The Supreme Court Needs to Decide These Trump Cases ASAP to Prevent a Jan. 6 Repeat

In short, when the Colorado and Minnesota cases arrive in Washington, the Supreme Court will confront a desperate race against time. If it fails to decide the cases rapidly, it will provoke a constitutional crisis once the polls close and each state decides who won the election. Under current law, state legislatures must report their Electoral College winners in time for Vice President Kamala Harris to report the results to a joint session of Congress meeting on Jan. 6, 2025. Once she inspects the ballots, she is likely to find that none of the three candidates—neither Biden, nor Trump, nor Trump’s proxy—has won a majority of the electoral votes. At this point, Harris will confront a dilemma that will make Vice President Mike Pence’s predicament in 2021 seem modest by comparison.