No, a Conservative Third-Party Candidate Can’t Steal the Electoral College
By Jonathan Chait
NYMag.com
May 6, 2016
Some conservative Republicans who hate Donald Trump want to run a third-party presidential candidate, such as Nebraska Republican senator Ben Sasse, who has lambasted Trump. It’s a plan that might help them turn out conservative voters, who would otherwise stay home to protest Trump, and help Republicans avoid a down-ballot wipeout. More likely, it could help conservatives preserve their dignity by having a candidate who articulates right-wing policies without the burden of Trump’s buffoonish ignorance and misogynistic bullying. Yet many people have grown convinced that the third-party plan could also do something else: throw the election into the House of Representatives, where Republicans could select their own (conservative) candidate. “One outcome, although rare, may be that no candidate crosses the necessary threshold of 270 votes in the U.S. Electoral College,” reports Reuters. “In that case, the vote for the next president would pass to the U.S. House of Representatives, currently controlled by Republicans.” Versions of this scenario have appeared in Time (headline: “The Crazy Way Republicans Could Beat Donald Trump After Election Day”), National Review (“If a third-party candidate could divide the vote enough to prevent anyone from getting an electoral-college majority, that would throw the election into the House of Representatives”), and elsewhere. The entire panel of Morning Joe, in a segment this morning, treated it as a live possibility:
Mark Halperin: The last gasp of the Trump movement is to get somebody to run or a series of people to run to stop anybody from getting 270 electoral votes.
Joe Scarborough: If they get somebody to run, the question is, is it too late? Because I’ve always heard you have to do it by March.
Mark Halperin: If you spend a lot of money it’s possible to get in enough ballots to keep either Clinton or Trump from 270, it’s possible. … With a lot of money and a well-organized effort you can get in enough ballots to block anybody from getting 270.
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