The 12th Amendment provides that, in cases of contingent VP elections, a majority of the whole number of Senators is required for election. That means 51 Senators, not 50 Senators plus one lame-duck VP.
As for the fact that you can’t fathom no one getting 270 EVs in the 2016 elections because Gary Johnson is highly unlikely to carry a state, you obviously have less imagination than I do. : p
BTW, the reason to adopt Section 3 legislation now is not because it is likely that we’ll have a contingent presidential or VP election in which a candidate dies after the Electoral College has met, but because in the unlikely event that such calamity does occur it would be catastrophic if no law is in place to deal with the situation.
” That means 51 Senators, not 50 Senators plus one lame-duck VP.”
Ok, I wasn’t clear on that.
“As for the fact that you can’t fathom no one getting 270 EVs in the 2016 elections because Gary Johnson is highly unlikely to carry a state, you obviously have less imagination than I do. : p”
Well, let’s go ahead and imagine a scenario, fun.
The LP with their ballot access in 48 or 49 states is seems like the likeliest source of a potential split to me. Their nominee will be Johnson or else one of their ideologue kooks nobodies (who wouldn’t be a threat to win major votes.)
Let’s say Trump is the nominee, some Republicans jump ship for the flawed former Republican Johnson.
Let’s say that Monmouth university poll from March that Kelt remembers is on the money, Hillary 42%, Trump 34%, Johnson 11%. Some people give him money and he starts running tv ads and a couple conservatives endorse him and a couple RINO bigwigs endorse him and he improves on that even with a the specter of Hillary plurality win hanging over us all.
11% nationwide or even 20% isn’t likely to get you a state, unless you’re a regional candidate like Wallace or Thurmond (who won 4 states but only 2.4% nationwide). I’d figure Johnson’s vote would be fairly evenly spread.
His best state last time was his home state, he got 3.5%. Any GOP split there means a dem win.
So where could he get the 30-something% needed to carry a state?
Utah comes to mind, they seem to hate Trump, and it’s heavily Republican enough to still not vote democrat even with a major GOP fracture.
Alaska, perhaps, is another state.
But this point dawns on me, if Gary Johnson, who would certainly take significantly more votes from the GOP than the dems, is doing well enough to win E votes, how is Hillary at the very least not winning a plurality in every swing state and walking away with an easy EC majority like her husband before her?
As for Trump running third party himself if he doesn’t get the nomination (I don’t believe for a second that Kasich or Jeb or Ryan can or will get the nomination, if it’s not Trump it’s Cruz) the question is, would he still have time for that at such a late date (let’s say after the Cali primary if he clearly doesn’t have the 1237, or July after the convo itself, that seems away too late)? To get on the ballots in states? I don’t know. There are state deadlines, there are sore loser laws. I heard someone suggest he could “run his wife” ala Lurleen Wallace. I don’t know.
Or if someone like Rick Perry tried right NOW to get on the ballot as the “GOPE” candidate, is there even still time for that right now? I don’t know. People were trying to draft this general whoever so I guess there’s time, but surely it’s running out.
I’m thinking the 269/269 scenario I previously laid out is a deal more likely, it centers on carrying NH and losing Omaha, sounds weird as Omaha is more Republican than NH (and VA and OH for that matter), but in the end that’s just a single Congressional district voting a little off kilter, perhaps thrown off by third party votes, NE-2 did elect a rat in 2014.
And there’s always faithless electors, in a close race it wouldn’t take many to deprive the victor of a majority.
Anyway, yeah, we don’t want a constitutional disaster, they should pass this. But Lord knows these people usually wait till AFTER the disaster to get off their butts.