What would happen if NO ONE would accept the position of VP for a presidential candidate?
10% Rule - 10% (or more) of the population will believe/do anything.
Never happen, because at least one of the delegates voting for the Presidential candidate at the convention would jump at the chance to be VP.
Some hypotheticals don’t have answers. For this one to happen the circumstances would need to be so bizarre that we’d have to know exactly what they were before even a stupid answer could be given.
“Who am I? Why am I here?”
Not a direct answer and different circumstances, but this reminds me of the Senate appointment of Roland Burris.
It got kind of close in 1972 when George McGovern reportedly got turned down when he asked Ted Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Abraham Ribicoff and Walter Mondale, and shied away from Kevin White, because Kennedy and White were rivals.
Finally, on the morning after he was nominated, McGovern asked Thomas Eagleton, who famously replied, “Before you change your mind, I accept.” That should have made McGovern think twice, because Eagleton was forced to drop out when it was discovered he’d been treated for depression.
Moderating
Since this scenario is so unlikely as to be essentially impossible, I doubt there’s a factual answer. Let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
There is no constitutional requirement that a party nominate candidates for both President and Vice President. If no one would agree to run on the same ticket as the Presidential candidate, then electors pledged to him (but to no Vice President) could theoretically still be elected. Electors are required to vote for a President and Vice President. Presumably they could vote for whomever they wanted for Vice President. If they didn’t agree to vote for the same candidate, it would be possible for the Vice Presidential candidate from the other party to be elected.
They can PM me. I’ll do it.
Ex-president Millard Filmore was nominated by the Native American Party, in absentia, as the party’s presidential candidate. He was out of the country at the time of his nomination.
In light of this, the Sherman pledge makes a lot of sense.
More likely, no vice presidential candidate would win a majority of electoral votes, and the Senate would elect the Vice President from among the top contenders, according to the procedure described in the 12th Amendment.
Another unusual case from history: When William Jennings Bryan ran for President in 1896, he had two different running mates. Bryan was nominated by both the Democratic Party and the Populist Party. But the Democrats chose Arthur Sewall as their Vice Presidential nominee while the Populists chose Thomas Watson.
Many states, however, require that a party (or an independent candidate) list a running mate on the ballot. (Even though as voters we aren’t voting for either candidate, but for a slate of electors.) This can be evaded by listing place-holders as VP candidates; George Wallace did this in many states in 1968. Wallace didn’t want to have a “real” running mate at all, but his advisors finally persuaded him he had to, not for legal but for political reasons. He named Lemay so late, though, that the place-holders remained on most state ballots.
There is actually a real answer for this as Colibri points out.
The electors for the several states and DC would simply vote for someone who was constitutionally eligible*. If no one got a majority, each Senator would vote from the top 2 vote-getters.
*With the caveat that the electors in their candidate’s home state would have to vote for someone not a resident of that state.
The Democratic National Convention of 1840 chose to make no vice presidential nomination. In those days the parties printed their own electoral tickets, so they didn’t have to worry about ballot access laws. Their presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, got crushed in the fall election, but he did win 60 electoral votes. The electors split their VP votes among three different candidates.