Markus Wagner, University of Wollongong

The world may have expected the chaos and uncertainty of the US presidential election to end when Joe Biden was declared the winner last weekend. But these are not normal times and Donald Trump is not a conventional president.

Concessions that used to be a part of the political process have been replaced by baseless allegations of voter fraud and election stealing, loud, all-caps shouting on Twitter and plans for a “Million MAGA March” on Washington.

The courts are the proper venue for candidates to challenge the results of elections. But a legal process requires evidence of illegality — and as of yet, the Trump campaign has produced very little.

So, then, how long can Trump string things out — and, more importantly, what’s the end game?

More lawsuits are filed, with little chance of success

Lawsuits can be filed for a number of reasons after an election: violations of state law by local election officials, discrimination against voters, political manipulation of the outcome or irregularities in the ballot counting process.

The Trump campaign has filed numerous lawsuits in both state and federal courts. Some challenges in Georgia and Michigan were quickly dismissed.

Read more: Has Donald Trump had his Joe McCarthy moment?

In one case filed in Pennsylvania, Republicans sought to stop the vote count in Philadelphia on the grounds Trump campaign officials were not allowed to be close enough to the ballot-counting process.

Under questioning from the judge, the Trump campaign lawyers were forced to admit a “non-zero number” of Republican observers were present. The judge, clearly exasperated, responded by asking, “I’m sorry, then what’s your problem?”

In another filing before a federal court in Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign alleges voting by mail runs afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause, a claim bound to fail.

The most interesting - and perhaps most viable - case concerns whether a state court can extend the time limit for mail-in ballots to arrive.

In this case, the Trump campaign challenged a decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to allow mail-in votes received up to three days after election day to be counted.

Read more: How votes are counted in Pennsylvania: Changing numbers are a sign of transparency, not fraud, during an ongoing process

The US Supreme Court twice declined to halt the counting of these votes, but did order the ballots to be segregated, leaving the door open to a challenge after the election.

A group of Republican attorneys-general filed a brief at the US Supreme Court this week urging it to take up the case.

Amy Coney Barrett, the newly appointed Supreme Court justice, did not participate in the earlier decisions, and it remains to be seen if her vote would change the outcome should the case reach the court.

Hoever, this may all be a moot point, as there are likely not enough late-arriving ballots for Trump to make up the sizeable gap to Biden in the state.

Attorney-general steps into the fray

Attorney-General William Barr has also inserted the Department of Justice into the post-election drama, authorising investigations by US attorneys into alleged voter fraud across the country. The move outraged the top official in charge of voter fraud investigations, prompting him to resign.

The Department of Justice has historically stayed out of elections, a policy Barr criticised in his memo, saying

such a passive and delayed enforcement approach can result in situations in which election misconduct cannot realistically be rectified.

The department’s about-face is important for several reasons. It changes long-standing practice, as Barr himself admits. The general practice, he wrote, had been to counsel that

overt investigative steps ordinarily should not be taken until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded.

Of course, Barr has ingratiated himself with Trump before, most notably in his 2018 memo to the Justice Department expressing concerns over the Mueller investigation.

Many had wondered why Barr had remained unusually quiet for so long on the election. It appears he is back, and willing to support Trump and the Republican cause.

The end game: Georgia and the US Senate

Given Trump and Republicans have very little chance of overturning the result through these tactics, the question remains: what is the goal?

Yes, this all could be explained simply as Trump not liking to lose. But setting such indulgences aside, the reason for this obstruction appears to be two upcoming US Senate runoff elections scheduled for January 5.

Under Georgia law, a runoff is required between the two candidates that came out on top if neither wins 50% of the vote in the state election.

The Republicans currently hold a 50-to-48-seat edge in the Senate, meaning control of the chamber now comes down to who wins the two Georgia runoffs.

The positions taken by Republican senators in recent days are telling — they have stood firmly behind Trump’s challenges and gone out of their way not to congratulate Biden on his victory. Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota put it bluntly,

We need [Trump’s] voters […] we want him helping in Georgia.

The Senate plays a crucial role for the Biden presidency. If it remains in Republican hands, this could leave Biden with few avenues to implement his favoured policies on the economy, climate change or health care and would deny Democrats the ability to expand the Supreme Court.

Already, it’s clear the focus of the GOP is shifting toward Georgia. The two Republican Senate candidates this week called for the resignation of the secretary of state, a fellow Republican, repeating Trump’s baseless claims over voter fraud in Georgia.

Read more: Winning the presidency won't be enough: Biden needs the Senate too

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this was done to appease Trump

lest he tweet a negative word about them and risk divorcing them from his base ahead of the consequential runoff.

Is democracy at stake?

It appears all these efforts are aimed at one goal: energising the Trumpian base for the Georgia run-off elections by delegitimising not only Biden, but the election process itself.

The long-term implications are momentous. The US is already bitterly divided, as demonstrated by the large voter turnout on both sides in the election. This division will only deepen the more Trump presses his claims and signals he won’t go away silently.

This continued fracturing of the US would prevent Biden from achieving one of the main goals he set out in his victory speech: bringing Republicans and Democrats together.

If half the country buys into his claims of a stolen election, the real danger is the erosion of democracy in the US as we know it.

Markus Wagner, Associate Professor of Law, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ria Angelo, University of Bath

As people moving across territorial borders continues to drive globalization, our society needs to reflect on the linguistic identities of students who are learning English and French, Canada’s two official languages.

In language classrooms, where English as a Second Language (ESL) and French as a Second Language (FSL) programs reflect Canada’s bilingual mandate, how we teach languages has not evolved much from the traditional grammar-based mode of instruction.

Students are generally presented with a language structure (say, the passé composé in French), are encouraged to practise it in the classroom and are ultimately asked to present the language structure in the correct social context — all for a grade.

In these dated language teaching and learning contexts, the everyday ways people communicate — that go against the rules and bounds of language — aren’t taken into account. Research shows that in language learning, when students feel that teachers dismiss their prior linguistic knowledge and experiences, they lose interest, become disconnected and may become set for failure.

Fixed rules

The everyday ways people communicate and that we hear in streets, cafés, malls and marketplaces typically do not follow traditional grammar rules (subject, verb, noun, for instance).

Particularly in what have become known as Canada’s “superdiverse cities” like Toronto, Vancouver and Montréal, it’s common to hear people using multiple languages (say English and Greek, or Arabic, French and English) at the same time. Such mixing and switching of language constitute authentic ways of communicating that reflect people’s geographical and cultural backgrounds — their lived histories and their identities.

This means teaching languages only by old fixed rules is not realistic in superdiverse schools across Canada. The lived experiences of students are shown in the mixed and hybrid ways they use language that go against the rules of grammar. In language learning we call this plurilingualism or translanguaging.

Multiple modes of communication

Today, we commonly see plurilingualism in people’s social media posts and texts that combine images, emojis and words in multiple languages. For example, in my own experience teaching FSL in inner-city schools in Toronto, grade 7 and 8 students text emojis and truncated words across two or three languages — just to signal where they’ll have lunch.

These plurilingual and multi-platform social exchanges mimic how students communicate with friends and family, outside of school.

Read more: Why emojis and #hashtags should be part of language learning

If teachers limit students’ identities by limiting the languages students are allowed to use in the classroom, their disengagement could lead to lower marks and marginalization at school. In the global job market, in the long run, disengagement in language learning may also importantly mean a lower payout — because learning the dominant language of a society is a form of social and cultural capital.

Open-ended language tasks

Languages are ways of being, ways of knowing and ways of acting in the world. To acknowledge this truism is to acknowledge that languages are more than the sum of their parts. They are more than a skill to which an exchange value (dollar signs) can be attached.

This is why plurilingualism has proved to be such rich teaching and learning tool in language learning. Students can use more than one language to communicate a given message at any one time. And they can do it using multiple platforms (pen and paper, online apps, emojis or even role play). Integrating plurilingual language practices in FSL and ESL classrooms engages language learners because they use language they can relate to, language that expresses who they are.

Read more: It's time to change the way we teach English

This begins with teacher modelling. Teachers can teach through traditional grammar-based instruction, but they can do so by integrating plurilingual and translingual practices that allow students to draw on their own mother tongues. In this way, students can integrate expressions or words in their preferred languages alongside the target language.

This explicit strategy can then be integrated into more open-ended language tasks that allow students the latitude to draw on personal experience and different ways of communicating that include multilingual language forms and practices.

This can be done through the use of technology and online learning apps. Google Suite, Google Jamboards, Flipgrid and Twitter all allow students to tell personal stories through words, images and body language that cross traditional linguistic and cultural boundaries.

How languages are actually used

Policy-makers need to take into account how language learners actually use languages, and then prescribe the most appropriate way to learn and assess students that takes into account their lived histories, identities and experiences.

Language teacher education and teacher professional development must include anti-bias training that extends beyond equity issues of race, gender, class, religion and ethnicity to address the suppression of other languages in the language learning classroom. In this way, we can ensure teachers understand that affirming students’ linguistic identities is integral to their engagement and to their future success.

Finally, in the classroom this would allow for more democratic ways to assess language competence where teachers and students could co-create assessment criteria that explicitly focus on multilingual ways to communicate.

Educators would then both be able to acknowledge the linguistic diversity of their students while affirming their present identities and equipping them for globally competitive job markets.

Ria Angelo, Doctor of Education Candidate, Department of Education, University of Bath

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.