Martial law lets you arrest people without trial, but it doesn’t directly allow you to just not hold an election, and you can only declare it “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it”.

I guess you could come up with some pretence then impose martial law and make it clear that anyone voting the wrong way is going to get arrested, but at that point why bother with laws at all?

Actually, reading the language again, I can absolutely see some shenanigans where he runs as VP for someone else who runs on a platform of “vote for me and I’ll immediately resign and put Trump in charge again”. It’d need the supreme court to decide if that “and” is exclusive or not, and given that half the court seems pretty happy to give up their principles of it suits their politics, I wouldn’t be surprised if that worked

If I had to put money on it, I’d guess they contest the legitimacy of the next election, and he just refuses to step down - can only be elected twice, but he’s just there as a care taker until a proper election can happen

I learnt a ton about Linux by fucking up my boot config and being too stubborn to just nuke and pave