{"id":211,"date":"2004-10-20T06:16:05","date_gmt":"2004-10-20T11:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/wp\/?p=211"},"modified":"2004-10-20T06:16:05","modified_gmt":"2004-10-20T11:16:05","slug":"what-if-no-one-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/?p=211","title":{"rendered":"What If No One Wins?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although the pollsters show that neither Bush or Kerry are projected to win the necessary 270 electoral college votes to be elected, I haven&#8217;t seen any speculation about that outcome in either the popular or alternative press.<br \/>\nThe League of Women Voters excellent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lwv.org\/where\/promoting\/election_whowillelect.html\" target=\"_blank\">website<\/a> describes the Constitutional process; here&#8217;s a summary.<\/p><p><!--more--><br \/>\nFirst, in half the states, Electoral College members are NOT required to vote for the candidates to which they&#8217;ve been pledged.<br \/>\nThus, a &#8220;rogue&#8221; elector could cast a vote at the December meeting of the Electoral College for anyone on the ballot, including the third party candidates.  In point of fact, this has happened, but very rarely.<br \/>\nIn the event no candidate receives 270 votes, it&#8217;s likely that there would be &#8220;a period of intense political horse-trading&#8221; in which electors pledged to third party candidates would be targeted to change their votes.<br \/>\nAs the League website points out, this was thought to be a possibility for George Wallace&#8217;s electors in 1968.  Of course, Nixon won the general election, thus precluding any such negotiations.<br \/>\nIf a candidate fails to win sufficient votes at the meeting of the Electoral College in December, then the election reverts to the House, which would select one of the top 3 vote-getters as President: Bush, Kerry and presumably, Nader.<br \/>\nInterestingly, though, rather than 435 votes, the House has only 50 votes, one for each state, determined by its delegation.  If the delegation ties, the state loses its vote.<br \/>\nIf the House is unable to choose a President by Inauguration Day (January 20), the Senate chooses a Vice President-elect from the top 2 (e.g., Edwards and Cheney), and that person serves as President in the interim.  The House would continue to vote until one Presidential candidate receives a majority (26).<br \/>\nIf the Senate fails to elect an interim President, then the Speaker of the House (Dennis Hastert) acts as President until one is chosen.<br \/>\nThus, the rules outlined by the Founders could lead to some interesting fodder for us political junkies this year.<br \/>\nStay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although the pollsters show that neither Bush or Kerry are projected to win the necessary 270 electoral college votes to be elected, I haven&#8217;t seen any speculation about that outcome in either the popular or alternative press. The League of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/?p=211\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}