Preface: The 20th Amendment declares each presidential term ends on Jan. 20th the year after the election, while Congress' ends on Jan. 3rd.

Ready?

12th Amendment: "If no person have" "majority of the whole number of Electors appointed" (the 538 Electors in the Electoral College) "the House of Representatives shall choose...the President."

Cool, so if there's a stalemate, the Democratic House will choose Biden, who, in a hypothetical free and fair election, is certain to win the popular vote...

"But" (uh oh) "the representation from each state [shall have] one vote...and a majority of all states shall be necessary to choose."

Meaning, even if the Dems keep their House majority, the number of low-population Republican states, swing or bluish states with Republican gerrymanders, and plain ol' red states combine to make a majority of state delegations...and re-elect Trump.

Unless things go this way...

So each state picks a slate of electors based on its popular vote. Each legislature votes for a slate, the governor signs it, and it's sent away to be tallied up to see who has the majority and becomes President.

But say Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, or North Carolina's R legislature declares a winner can't be determined since it's too close, or they make up a rule that on-time mail-in ballots tallied after election day don't count (as Trump has said). They vote for a Trump slate, and the Democratic governor vetoes it. And then each branch sends a competing slate, or none at all.

Neither candidate reaches 270, and the House decides as described before.

HOWEVER, the 12th Amendment specifies the number of Electors APPOINTED. And if no slate is sent or competing slates are sent, can we say those count as "appointed"? If not, the number of electoral votes decreases by that state's number of electoral votes.

Now, if Biden has, say, the same map as Hillary and flips Maine-2's vote, and there are no faithless electors, he has 233 votes. Trump, without those four states, has 244 votes. If the Supreme Court interves to force at least one of those states to honor its popular vote, Biden wins.

So there's that.

In the hopes of making things both a bit more interesting and clarifying, here I'll list a raft of issues that are commonly discussed in the order of what I perceive to be their current importance/urgency followed by which candidate's position on those issues I agree with more.

COVID-19: Biden
General health care policy: Biden
Jobs and labor issues: Biden
Women's issues: Biden
Racism: Biden
Foreign policy and national security: Biden
Drug policy: Biden
Education policy: Biden
Gun policy: Biden
Crime policy: Biden
Immigration policy: Biden
The environment: Biden
Tax policy: Biden
The federal budget: Biden

So as you can see, this election is a very tough call for me. Who to vote for, who to vote for? Which one, which one?

It's not like I agree with Biden about everything by any means. I'd prefer a much more serious kind of economic populism from him and a less strictly liberal approach to women's issues as well, for instance, but in the choice of him or Trump, the choice for me is crystal clear. In point of fact, even if I agreed with Trump on everything but the matter of how to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, that one issue alone would still be enough to make me vote for Biden. It's just about the only thing that matters until it's contained because it's prevalence undermines pretty well everything else we might want to do in the way of positive reform.

I prioritized certain issues like immigration policy and the environment much lower than a year ago because of the current pandemic. I'm pretty sure that the drastic reduction in travel and slowdown in manufacturing output this year compared to last buys us more time to address climate change and a liberalized approach to immigration, while fundamentally a good idea, I think can also wait until we've gotten the current pandemic under control for obvious reasons. Remaining in the World Health Organization and restoring our faltering alliance with Europe and NATO are more pressing matters right now, I believe.

Anyway, that's my reasoning.

It's probably better to call me a Trump fan, I had this username since the end of vanilla wow. Have 3 of his books and watched every season of the apprentice except 1 and watched every season of celebrity apprentice.

For Kamala Harris, I have followed american politics somewhat since 2008 and followed more closely since Donald Trump announced for president, in american politics my favourite people are what you americans calls the establishment republicans and the establishment democrats.

Oooooh, okay! That's very unusual! I say that because Donald Trump's personal favorability rating (i.e. how people see him as a person) is always a little below his job approval rating (i.e. what people think of him as a president). In that way, the survey data suggests that few, if any, Americans like Donald Trump better as a person than as a president. You're literally the first person I've met who takes that view, in fact. Interesting stuff!

Donald Trump is synonymous with failure.

Polls appear to be tightening... sadly...😒

Trump will win, luckily.

I sure hope not, he has been the worst president of my lifetime imo. I still don’t think he gets the rust belt back, which should give Biden the win, it just may not be the statement win that needs to happen to get the Republican Party to do the deep retrospective that they desperately need.

Nope, the one thing you new to understand is the SILENT MAJORITY. They do exist and these polls from CNN are heavily skewed for Democrats. Imagine how many people out there are scared to say they are voting for Trump or pretend to vote for Biden so they won't get attacked.