Let’s say that with less than a week to go before the election, both Romney and Ryan die in a freak plane accident. There’s not enough time to select a new candidate, let alone reprint all the ballots. But to everyone’s surprise, Romney wins.
What happens then? Can the GOP say that since voters voted Romney, whoever the GOP eventually puts up as the official nominee should be president? Or does the 2nd highest vote count, Obama, get the nod instead?
I don’t know the answer, but it seems like option #2 would tacitly encourage assassinations, so I assume that’s not it.
I don’t know of any official party rules, but it seems to me that this would be sorted out in the Electoral College. If by some process the GOP decided that they wanted Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum to go on the stump and urge voters to vote for electors pledged to the late nominee, if Romney happened to win the election, the electors would still be free to cast their vote in January for whomever they wanted.
ETA: the winner of the election still has to get 270+ electoral votes, or if no candidate gets that number, Congress decides the election in that bizarro scenario the Founding Fathers laid out. There is no “defaulting” to the other candidate.
Mel Carnahan beat John Ashcroft in the Missouri Senate race in 2000, despite being dead. His wife was appointed to the Senate by the Governor of Missouri.
I’m unsure how that scenario would play out in a Presidential race (probably the Supreme Court and House of Representatives would get involved, like they did for other close races like John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson, and Bush vs. Gore), but I thought it was an interesting and relevant story to share.
In such a circumstance the Electoral College would become the focus of intense lobbying by party insiders. So long as faithless electors do not defect to vote for Obama then there are a couple possible outcomes.
A sufficient number of Romney/Ryan electors unite behind other candidates and these persons gain enough EC votes to have a majority. Election is over. New POTUS/VP are sworn in Jan 20.
The Romney/Ryan delegates are unable to unite in enough numbers to give a EC majority to anyone. The POTUS election to thrown to the House, and the VP is thrown to the Senate.
In the House each state delegation gets one vote. In the Senate each Senator gets one vote. There is the possibility that a Rep controlled House elects a Repub POTUS and a Dem controlled Senate elects a Dem VP. If such a split is even a remote possibility then the pressure on the EC to not let it get that far would be all the more intense.
Nitpick. The Electoral College votes the Monday after the second Wednesday in December.
One reason the dead guy won (maybe not the major reason but one reason) is because the brand new governor (who succeeded Carnahan when he was killed) announced before the election that he would appoint Carnahan’s wife if Carnahan won, so the voters at least knew who they were voting for.
In the OP scenario, it would fall on the Republican National Committee to designate a new ticket, who the electors could then vote for. However, it’s unlikely they could get their act together in the short time posited, and in theory, the Republican electors would be free to vote for anyone they wanted.
As The Master noted in his column, the electors who supported Greeley in the 1872 election ended up splitting their votes among several different people.
And also that Congress rejected the three votes that were cast for the dead Greeley anyway.
Right, but Greeley was a loser anyways. It would be a different scenario if Greeley (or in this case Romney) had a majority of electoral votes.
I would imagine that after the election in which Romney wins a majority of electors, you would have Nate Silver polling the House members to see how they would vote should no candidate get a majority. If there seems to be consensus there, then the electors would either go along or united behind another candidate that the House would not vote for.
The electors would be lobbied from everywhere, but the success of this lobbying would depend on how many Romney electors were out there. Say there were 300 Romney electors, which seems very high given the current climate. If only 31/300 voted for someone different, the election goes to the House. It would be very difficult in a month to get near unanimity from electors who really aren’t beholden to anyone.
It would almost certainly go to the House where party pressure would come to bear on members..
The other problem is who would be the obvious Republican nominee? If Obama & Biden had died in 2008 just before the EC met then I think H. Clinton as the clear 2nd plac nominee and whoever she wanted as her VP would have been an easy consensus for the Dem ticket given such short notice. Similar in 2012 I think it would again go to Hillary for the Dems.
But in 2012 who is the obvious pick for the Republicans?
Mike Huckabee, maybe?
This is the problem too. Every candidate has their flaws and attractions (which is why they failed early in the primaries.)
If the substitution had to happen very close to the election, what are the odds Giuliani or Santorum or Huckabee could come up with a platform and persude reluctant factions of voters?
Even if the greap Oops had happened after the election - the question is, where do the loyalties of the electors lie? As mentioned, technically they can vote for anyone. The question then will be, does the candidate pass their smell test? I.e. Giuliani and abortion, Santorum and gay rights (yeah, right!) etc. A bunch of obscure people will suddenly discover they have a huge amount of power, and will be subject to intense lobbying.
Suddenly these 300 or so folks would be the most popular people in the party.
Which brings up the question - who are electors, typically? Just party hacks, party emeriti, or friends of a candidate (or his state campaign manager)? Congress members? Random people off the street?
Another issue in terms of PR.
Assume Romney & Ryan or Obama & Biden die after the election and before the EC meets and the party hacks at the RNC/DNC tell (recommend?) who to vote for. What would the blowback be from the American people that the next President was chosen in a backroom deal?
It might be a “backroom deal” but that is how the Constitution orders it to be done. If there’s any blowback other than random bitching and moaning, I’d expect to see it in the form of an amendment that would substitute an alternate process.
Otherwise, what can you do? Even if public pressure persuaded the new President to voluntarily step down, the Constitution dictates who will take that position so that you’re still left with a “backroom deal.” There’s no way to get it back to a public vote until the next election cycle.
After all, Gerald Ford was chosen president (eventually) by congress. he ran next election. Similarly, Nelson Rockerfeller was chosen VP by congress - a whole admin not selected by the people.
Rockefeller was selected by Ford and confirmed by Congress. Congress could have shot down Ford’s selection, but they can’t pick one themselves.
There is no real clear answer to this. However both parties do have rules for this, I’m not sure if these are still the current rules but if the republican candidate died they would hold another convention to fill the spot. If the democrat candidate died it would be up to the Democratic National Committee to decide how to fill the spot. If there was not enough time for that to take place I would imagine in order to appease the public Congress would hold an emergency session to postpone the election a few months for the party to get a candidate. Unfortunately there is not a lot of rules that govern our elections most of it is party rules so there really is two different rules for elections.