Alexander Burns writes:

The date of the general election is set by federal law and has been fixed since 1845. It would take a change in federal law to move that date. That would mean legislation enacted by Congress, signed by the president and subject to challenge in the courts.

To call that unlikely would be an understatement.

And even if all of that happened, there would not be much flexibility in choosing an alternate election date: The Constitution mandates that the new Congress must be sworn in on Jan. 3, and that the new president’s term must begin on Jan. 20. Those dates cannot be changed just by the passage of normal legislation.

After Louisiana’s announcement on Friday, Marc Elias, the prominent Democratic election lawyer, knocked down what he described as a wave of queries about whether the November election could be similarly revised.

“I am getting a lot of questions about the November election,” Mr. Elias wrote on Twitter. “While states can set their own primary days, the federal general election is set by federal statute as the the [sic] Tuesday following the first Monday in November. This date cannot be changed by a state nor by the President.” [Continue reading…]