What happens if Donald Trump loses the US election, but refuses to concede?

Donald Trump has refused to guarantee he will leave office if he is declared the loser of the election. If he tries to stay, this is what happens next.

We recently asked you, our readers, for your burning questions on the upcoming US presidential election.

Among the questions you wanted answered was one which would have sounded farcically far-fetched in any other year.

Will President Donald Trump actually vacate the White House and hand over power, should the election result show him losing to Joe Biden? And if he refuses to leave office, can he be forced out?

Obviously, this becomes a moot point if Mr Trump wins the election, and that absolutely could happen. But for the purposes of this article, we’re going to run with the hypothetical scenario of a Biden victory.

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First, let’s give the question some context, because if you’re just tuning in to the election campaign now, you might not know the basis for it.

Mr Trump has repeatedly claimed that an increase in the number of Americans voting by mail this year, caused by the coronavirus pandemic, will lead to widespread voter fraud.

In September, the President was asked whether he would commit to “a peaceful transferral of power” after the election, if he loses.

“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” Mr Trump responded.

“You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the (mail) ballots. And the ballots are a disaster.

“Get rid of the ballots and we’ll have a very peaceful – there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.

“The ballots are out of control.”

The subject has come up several times since, and Mr Trump has never changed his stance.

A day after those initial remarks, he doubled down, calling mail ballots “a whole big scam”.

“We want to make sure the election is honest, and I’m not sure that it can be,” he said.

During the first presidential debate, Mr Trump claimed the election was “rigged”. Moderator Chris Wallace asked him whether he was counting on the Supreme Court to settle any dispute over the result.

“Yeah, I think I’m counting on them to look at the ballots, definitely. I hope we don’t need them, in terms of the election itself. But for the ballots, I think so, because what’s happening is incredible,” the President said.

So that is where the question comes from. It is based on Mr Trump’s own refusal, on multiple occasions, to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power.

RELATED: Mail voting surge could cause ‘nightmare scenario’

Donald Trump at one of his many boisterous political rallies. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Next, let’s build up a plausible picture of the scenario in which Mr Trump might try to contest the result.

As I write this, with eight days left until the election, more than 58 million Americans have already voted, either in person or by mail. That is about 45 per cent of the entire turnout from four years ago.

It is clear, then, that the expected surge in mail voting is indeed happening.

The Bipartisan Policy Centre has predicted between 50 and 70 per cent of votes cast this year will be via absentee ballot. In 2016, it was a little over 20 per cent.

That does present a genuine problem, even if Mr Trump’s warnings about fraud are absurdly overblown (they are, and you can read about the evidence here).

The problem, put simply, is the potential for a long delay in declaring the election result. Mail ballots will take far longer to count than those cast in person on election day.

“We’re all going to need to take a deep breath and be patient this year,” Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, warned in August.

“There’s a substantial chance we are not going to know on election night what the results are.

“That’s OK. If it takes a little bit longer to count the votes accurately, that’s what we need to do in order to ensure that everyone’s vote counts.”

It’s important to understand here that the United States does not have one uniform system for counting votes. Each state essentially runs its own election, and sets its own rules.

Some allow election workers to start counting early ballots before election day. Others forbid any of those votes from being counted until the polls close.

Some states accept ballots that arrive by mail during a window after election day, as long as their postmark indicates they were sent before the deadline. Others do not.

Some give voters a chance to fix any errors which would otherwise lead to their ballot being discarded. Others chuck out those ballots immediately.

Broadly speaking, we can expect states that fall into the first category for each of those rules above to report their results pretty quickly. That group includes Florida and North Carolina on the east coast, where the polls close early in the night.

Other crucial swing states, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, will be slower. It could conceivably take days for them to declare a winner.

The other factor to consider here is that the early vote, including the mail vote, is likely to overwhelmingly favour Mr Biden, while the in-person vote on election day should favour Mr Trump by a similar margin.

So, our hypothetical scenario looks like this.

The early returns on election night, based disproportionately on the in-person vote, suggest Mr Trump is winning in a handful of key states. The President declares victory, while Mr Biden refuses to concede.

Over the next few days, the early vote is gradually counted, and eventually pushes Mr Biden ahead. He then claims victory, and Mr Trump refuses to concede, claiming there are millions of fraudulent mail ballots and the election has been rigged against him.

A constitutional crisis ensues.

RELATED: The states where the election will be won and lost

As a pure hypothetical, imagine the map looks like this after election night, with no result declared in a couple of decisive swing states. Picture: 270toWin

So, what happens next?

If Mr Trump does try to contest the election result, it will likely be through the courts. You might have noticed that he foreshadowed such a challenge in those remarks we mentioned earlier, saying he thinks “this will end up in the Supreme Court”.

Lawyers representing the Trump campaign would seize on any reported ballot irregularities in the relevant states.

Put the idea of massive fraud aside here. That fringe right-wing page on your Facebook feed might insist there is evidence of such fraud, but here in the real world – at least at the moment – there absolutely is not.

Irregularities, on the other hand, will definitely happen, because voting by mail is a rather technical process. Some states require ballots to be enclosed inside an inner security envelope. Ballots can be disqualified if someone puts their signature in the wrong place, or writes a slightly different version of their legal name, or for any number of reasons.

Still, unless the election comes down to a Bush vs Gore situation, with the entire result hinging on a few hundred contested ballots, none of this is likely to amount to anything that will invalidate a Biden victory.

It is hard to envision any scenario in which a majority of the Supreme Court – even with a newly seated Justice Amy Coney Barrett – sides with Mr Trump’s rhetoric and throws out mail ballots en masse.

So, with the legal process exhausted, the electoral process continues.

On December 14, the electors meet in each of their states and officially cast their votes for president (if you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about, here is an explanation of how the Electoral College system works).

On January 3, the new Congress is seated, and on January 6, both of its houses meet to make the electoral vote count official.

We reach Inauguration Day, on January 20. Mr Biden shows up at the Capitol to be sworn in as America’s 46th president, and Chief Justice John Roberts obliges.

What is Mr Trump going to do? Lock himself in the Oval Office and refuse to come out? Order the military whose senior officers he has been denigrating for years to intervene on his behalf?

If he tries, there could be immense civil unrest. But it is not a plausible way for Mr Trump to hold onto power.

At noon, the moment Mr Biden is sworn in, the nuclear codes will expire, the “football” will pass into his possession, and the Secret Service will acknowledge him as president. If the then-former president issues any orders to the military, they will be ignored.

Even if the authorities do not march Mr Trump from the White House, he will no longer have any official power.

Personally, I don’t think any of that is going to happen. Far more likely, and more consistent with Mr Trump’s personality, is that he will claim his defeat is fraudulent and complain about it very loudly, but leave office voluntarily.

He can complain all he likes. It won’t change the result.