I don’t believe the U.S. Senate has a say in who gets to be Minnesota’s senator if the election doesn’t get certified by Jan 20th. There is a “safe-harbor day” (Dec 9th) by which all the states have to certify their electoral college results for the presidential election or else the Senate decides for them, but I can’t find anything similar for Senate races.
I suspect that it can drag on for as long as one side doesn’t concede and continues filing law suits — even after the state has certified the election. Once certification happens (and there may be lawsuits filed in an attempt to delay that) then I suppose the declared winner can take his place in the US Senate.
It’s just a guess, but if the Supreme Court later decides that some votes were disqualified improperly and counting them was enough to change the result, then Minnesota would have to comply, but I suspect the Supreme Court would be extremely reluctant to get involved in a state election issue unless there was a very obvious miscarriage of justice.
Bottom line, I believe, is that the final say will be in the hands of Minnesota’s state government officials, not the U.S. Senate.
Yes. In 1974, the Republican candidate in NH was the certified winner by 4 votes. The Democrat senate refused to recognize the results and a ‘do over’ election was held, which the Democrat won.
It is right in the Constitution that each House is the final judge of the elections of its own members.