In less than a month, Americans will go to the polls and elect former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris to a term in the White House.

However, one observer recently suggested that Supreme Court justices may be the ones who decide which one takes the oath of office. 

State election laws could become an issue

That idea was put forward by University of Chicago Law School professor Aziz Huq in an op-ed piece published by Politico last Wednesday.

Huq laid out three scenarios under which that could happen, with the first being an instance whereby America's highest judicial body rules on a state election law.

3 scenarios for the Supreme Court to intervene in the election https://t.co/yVXUzbAPEy

— POLITICO (@politico) October 9, 2024

He noted how although the Supreme Court typically hears cases having to do with federal law, it ruled in Moore v. Harper that intervention is possible when state judges "exceeded the bounds of ordinary judicial review" concerning state election laws.

That could include a controversy in North Carolina, where Republicans contend that the State Board of Elections improperly registered some 225,000 people.

Questions over Electoral College deadline

The next possibility concerns the Electoral College, to which a slate of electors are sent by each state after having been certified.

Should a state fail to submit its slate to Congress in time, since a 2022 revision to the Electoral Count Act did not specify what should happen if the hard deadline is missed.

"Can Congress still consider the slate? Or would the state’s Electoral College seats be eliminated from the final tally?" Huq asked.

"The new law punts this question to the courts, and it creates a fast-track mechanism for certification-related disputes to reach the justices," he wrote.

"Most explosive" scenario involves Democrats blocking certification

According to Huq, the final path to the Supreme Court is "the least likely to unfold" but also "the most explosive" should it come to pass.

He envisioned a situation that saw Democrats "remind people that Donald Trump played an active role in the violence of Jan. 6, 2021" and "make a last-ditch effort to derail his return to the presidency."

"The Supreme Court has positioned itself as the necessary final word on almost all issues of national import," Hug wrote as he drew to a close, adding, "Its extravagant claims for authority — far beyond what the Framers anticipated — may finally come back to haunt it this fall."