Politics The 2016 US Presidential Election

How awesome would it be if Trump and Sanders ran as Independents and you had a four person race?

 

I'm not sure what would happen if nobody in the race got 270 electoral votes.

 

Excellent question.

Link:

U. S. Electoral College


Copied & pasted from above:

"If no presidential candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution provides for the presidential election to be decided by the House of Representatives. The House would select the President by majority vote, choosing from the three candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes. The vote would be taken by State, with each State delegation having one vote. If no Vice Presidential candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the Senate would select the Vice President by majority vote, with each Senator choosing from the two candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes."

 

If I recall, the 12th Amendment was really just a technical amendment. The process of the House determining the president in case of a tie in electoral votes or no candidate receiving the majority (270) is laid out in Article II.

But the one case where it happened was T. Jefferson v Aaron Burr and the language in Article II stated that the candidate who received the majority votes in the House (most number of states) would be president and the person with the next most would be VP, so Burr became VP.

The 12th amendment changed that with distinct ballots in the House for president and vp.

 

A technical amendment in the sense that's not how the POTUS & VP would be selected???

The 12th amendment is the only answer that I found.

 

The "Electors" and the process in the case of a tie (or no majority) in electoral votes is in Article II, Sec. 1.3:

...if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner choose the President. But in choosing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President....​

There was one vote in the House; of the candidates from two (or more) opposing parties, the one who received the highest number of votes in the House (one vote per state) became president and the second highest became vice president. The result, in the one case where it happened, was that the VP elected by the House (Burr) was the opposing candidate for president elected by the House (Jefferson) rather than the VP candidate of the same party as Jefferson.

The 12th Amendment changed the process so that the House had two elections and the VP would essentially be the VP candidate who was on the ballot with the winning presidential candidate.
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Under the original language of Article II, if we have no candidates with a majority of electoral votes this year and it goes to the House, the result would likely be the Republican nominee (Trump/Rubio) as president and the Democrat nominee (Clinton/ Sanders) as vp.

 

Would it be the current Congress that gets to decide, what if they get voted out in November, but the new Congress doesn't take over until January?

I would have thought that the popular vote would have come into play as the tie-breaker.

 

Senator Lindsey Graham just summed up this election perfectly:

Every time Sanders talks about money in politics take a sip.
Every time Clinton talks about sexism take a sip. If she's accusing Sanders of it take a shot.
Every time Trump says something racist or sexist take a sip.
Every time Trump says something you can't disagree with take a shot to help with the taste.

Play with beer or you'll probably die pretty quickly.

 

This makes me smile with the presidential coverage.
Thank you John Oliver.

Drumpfinator - Chrome Web Store

 

Ohio farmer spells out giant anti-Trump message in manure | NBC4i.com

I'll just leave this here.

 

There's hope:

Voters turned away as Boulder County Democrats overwhelm caucuses

 

Yeah, I'm kind of surprised at the level of attacks against Trump from both the establishment and the far right Tea Party/Talk radio guys.

I still worry a lot more about Cruz winning though. I also worry about the enthusiasm that the Trump supporters have that Hillary supporters don't.Being able to turn out the voters is important in the swing states. And with Bernie winning or doing better with the base of the Democratic party in the blue states, and how nasty the general election would get between Trump and Hillary, it's going to be bad in states like Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Ohio...

 

No, no, that's not what happened.

Jefferson and Burr were running on the SAME ticket, with the plan that Jefferson would be president, and Burr would be VP.

But every elector had two votes, and all of the Jefferson-Burr electors (a majority) voted for both of them. So there was a tie!

The Constitution's framers did not anticipate the rise of national parties, and figured there would be multiple regional candidates getting electoral votes.

After the 12th Amendment, every elector still has two votes, but one goes for a President, the other for a Vice-President.

No, the two party system is in no danger of "falling". It is baked into the Constitution.

We have a single directly elected president who gets to control the entire Executive Branch. That creates a tremendous incentive among all actors and all factions to create a 51% coalition to win that prize. That state of affairs results in the development of two main parties, and while there may be temporary disruptions, things will always return to that equilibrium.

"Third parties" in America are for those who didn't find a place in either of the major parties. Their role is to protest or influence the behavior of the other parties. Most ambitiously, they could seek to replace one of them, but that hasn't happened since Republicans replaced the Whigs in the 1850s.

It is not possible to have multiple parties, long term, without a parliamentary system.

For the last 150 years, across huge and epochal changes in issues and politics and demography, we have had the same two parties. They have proven to be highly adaptable to all of these changes. In some ways the parties are complete opposites of what they once were, but they both maintain institutional continuity going back to before the Civil War.

(Issues of race and African-American civil rights are the prime example. Before 1932, almost 100% of black Americans were Republicans. Since 1964, around 90% of black Americans are Democrats.)

We have these parties, because we have this country.

 

Streetpattern, just have to say it's good to see you again. I appreciate your pithy insights.

 

Street.....thanks for clearing that up!

I'm going to see "Hamilton" on Broadway next month; maybe I'll learn some history.

 

Specifically we have two parties because we have a single nontransferrable vote based first past the post electoral system.

 

Yeah, I would like a like at least a first and second choice.
Something like this is my first choice but if they don't get enough votes to meet a certain standard then this is my second choice.
That way you could vote for independent candidates without fear of pulling votes away from the 'mainstream'.