President Trump tweeted Thursday morning to suggest delaying November's election over mail-in voting concerns.
He believes absentee voting is still valid.
Trump tweeted universal mail-in voting for November would make 2020 the "most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history....Delay the Election until people can properly, securely, and safely vote???"
Can he legally delay a Presidential election?
"The answer is no," says UCONN Law Professor Richard Kay. "There are a lot of difficult questions about elections and separation of power but this is one of those happy events when the Constitution is very, very clear. Congress chooses the date on which electors are chosen and the date on which electors vote."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quoted this article of the Constitution in a reply tweet to Trump.
And Attorneys General are committed to holding the election on the same day it has been held since 1845-- the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
"Connecticut will have its election and we will select a President," says Attorney General William Tong. "And whether or not it's Donald Trump, Joe Biden or otherwise is up to the people of this country, not Donald Trump."
In Connecticut, lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a no-excuse absentee ballot law for the 2020 election. That means voters may cast their ballots via absentee ballot for the general election due to the pandemic. So far towns and cities have received a spike in applications. The state has already received hundreds of thousands of absentee applications for the August primaries.
Trump is apparently concerned with Universal Mail-In voting.
"I have to be honest. There are problems that are associated with mail-in ballots and absentee ballots in association with the guarantee of the honesty of the election, which you don't have for in-person voting," says Professor Kay. "On the other hand, there are some safeguards doing it that way to the extent that we're relying on computers and technologies to do our in-person voting, that has risk as well."
"Absentee ballots and voting by absentee in the middle of a public health emergency is our only option," says Tong.
The Twentieth Amendment states that a President's term ends on January 20th at noon. Even in the event of a national emergency or no election, a President's term will end on that day.
A general election has never been canceled before--not during the Civil War, not during World War II, and not during the Vietnam War. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they are committed to holding an election on November 3.