One thing I worry about is a contingent presidential election. That situation arises when no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes (270 of 538). Should this situation arise, Congress gets to pick the next president and vice president.
One thing I worry about is a contingent presidential election. That situation arises when no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes (270 of 538). Should this situation arise, Congress gets to pick the next president and vice president.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
My smart readers might now rub their chins and reply, “Well, how likely is that scenario?” Some of them might even point out that there has not been a contingent election since 1824, when John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay split the votes.
Landslide victories (think Ronald Reagan vs. Walter Mondale in 1984 or Richard Nixon vs McGovern in 1972) are growing rarer.
Or, to take another possibility, a determined minority might thwart the House from choosing a Speaker, which leaves it unable to even take up the business of selecting a president.
A reader might be mistaken for getting the impression that the authors of the Protect Democracy report would prefer No Labels to pull the plug on its presidential campaign planning.
My own preference is that Congress would take time to pass a statute to clarify the processes that each chamber should use to decide a contingent election.
Congress failed to act, and an intruder in a fur hat with a spear in hand sat in the chair of the Speaker of the House.
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