NY-20 Special Election

[jimrtex]

Murphy will most likely win.

That's counting that it doesn't turn into Minnesota-sen 2.0

What are the election laws like in New York regarding challenges? Hopefully they don't allow endless appeals well beyond inauguration day like Minnesota does.

Imagine if the Presidency was like that. Gore could've just kept the Florida results held up in court forever and kept the White House vacant. Obviously anyone who supports Coleman's challenge now would've supported this as well.

The difference is that the US President is not elected by the voters. He is elected by the Electors. While it would have been only sane and proper to just deny Florida its electors entirely, as was done in comparable circumstances in 1872 (but not since), the remedy of seating the leader provisionally (which would be sane and proper here but isn't allowed by MN state law) was just not available for the selection of Electors.

If Florida was denied its electors, wouldn't that have taken the election to the House with the electoral votes standing at 267 (or 266 if one still didn't vote) for Gore to 246 for Bush? And presumably Bush would've still won because the GOP had the house majority, after the 2000 election. The senate was 50/50, after the 2000 election, with Vice-president Gore as the 51st Democratic vote, so Lieberman would've (presumably) been made the Vice-president to Bush.

The Constitution defines a majority in terms of electors "appointed".  The issue would then be whether Florida had appointed its electors.  The Florida legislature was prepared to appoint electors, so then you would have Congress determining whether (1) Florida had appointed electors, and (2) whether their votes were legally cast.