No matter how corrupt and/or dysfunctional the 2020 election may have been, there is no place in the Constitution for the U.S. Supreme Court to insert itself into a presidential election that is designed to be carried out among the states according to their own individual processes. A state government that violates its own laws in the conduct of the election doesn’t answer to the federal courts in the matter. The states are sovereign, and answer only to their own legislatures in matters related to a presidential election.
That’s why Election Day and the “popular vote” are meaningless. They are designed for TV audiences, and that’s pretty much it.
The only election that matters is the Electoral College vote that is held in mid-December after Election Day in a presidential election year. Any disputes or controversies in individual states should be addressed before that vote, or — if they can’t be resolved — by submitting competing slates of electors for the joint session of Congress in early January before the inauguration date.
To be clear, we will never know if Donald Trump won the 2020 election. But we may learn something far more troubling: that we can’t know who won.
100% false. We know exactly who won, and it wasn’t even a matter of dispute because there wasn’t a single state that submitted multiple slates of presidential electors to Congress.
Article I, Section 4, cl. 1, of the U.S. Constitution, known as the Elections Clause, states, "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of [choosing] Senators." State governments have initial and principal authority for administering elections within their jurisdictions, but the Supreme Court has recognized that the Constitution provides that the federal government maintains authority over elections, including guarding the safety and integrity of congressional elections. For example, the Supreme Court held that the Elections Clause embraces Congress's authority to provide a complete code for congressional elections and that "Congress may supplement ... state regulations or may substitute its own," including imposing "additional penalties for the violation of the state laws or provide independent sanctions." Smiley, 285 U.S. at 366-67.
The Court in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 808–09 (1995) further observed that by providing Congress with override authority over the states, the Framers of the Constitution sought to avoid states potentially abusing their power over congressional elections.