"One of the things they are supposed to do is to certify that the winning candidates from each state are qualified to be president": this is incorrect. Under the statute that governs the counting and certification of électoral votes, congress has no discretion to consider the qualifications of the candidates. The vote of the electors is the last chance.

"Everyone who opposes this election will qualify as an aggrieved party": not in a million years; the court has a far more restrictive view of "standing" than this. "The Court's number one job is to ensure the Constitution is obeyed": not really. There are many constitutional questions that they won't consider or rule on, and the qualification of someone who manages to be elected president despite not being eligible is very likely to be such a question.

If any court rules on the question it's likely to be a state court or possibly a federal district court, in connection with a suit such as the one in Colorado, in the "roadblock 1" phase, at which point the court will surely rule that the candidate is unqualified, and the US Supreme Court would not bother to accept a case solely to affirm such an obviously correct ruling.

@phoog I think their opponent would likely have standing to object to an illegitimate president-elect, though, even if the American people at large wouldn't. It directly hurt them by denying them the Presidency.

End of point 3 - would it not be Federal law being breached by violating the Constitution?

@Darren Not unless Congress passes a law with some kind of sanctions. I could not find such a law. We're trusting officials who have sworn an oath to the Constitution. Those officials might well might lose their jobs for breaking that oath. But AFICT they will not be subject to jail time or financial penalties.

I don't think Secretaries of State are the gatekeepers for getting on the ballot. A number of them tried to block Trump because of the insurrection clause, but SCOTUS said that they only have authority over state officers, not federal. It's Congress's duty to decide whether a federal candidate is qualified.

Anti-Roadblock #1 — what's how Medvedev became President of Russia.

@DavidHammen Have you actually read what he wrote in that quote? He said:" A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution". This read to me he accussed the democrats of terminating constitution de facto - by stealing the elections. (obligatory note that I'm just pointing out he is saying there was a fraud in the election process, not that I believe it was)

@nick012000 the time for such objections is during the preparation of ballots and certification of candidacies, as with the Colorado case seeking to keep Trump off the ballot there. Once the electoral college votes have been counted and Congress has certified the result of the election, the courts are most likely to find the question "non justiciable" -- outside of their authority. Opposing candidates are indeed much more likely to have standing (but such questions may also fall under state law, where standing may be handled differently, likely more permissively).

@Barmar the supreme court decision says that disqualification under the 14th amendment must be pursuant to an act of congress, but that doesn't mean that only congress can disqualify a candidate, and it doesn't imply that congress must make individualized determinations of qualification. If someone has been convicted of violating 18 USC 2383 then a state officer can keep them off the ballot for a federal office because the prohibition against holding federal office was enacted by congress. Had Trump been convicted in federal court, the case would have had a different outcome.

I'm not sure I follow Anti-roadblock #1. What would be the point of Wilson making his opponent President that much earlier? Just as a way to shorten the transition period? Or is it supposed to be some kind of problem for the opponent?

@ItalianPhilosopher It’s important to remember that while Trump has run and been elected as a Republican, he and his ardent supporters are very much not in-line with conventional wisdom about Republicans.

@Bobson What Wilson planned to do was to make Hughes become President prior to March 4 should Hughes win the election, and it was not to create a problem. It was to solve the problem of a very long lame duck session during which Wilson perceived might well be very rough times ahead. When the vote counting finally finished in California (California has always been notoriously slow), Wilson won the 1916 election in an Electoral College squeaker (but a landslide win in the popular vote). The plan was never put into play.

@DavidHammen you might want to clarify that in the answer, especially since your comparison is to Trump keeping himself in office. The mechanism is the same, but the result is different enough to be confusing.

This answer could be improved in two ways. First, consider adding in "roadblock 0", which presumably would be to secure a major party's nomination. Second, regarding "other countries" replacing their constitutions at the end, it has already happened in the United States when the current Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation.

Two things are false here : "One of the things [Congress is] supposed to do is to certify that the winning candidates from each state are qualified to be president." which is negated by the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, and "The [Supreme] Court's number one job is to ensure the Constitution is obeyed." which is simply not true : the court's job is to apply all law, not just the constitution, and the constitution says that congress certifies the election so the supreme court has nothing to say afterwards.

Anti-roadblock #1 is wrong too, because people holding offices of the line of succession (i.e Speaker or secretary for example) but not qualified to be president (being born not american for example) are not part of the line of succession. There are precedents for that in the Obama and Trump administrations.

@Gouvernathor The 22nd Amendment only covers who may be elected as President, not who may serve in the office. You could technically sideskirt the 22nd Amendment much easier than the answer suggests: Simply run someone else for President and the person ineligible to run for President as VP on the ticket. If they get elected, both take oath, then President resigns. 12th Amendment only says that someone ineligible to be President can't be VP, not the someone ineligible to be elected President can't be or be elected VP. Of course, this would be a flagrant violation of the intent of the 22nd

@Gouvernathor No, if the Supreme court declares any act of Congress unconstitutional, it is overturned, and Congress can still block an election: the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 simply increased the number of representatives required to raise an objection and possibly delay the inauguration of a new president. It used to take one Senator and one Rep, now it requires 1/5th majority in each house.

What authority would the 2021-2022 Congress have had to specify the rules by which any future Congress would conduct business?

@DavidHammen NO, that is not what your source says. If you read what Trump is saying in context, he said that no rule should be enforced based on fraud, not even the Constitution. He was referencing the Supreme Court decision from Takhar v Gracefield which formalized the legal maxim that "fraud unravels all" meaning that no law can be enforced based on fraud.

@Nosajimiki: The Supremacy Clause says that acts of Congress are subservient to the Constitution, but doesn't list court decisions as having any authority beyond the parties to them. If the Constitution forbids something but Congress does it anyway, and the Supreme Court cites parts of the Constitution that forbid it, the cited parts of the Constitution would have authority, but a piece of the checks and balances established by the Constitution is that the Court doesn't have authority of its own except with regard to the parties before it.

@supercat There are laws, and then there are Acts of Congress. Acts of Congress can certainly be limited by and controlled by laws made by congress in the past. Future congresses can overturn those laws, but they must first overturn them through due process before they can violate them.

@Nosajimiki: What part of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to pass legislation regarding how any future Congress conducts business? There would be no need for the 27th Amendment to be ratified by the States if Congress could have constrained future Congresses by legislation alone.

@supercat All that means is that someone would have to formally make a case of it which nearly 1/2 the entire American population would have the right to do. Once a case is made of it, the Supreme Court can rule on it and the 22nd Amendment is so clear on the topic that is would (barring blatant corruption) be an open-close case.

@supercat Amendments are MUCH harder to overturn than laws and take supremacy over laws because they are part of the Constitution. The 27th amendment was proposed as an amendment to make it too hard for future congresses to easily overturn or side-step, but the Constitution does not define the entire body of law that dictates how every aspect of the government functions.

@Nosajimiki: The Fourteenth Amendment is likewise clear that certain people are ineligible to hold any office of trust, there is compelling evidence that Trump has by his actions disqualified himself, and one of Trump's arguments in Trump v. Colorado was that the Constitution vests in Congress the authority to determine whether someone is eligible, and therefore nobody else would have the authority to do so.

@Nosajimiki: If the current Congress had the authority to dictate how any future Congress does business, it could pass a law saying that no future Congress may by any means whatsoever increase their own pay, nor consider any action which would allow them to repeal or subvert that rule. Or, for that matter, pass a law saying that only members of a certain party would be allowed to vote on who would be Speaker of the House.

@supercat If Trump was ever convicted of treason, I would agree. The problem is that no matter how many people believe Trump is responsible for the insurrection, he has never stood trial for it or been convicted. Denying him candidacy without a conviction is a presumption of guilt which is against US law.

@supercat The core of the process for passing laws and amendments is part of the constitution; so, any law that abridges the constitutional powers and rights of congressmen is unconstitutional. Laws can clarify and set guidelines to the system but the system itself can not be invalidated.

@Nosajimiki: The role of the Congress in ensuring the legitimacy of the Electoral College votes is likewise expressly provided for by the Constituiton, and Trump has claimed that Congress has sole authority in determining his eligibility. Making such argument should preclude Trump's ability to claim that the body that he said had sole authority actually has none.

@supercat Amendments by their definition supersede any previous statements in the Constitution. If the original verbiage says "this is how elections work" and a followup amendment makes an exception, then the exception in the the Amendment supersedes the original verbiage. So, the 14th Amendment supersedes any part of the electoral process that comes before the 14th Amendment and is superseded by any Amendment that comes after it. So IF Trump were convicted of treason, then no one: not Congress nor the electoral college would technically have the authority to ratify him.

@Nosajimiki: The Fourteenth Amendment does not specify that a conviction of treason is required; following the Civil War, it was felt that disqualifying people from office, but otherwise allowing them to get on with life, was better than trying to prosecute them.

@Nosajimiki the 14th includes this provision, which has not been cancelled by any subsequent amendment: "But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability." So Congress could indeed have the authority.

The SC ruled that STATE law cannot enforce section 3 of the14th Amendment, but Federal law can meaning that Federal Courts need to convict him of under the laws created by Congress found in 18 U.S. Code § 2381-2390 which are 9 separate Federal laws pertaining to the conditions described in the 14th Amendment.

@supercat any role for congress in "ensuring the legitimacy of the electoral college votes" is conspicuously absent from the constitution; it merely says that congress shall be present when the president of the Senate opens the certificates and counts the votes.

Yes, they can vote to remove it for an individual, but my point was that he first has to be convicted of one of the 10 laws pertaining to Treason, Sedition, or Subversive Activities that would disqualify him first.

@Nosajimiki As supercat said, this is a Civil War amendment, clearly designed to keep Confederates from seeking office, and they in fact did not charge Confederates with treason or sedition.

In regards to the anti roadblock methods my understanding was a former two term president is no longer eligible and would be skipped over in the line of succession just as anyone else who doesn't meet all of the requirements would be.

@JoeW Are you sure of that? The 22nd Amendment prevents people elected as President from being elected a third time. It does not say anything about being appointed as President for the third time due to being in the proper place in the line of succession. If the 22nd Amendment was repealed, the repeal could easily be written to allow a President who had already been elected twice to run once again.

@DavidHammen the problem is that after a second term they are no longer eligible for the office again. To me it seems clear that the purpose of the 22nd amendment was to keep someone from staying as president for many years and something as simple as having them take over by filling an opening seems to fly in the face of that.

@JoeW The issue is the use of the word "elected" as opposed to some other word such as "serving". In particular, the 22nd Amendment only prevents someone who has already been elected twice from being elected a third time.