Could Sanders run as an independent even without his approval?

Politics & Elections
1

Assuming Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, I was looking into whether or not Sanders could run as an independent in California (the way John Anderson did in 1980).

California Elections Code Section 8301 says, “A candidate for whom a nomination paper has been filed as a partisan candidate at a primary election, and who is defeated for his or her party nomination at the primary election, is ineligible for
nomination as an independent candidate,” which makes it sound like that whichever of Sanders/Clinton/Trump/Cruz doesn’t get nominated can’t then run as an independent in California.

On the other hand, the rest of the Election Code says that the office being run for is “presidential elector” and not “president”, and sections 8303 and 8304 say:
“Whenever a group of candidates for presidential electors,
equal in number to the number of presidential electors to which this
state is entitled, files a nomination paper with the Secretary of
State pursuant to this chapter, the nomination paper may contain the
name of the candidate for President of the United States and the name
of the candidate for Vice President of the United States for whom
all of those candidates for presidential electors pledge themselves
to vote.
When a group of candidates for presidential electors
designates the presidential and vice presidential candidates for whom
all of the group pledge themselves to vote, the names of the
presidential candidate and vice presidential candidate designated by
that group shall be printed on the ballot pursuant to Chapter 2
(commencing with Section 13100) of Division 13.”
Notice that it does not say that the “nomination paper” need have the approval of the candidates themselves.

Which brings up the original question: could Sanders supporters press to get him on the ballot in November in enough states even if he says he doesn’t want it? Of course, there will be calls of, “But this would just split the Democratic vote!,” but the response would probably be, “Clinton would do better in states that Trump would win anyway, and Sanders would win most of the other states thanks to the independent voters.”

2

Writers of State Laws have waaaaay too much time on their hands.

3

Which would mean splitting the Democratic vote.

4

I hope that if Sanders sabotages the election like this (thank you, Ralph Nader), Cruz ALSO decides to run as an independent and similarly splits the Republican vote. Clinton has a better chance of winning 4-way election than Trump, I suspect.

Anyone think Clinton may offer Sanders her Veep position just to keep him from doing this? because I do get a vibe from him that he could sabotage the election this way. In fact, I think Trump’s only real shot at the office is if Sanders does this.

5

Sanders isn’t an idiot, which means that he’s certainly not going to do this deliberately. Some of his supporters, however, are idiots, and just might try.

6

If any one or more of the also-rans then runs as a third party or independent, doesn’t that risk putting the election into the House of Reps? I don’t think we want that to happen!

7

The election goes to the House only if a third party wins a sufficient number of electoral votes to deprive a major party candidate from getting over 269. That’s not likely to happen.

8

Or if there’s an exact tie between two candidates, something that is possible, but hasn’t happened under current rules.

9

I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. I’m no Ralph Nader fan, but he was never a Democrat in that election cycle… He’s been outside the political mainstream his entire career and has ran on his Green Party ticket many times. He was a bona fide third party candidate.

Sanders bears some similarities to that, in that he has been outside the political mainstream his whole career. But he’s chosen for his entire Congressional career to caucus with the Democrats, thus making him not necessarily a true independent–he instead chose to surrender some of his independence to avoid being a toothless member of congress (later Senator) who would really only have power to yell and shout but little else (not caucusing with either means he’d probably be largely shut out of any committee and thus would have little real legislative influence or power.) Further, in this actual campaign cycle, he has become a Democrat and is running for that party’s nomination. So Sanders running third party in my opinion would be a much worse and immoral behavior at this point, and is also why there are “sore lore laws” in many states (but only a few apply them to the Presidency, and he only needs to be on the ballot in a small number of States to really fuck Hillary over.)

10

According to the electoral law guy on “It’s all Politics” a few months ago, most State’s sore loser laws wouldn’t keep a candidate off the ballot for the reason you state.

Realistically though, I suspect the CA Dem party would use the sore loser law to keep him off the ballot anyways, and make sure that by the time Bernie’s supporters won the resulting court case, it was too late to get him on the ballot.

Plus you need 100k signatures to get on the ballot as an independent candidate in CA. I kinda doubt a group of Bernie supporters acting against the wishes of the candidate himself would be able to get enough support to collect that in the time remaining.

Its sort of an interesting case for a spoiler strategy, though. Some states require very few signatures for an independent run. I wonder if Hillary supporters could try and put Trump or Cruz on the ticket in a few states, or Trump supporters try to get Bernie on the ballot in a few places even against the will of the candidate in question.

11

When Michael Bloomberg was considering an independent run, he concluded that if he ran there would be too much risk of throwing the election to the House and electing Trump.

Sanders might only have to take few states from Hilary to deprive her of a clear majority.

12

Holy billionaires have ego problems, Batman! Bloomburg thought an awful lot of himself. He believed he could take 14 states and tie in California and Texas? States in which Romney got 37% and Obama got 41% respectively? Is there anybody else in the country not on his payroll that could say that with a straight face?

13

If Sanders were to run as an independent, I doubt he would win any state other than Vermont. It’s really hard to win as an independent. No infrastructure to draw from. Poor ballot position in many states. No downballot candidates to boost turnout. The American instinct to choose one of the two big parties. Etc.

Also, math is against him. Most states won by Obama just aren’t all that heavily Democratic. If you divide the Dem and Dem-leaning vote into two–half each for Clinton and Sanders–the GOP will win almost all of them. Even if you give Sanders more than half, say 60%, of those voters, the GOP will still almost always win.

(Example: Minnesota, the state with the longest current streak of voting for Democrats in the presidential election. Base it on 2012: Obama won 52.6%. Romney won 45.0%. Sanders would have to win about 90% of the Dems and Dem-leaners to beat out the GOP candidate. That’s not going to happen.)

If Sanders entered the race and got enough votes to make a difference, it would be purely as a spoiler–siphoning enough votes away from Clinton in many of the traditionally blue states to put the Republican in first place, probably with less than 50% of the vote.

14

Leaving aside the fact that Sanders has repeatedly promised that he won’t run as an independent and be a spoiler, there are other reasons it’s doubtful he’d try.

For starters, getting on the ballot in all 50 states as an independent is not that easy.

Collecting the required signatures and submit them by the different deadlines can be really difficult, and if he plans on doing this then it made utterly no sense for him to lay off hundreds of his campaign workers.

I’m not sure when the different deadlines are but they’re coming up. Texas’ is within the next 2 weeks and requires around 90,000 signatures IIRC. A bunch of them are prior to the convention.

If the Green Party hadn’t already picked a nominee, Jill Stein, I’d say he could talk to them and for all I know they might be allowed or inclined to change horses, but I don’t know about that.

There might be some other left-wing political parties that might be on the ballot in multiple states, but I’m not sure how many.

The last thing he could do is launch a write-in campaign. There are 43 states that allow write in candidates. FTR, I think if Trump fails to secure the Republican nomination this is exactly what he will do. This could lead to issues like will “Bernie Sanders” be disqualified because his name is “Bernard Sanders” whereas “Donald Trump” is a very easy name to spell.

I’d find the idea of Bernie choosing to run as an independent to be slightly more likely than him stripping naked and singing “I am a little tea pot” at his next press conference, but not by much.

15

“without his approval” is right there in the thread title. You guys don’t even need to read the actual OP to see it.

16

Bernie is a really idealistic guy, but he’s not immune from the character traits you’d expect most guys who have been in politics for over 30 years to have, namely he’s definitely got enough hardboiled political instincts that he knows exactly what would happen if he were to run as a third party candidate. I think Sanders genuinely believes himself to be the best candidate, and I think he wants the sort of revolutionary change he has advocated for his entire career. However, I think unlike a lot of his reddit legion supporters he doesn’t view Hillary and Trump as just being different sides to the same coin. I think he looks at Hillary as too cozy with big business to make the radical changes he wants, but I think he also knows there are major and genuine differences between Hillary and any Republican nominee, and if he has to choose (which he would) between both, he would choose Hillary in a heart beat.

I think when all is said and done Bernie will want this from Hillary:

  1. Adoption of a lot of his platform, like his college tuition plan, medicare for all, and adoption of a plan to break up the big banks
  2. A coveted speaking position at the convention where he can make a very bold anti-Wall Street, anti-Big Business attack, and possibly go off the rails and attack the Democratic party establishment as well

If he gets that, he’s going to be a full-throated supporter of Hillary in the general, up to and including maintaining a part-time campaign schedule where he will go to certain locations where the Hillary campaign believes he will be valuable (namely, college campuses / college towns in purple states, maybe parts of the industrial Midwest.)

Note I don’t list out the Vice Presidency, I think Sanders has no interest in being VP, and would actually probably be less effective at pushing his agenda as VP than remaining as Senator in Vermont.

What will he get?

I think Hillary will possibly adopt his college plan. Because a) it’s essentially tax neutral in that it costs some $70bn/year which is about how much we spend on the inefficient loan and grant based Federal college funding program, b) it’s not all that different from what Hillary has already committed to and c) will make young people happy and make Sanders supporters happy that Hillary has “caved” to some of his demands.

Medicare for all won’t be seriously considered. I think given Hillary’s past that may be where she is ideologically (I mean she was pushing for single payer 25 years ago, I think she’s just learned it wasn’t politically viable and still isn’t), but she knows the country isn’t ready for it, won’t be easily persuaded that the huge tax increases to pay for it will be to the benefit of many and it’ll likely hurt her with centrist voters and put some of them in Donald Trump’s camp.

I think Hillary (correctly) doesn’t view the big banks as the apocalyptic problem that Bernie says they are. Most economists don’t think they need broken up, and they largely were not at fault in the 2008 financial crisis the worst banks were the smaller investment banks like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and actors like Morgan Stanley and Countrywide–the 4-5 really big banks today just weren’t the secret super villains of that story. So I don’t think she’s going to be willing to sign on for breaking them up, but she might agree to some sort of tax on larger banks based on the size of their holdings.

I think she’ll be fine giving Bernie a good speaking spot, but he’ll have to agree to at least make the pretense of endorsing her during it.

Since she will have basically given him a speaking position and the “easiest” thing from his platform that she can/is willing to give, he’ll give her a stiff endorsement and then go back to Vermont, he’ll support her when asked about it but won’t be on the campaign trail or working real hard for Hillary.

It’s possible if he’s feeling ornery he’ll refuse to play ball at all, which would deny him a prime time speaking spot. Now, he can pull a Jerry Brown and use his delegates to acquire a speech for himself from the floor like he did, but Hillary’s people will control the schedule and agenda and will be able to structure the timing of that so it has minimal exposure and impact.

17

That’s going to be legally very difficult. Just looking at filing forms real quick from a few large states, and all of them require candidate’s signature on them. So you literally couldn’t get Bernie candidates for electoral college on the ballot in say, California, without Bernie’s signature.

Write in candidacy would be possible in some states but would likely generate so few votes as to be irrelevant, especially with Bernie openly advocating against it.

18

If they could do it without his approval, I’m sure the Kochs would step up and pay to make it happen…

19

I suppose they could do something similar to how the state parties used to run “favorite son” delegate slates for the convention.

You could have a stand-in on the ballot. Then the party would choose a slate of loyal Sanders supporters to be the electors (in some states you appoint electors before the election, in others after the election). Then after the stand-in wins and the electors are appointed, he could resign and leave the electors free to vote for anyone they wanted.

Hey, they could even find some super-dedicated supporter willing to change his name to “Bennie Sanders” or something like that and be the stand-in. You wouldn’t want to change it to “Bernie Sanders” in order to avoid confusion about who the electors cast their ballots for.

20

He might not be an idiot, but he just might be delusional and narcissistic enough to try. I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt up to this point, but his rhetoric lately seems to be drifting more into treacherous waters.

If Sanders runs, I hope the Democratic party crushes him and any candidate who even remotely supported him in future elections. Regardless of what happens, the Democratic party needs to make sure that it finds ways to keep independents like Sanders from thanklessly using their machine to promote a delusional campaign.