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Right now, the rules make it nearly impossible. There are petitions online asking to change the rules so all candidates on the ballot can debate. Should they debate?
No. There are over a dozen third-party candidates. None have any realistic chance of winning.
Not high enough to actually win. They might go from 8% to 18% or something. Perot was in the debate despite never having had a realistic chance of an electoral college victory. He didn’t even win a single state.
No. It is a two person race (well, sort of). As someone who thinks Clinton is the lesser of evils, I hope they let Gary Johnson in, but it would not really be fair.
That said, there is an extremely remote chance GJ could actually be president. He is polling between 9-12 percent and Mitt Romney and others are considering endorsing him. If he gets a single state, and some say he could get a few, he could deprive either candidate of the 270 needed to win.
It really is crazy (and interesting) that each party picked their absolutely worst candidate, because normally (to the extent this would ever be normal), if no one gets 270, the president is picked by the house, who likely would pick their candidate.
But some say that if the republicans remain in control of the house, they would not pick trump if he did not get the 270, they might pick Gary Johnson. Stay tuned….
If no one wins 270 it goes to Congress (the current term not the incoming class) and the Republicans control a majority of congressional state delegations to choose the winner.
If no one wins 270 it goes to Congress (the current term not the incoming class) and the Republicans control a majority of congressional state delegations to choose the winner.
I do not believe you are correct with regard to which Congress votes. The electoral votes aren’t officially tallied by Congress until the new House convenes in early January, so it would be the House in the new Congress that votes, not the old.
The Wolf
I think the House can only choose from the top two plurality winners of the electoral college, so Johnson couldn’t even be an option.
@joseph. That is what I said, except for one irrelevant point. I believe it is the incoming congress, but it does not matter, that will be republican too.
But in every other year that this might happen except this one, it would be a near certainty that the congress would pick the party nominee. Some are saying that if this happened, the repubs would pick Johnson (who was a repub governor) and not Trump. They are limited to picking the top three (electoral) vote receivers, which means Johnson would have to win at least one state.
It gets even more interesting if he does not win any states, as anyone (including Johnson) could receive a vote from a faithless elector, and thus we could have president Paul Ryan or whoever
One other nuance. The senate picks the VP, so you could have VP kaine as dems may take control of senate.
Going even further into the abyss, the dems could actually force some of their “faithless” electors to vote for say, Bernie sanders, and overtake the republican second choice meaning the house would be left with choosing from two democrats and trump. (They must choose from the top three electoral votes, so there is a maximum of three options, 2 of which will be Trump and Clinton).
Its all pretty unreal, and very unlikely to happen, but I like thinking about it.
1. Gary Johnson is polling well over 20% in some states.
2. Most Republicans reject Trump, and most Democrats reject Clinton. Given Johnson “Tea party” economics combined with the Libertarian policy of toleration on social issues, Johnson has a realistic chance of carrying some states.
3. Given the choices of Trump or Clinton, Johnson/Weld is the unanimous “second choice”. In a state in which Clinton or Trump has no chance, it will encourage their supporters to vote for Johnson in hope of stopping the one they hate.
4. If Johnson does get some electoral votes, and the election goes to the House of Representatives, they vote by state (i.e. New York gets one vote), and states in which the the Representatives are evenly divided will abstain, thus the result could be that Johnson would end up winning even if he came in third (since the hatred of Clinton and Trump precludes a compromise).
“each party picked their absolutely worst candidate”
No, the Democratic Party was right to reject Sanders because of his poorly thought out policies, his calls for what amounts to class warfare, and his cluelessness regarding Israel.
The 12th Amendment provides that if no candidate receives the majority of Electoral Votes, the House of Representatives, with each state having one vote, has to pick the President from the top three recipients of Electoral Votes. The Senate picks the Vice President from the top two. So we could have a Trump Presidency with a Kaine Vice Presidency. This procedure was used once for President, in 1824, and once for Vice President, in 1836.
@Charlie: There were others besides Bernie and Hillary. They all stayed away because everyone just conceded it to Hillary. Heck, kaine would have been a better presidential pick by far. Or Biden. Or Warren. Or just about anybody.
Whatever your politics are, the fact is that Hillary is an AWFUL candidate. She has no chance of winning against ANYONE, except of course the one person she is running against who is worse, trump.
Given how awful Trump is, and how disliked Hillary is, if Johnson could get on the debate stage he would have a legitimate shot at winning the conservative anti-Trump states like Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.
Or Jill instead of Hill, for the Greens.
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