Local Insight on 2020 Presidential Election

Local political scientist Melinda Kovacs joins us to discuss the unprecedented turns of the ongoing 2020 election

View of the current c1 60 days from now, the u.s. government is scheduled to swear in a president.

Two weeks ago the votes seemed to favor joe biden.

However the transition of hour has been anything but smooth.

Joining us is wanda covach, a political scientist in the area and has been so helpful to us over the years.

Welcome melinda.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely.

I want to ask you, this has never covered in the u.s. what is your take?

What is happening basically president trump contesting the results of the election.

Which sort of has happened before to the extent that those among your viewers already adult necessary the year 2000 remember there was a lot of contention about what happened in the election of 2000 and there was a recount in florida and the courts got involved in the recount and letting it go forward.

So contesting the results of an election is not entirely unprecedented.

What is completely unprecedented.

President trump even before the election occurred was telegraphing or tweeting as case may be that he feeling the election would be problematic from his perspective because he didn't want to count mail in ballots and there has been pressure from the trump administration on various states and decision makers in states who invalid or throw out ballots that came in through the mail and of course, there is a whole lot of uproar about that because one of the most basic tenants of democracy and i mean small d democracy is the population gets to decide what happens in the politics of the country and people cast votes and you have to count every last darn one of them.

When those are counted, that's how it's decided who gets to leave a given country.

Melinda, is there any chance an electoral college could into something uncharacteristic?

Are you expecting that or the status quo?

The thing about the electoral college is that it hasn't assembled yet.

Each state has a slate of trump electors and a slate of biden electors.

And it is up to the leadership of that particular seat to decide, which group of people will be invited to cast electoral ballots.

Which they will have to do in the state capitols of their respective states.

They have to show up there.

Which group do you invite in to do this?

And one thing that the trump administration has been pressuring states for is to have state leadership disregard the results of the popular vote in their state or invite in trump friendly electors.

I don't expect that strategy is going to work.

But i want to cause your viewers ut the fact that the thanks for c1 very attempt or the very idea even that a sitting president could ask to have electors sent from the state or chosen by the state who will be favorable to them regardless of what the popular vote was in given state is uncharacteristic.

Undemocratic.

Completely unprecedented.

And if the united states wants to hold on to its prestige and reputation of being a bastion of democracy.

Then it's also unamerican.

Melinda covach, thank