By Martin Frost
What happens if we have a presidential election and no one wins?
Now that Robert Kennedy Jr. is in the race running as an independent, it is possible that you could have a result on election day that no one gets the 270 electoral votes to win. Let’s say that Biden and Trump each get 260 electoral votes, and Kennedy wins several states with 18 electoral votes. The total number of electoral votes is 538, and Kennedy’s 18 electoral votes hold both Biden and Trump under the magic number of 270.
How is this possible? It’s because of a fatal flaw in the electoral college system – electoral votes in all but two states are determined winner-take-all. Whoever receives the most votes in each of 48 of our states wins 100 percent of the electoral votes in each of these states. There is no proportional representation. If you lose any of these states with 47 percent of the popular vote and your major opponent gets 49 percent of the popular vote, he gets all of the electoral votes in each such state. Only Maine and Nebraska have different systems.
A third-party candidate like Kennedy could tip the electoral vote in a number of states by receiving as little as four percent of the popular vote. Independent candidate Ross Perot got 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992 but won zero electoral votes because he didn’t carry a single state.
But what happens if a candidate with a famous name like Kennedy actually carries a few small states with a total of 18 electoral votes? Bingo – no one wins.
Under our constitution, the election is then decided by the House of Representatives, with each state having only one vote. Our most populous state, California, gets one vote, and a small state like Wyoming gets only one vote. The election would be decided by the new House, which takes office on January 3rd.
Republicans currently control a majority of state delegations in the House of Representatives Trump could be elected by the House even if the Democrats take back the House if the Republicans still control a majority of the state delegations. This could be possible because many of the small state delegations are likely to remain Republican.
Enter Bobby Kennedy Jr. Because he has a famous name and the general population knows very little about some of his bizarre positions on issues, he could throw the election to Trump either by tipping the popular vote to Trump in some states or by actually carrying some small states. That’s why a large number of Kennedy family members recently held a press conference disavowing their famous relative and endorsing President Biden.
Their message was simple – a vote for Bobby Kennedy Jr. is a vote for Trump.
Former Congressman Martin Frost (D-Texas, 1979-2005) was Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1996 and 1998 and Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus from 1999 to 2002.
