tape over all the buttons I shouldn’t push and I’m now out on the roads.

Nobody should worry for long, though, because historically about five days after I buy a new car something happens. Two cars ago around Day Five a forest fell down on it and one car ago on Day Five another driver hit us at 50mph on I-395 and we almost went over the side into the treetops of the George Washington Parkway and thus almost became a permanent feature of a National Park. Both times I wound up driving a rental car — the Ford Nope — by the end of the week. (The second time I was in a rental Ford Nope I was almost immediately rear-ended by a what-are-the-statistical-odds FBI agent.) So right now I’m driving to dodge lightning while crying and praying and I’m in total suspense and if you don’t hear from me next week it’ll be because of the terrorist attack.

Other bits before we get to the main stuff:

• GOP NC gubernatorial hopeful Mark Robinson? Good Lord. I’ve now hit the point where I can’t watch or read about American politics unless I'm sure my kids are no longer in the room.

• The Guardian this week found that 20 years ago Project 2025 mastermind Kevin Roberts killed his neighbor’s dog with a shovel and hid the body because the dog barked too much. (Kristi Noem at least had the common courtesy to murder her dog with a firearm; Roberts made it personal.) I’ve now hit the point where I can’t watch or read about American politics until I’m sure no dogs are in the room. Word’s gotten out, though, and I’m sure American dogs are now organizing carpools to go poop on his lawn. Until they spot Mark Robinson spying on them from the bushes. Probably. Allegedly.

• Speaking of righteous lawn-pooping, later today Jack Smith will lay out his evidence that Trump attempted to steal the 2020 election before, during, and after the election was over, including the January 6 Capitol Riot. Almost immediately, perhaps/probably today some version of his evidence will be made public — some grand jury testimony may be redacted and one piece of evidence is classified and probably won’t be declassified today. The next few (or few dozen) news cycles will be filled with coverage of what’s in the evidence, what’s redacted and why, and speculation about what’s in the redacted and classified material. And analysts will compare what he and his allies did in the 2020 election with what they’re trying to do now. Welcome to your weekend and early next week at least.

So.

Most folks seem to be thinking that there’s only two options ahead for the election but I suspect there’s five. And that this will be a two-part election.

Some folks have caught onto this already but I’m going to sum up the options and then spit out what might be beyond them.

Everyone — 538, Nate Silver, the Pope, and everyone else — seems to sorta assume there’s only two outcomes to Election Night/Election Week once all the votes have been counted but there’s five instead. And on top of that this is probably going to be a two-part election: who wins it and who can keep that win.

It’s pretty plain to see that Trump supporters on some county and state election boards across the country plan to sabotage the election by refusing to certify election results in enough blue counties to allow purple states to be certified as red and/or to sabotage the certification of entire states to prevent Kamala Harris from reaching 270 votes in the Electoral College or to prevent either of them from reaching 270 in the hope that the House of Representatives will elect him over her regardless of the will of the American people. Because that’s what they tried to do last time but failed to get themselves organized enough to succeed. Or succeed at the Capitol on January 6. But since then they’ve had four years to prepare. But then again so has everyone else.

• If you need one single roundup of recent election sabotage efforts by election officials, most of whom remain in position and will be overseeing parts of the 2024 election plus means by which state and federal officials can thwart them, see this report by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). If you need more, Democracy Docket has an explainer here and Rolling Stone has a much more extensive report here.

I think they will try to sabotage this election. I think they will fail.

• In many ways, though, the sabotage efforts don’t have to succeed, they just need to drag things out such that certifications fail to happen by December 11, the national deadline for finalized vote counts.

• If Rolling Stone’s reporting is correct, then we should start seeing lots of GOP challenges to vote counts across the swing states by the end of Election Week.

Again, I think the challenges will fail, but if they succeed or make significant progress then there’s five possible futures ahead for this election:

1. Kamala’s Undeniable Win. Kamala Harris wins so undeniably that no sabotage effort can succeed. If she has North Carolina by the end of Election Night — the first swing state apt to make a call because NC can count its mail-in ballots ahead of time and its polls close at 7:30pm — then she’ll probably also have won Georgia and the Blue Wall states. What a North Carolina win would mean is that she’ll probably safely have 270 Electoral College votes in hand even if several other swing states completely fail to certify their vote tallies.

2. Blue States Flipped Red. Kamala wins but election sabotage efforts in enough swing states thwart the counting of enough blue votes to flip some swing states red.

3. House Elects Kamala. Election sabotage efforts prevent enough states’ votes from being certified at all to the point where neither reaches 270 votes in the Electoral College thus the election gets thrown to the House of Representatives. Each state delegation gets one vote and determines which candidate gets its vote by relying on which candidate received more of the popular vote in their state. If so, then Kamala Harris probably wins.

4. House Elects Trump. Election sabotage efforts prevent enough states’ votes from being certified at all to the point where neither reaches 270 votes in the Electoral College thus the election gets thrown to the House of Representatives. Each state delegation gets one vote and determines which candidate gets its vote by relying on which party won more of the Congressional districts in their state. The popular vote within those states and at the national level are disregarded. If so, then Trump probably wins.

5. Trump Wins. He wins in the Electoral College such that — unless Putin and all of Russia stands up, cheers, and sets off fireworks that spell WE SABOTAGED THE AMERICAN ELECTION — Democrats would accept the election result because they’re not the type to insurrect against the Capitol on any given January 6.

From a futures perspective, here’s the worst part: if Trump supporters’ sabotage efforts succeed to any significant degree then the GOP and/or other enemies of American democracy will have figured how to successfully sabotage American presidential elections each and every time going forward, potentially preventing one or both candidates in any election from reaching 270 ever again. If so, that would mean a few things:

• Americans effectively won’t elect their President any more; Members of Congress will.

• Whoever controls the House controls the Presidency and thus also controls the United States and its domestic and foreign policy. Given the state of the House in recent decades that would effectively paralyze the United States at home and abroad.

This would continue until Democrats and non-MAGA Republicans can fix it (probably by abolishing or supplanting the Electoral College) but they may not be able to move faster than a reelected Trump can permanently hobble American presidential elections. And remember: now because of the recent Supreme Court ruling, a reelected Trump can jail opponents for dissent. When people on both sides say that the future of democracy is held in the balance in this election, this is path to doom that I fear.

So now I need to reread Project 2025 with a different sort of futurist’s eye. I’ll skip the part on dog-killing.