It’s one of the last sad hopes of NeverTrump conservatives. They’ve been devising these fantasies since early this year. The “establishment lane” was going to pick a candidate to beat Trump (even though Trump was the #2 choice of many of the “establishment” candidates’ voters), then Cruz and Kasich were going to team up to consolidate delegates against Trump, then the rules committee was going to do some procedural magic to block him, then the convention was going to revolt, then Trump was going to be made to drop out, etc.
This. Anything else is fantasy.
I’m afraid that’s true.
One small problem: according to Article I, Section 3, if the Senate is tied in its vote, Vice-President Kerry breaks the tie. Nowhere in the 12th Amendment does it say that only the Senators vote; it says that “the Senate shall choose the Vice-President.”
Any Republican representative who voted McMullin rather than Trump wouldn’t have to fear the voters for 2 years, anyway.
2 years is an eternity in voter goldfish memory.
I think Selena Meyer put it best: “Didn’t those Founding Fuckers ever hear of an odd number?”
IF there is a failure of the Electoral College to hit a majority, it’d probably be due to Utah going to McMullin in a very close race.
269-269 is possible but a less likely scenario. Theoretically this could happen:
Of course, the Founders did not establish the present number of electoral votes. Throughout American history, the total available for a given election often has been an odd number. Though, because there can be more than two candidates, that does not forestall the possibility of no majority result.
So why wouldn’t they vote for McMullin? He’s a Republican too.
Because he didn’t get the most votes in their state (presumably) and (again, presumably) got less than 5% of the national vote. And that will alienate the vastly larger number of people who voted for Trump. And someone with that small a percentage of the vote being named President will make the US a laughingstock. And people who didn’t even bother to vote will find it outrageous. And if all the GOP didn’t do it lockstep, Clinton could still end up president.
Not as much a laughingstock as Trump being president.
I take the job in Switzerland.
How do you say “Eat a bag of dicks” in German?
Sorry, but no. Not the way I mean. Electing a crappy leader - happens. Congress appoints the guy with <5% of the vote - country can no longer be taken seriously as a democracy (republic) and is the butt of every joke, everywhere, and gets compared to all those other places where a person’s vote doesn’t count at all.
And McMullin’s not even running as a Republican: Evan McMullin 2016 presidential campaign - Wikipedia
I think you meant Biden, no? 
But in any event, the 12th does say that, later on:
There has to be a majority of the whole number of Senators to choose the VP. That means 51 Senators. Biden is not a Senator and therefore has no role in the vote for a VP.
The degree the real answer is below 100% Trump is just the likelihood of a mega-negative revelation about Trump, far worse than anything so far, between a 269-269 election and when the House would vote. As of now there aren’t anywhere near enough committed sitting anti-Trump GOP House members for any other outcome but Trump to be plausible. And a lot of the weak support for Trump in elected GOP is based on belief he’ll lose outright, and a few GOP’ers in competitive House races that their own CYA move is to distance themselves from Trump. That’s not going to extend to the political suicide of voting in some known quantity ‘establishment’ GOP’er who didn’t run (though eg. Paul Ryan will get some tiny % of write in votes), or Hillary Clinton, and voting in an unknown like McMullin as President, even though he sounds much more reasonable to typical conservative ears than Trump, is perhaps the most fantastic scenario of all.
Yes, Selena Meyer is no historian. (I will point out that having two senators per state guarantees having an even number of senators, though.)
Still, the quote has pith, right? Here’s another: “Two great Greek contributions to society: democracy and getting fucked up the ass.”
Why? I bet every single Republican Trump voter would be happy with McMullin. And remember that the American political system is explicitly set up so that voters do not have the final say: it’s down to electors and then the states.
Huh?
What part of “I was mad as hell before Nov 8th, so I voted for Trump and instead I got McMullin through some shady backroom deal. So now I’m totally satisfied my vote was heard.” makes sense to you?
Zero of it makes sense to me.
What happens? Trump victory 99.9% chance
In the event of an Electoral College deadlock where no candidate reaches 270 EVs, the House would vote for Trump unless something really damning happens at the 11th hour such as a video surfacing of DT snorting blow with underage Russian hookers. There are only about a dozen Republican members of the House who publicly oppose Trump. The state delegations would easily be a Trump majority as others have noted.