What if… come election day… the whole country was totally disgusted with both presidential candidates and NOBODY voted??
What would happen?
Both candidates would kick themselves very, very hard?
Seriously, I don’t know. But iirc there are similar situations where a coin is (literally) tossed, or the elections are run again.
could be completely wrong on this one but:
I think that they house of representatives would just vote by themselves anyways. Your vote is really just telling them who to vote for. So if no one votes, they will just vote for whoever they want
I think :rolleyes:
We would start counting hanging chads, until the nine supremes stopped the recount.
The president is actually elected by the vote of the electors not directly by the voters. Article II (2) says “each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct” etc.
A state law somewhere may pass constitution mustard so that one or more electors could be selected in such a case and vote. A president is elected if he/she receives a majority of electors voting and certified not necessarily based upon the total number that could have been certified if other circumstances were different.
So if only one elector could vote, a president could win with a majority of one.
Sounds messy. 
You mean pass muster. Although there are 194 hits for ‘pass mustard’ on Google. Fifty percent of which refer to handing over a condiment, 25 percent meaning ‘pass muster,’ and 25 percent correcting them.
WRT the OP: It would be really unlikely that absolutely no one would vote. Ceratainly each candidate would vote for themself, so that should solve everything.
Peace.
In the presidential election, if no one gets a majority of electors (from the electoral college) then the election is taken to the house of representatives. The house can vote for whoever they want to be president. They must keep voting until someone gets a majority.
So if no one voted for president, and therefore no states sent electors to the electoral college, the president would be selected by the US house.
Of course, the likelihood that no one will vote in a nationwide, or even statewide election is pretty slim. I mean, don’t you think the candidates at least would vote for themselves?
But I seem to remember hearing about a local school board election that had this result. NO ONE voted, not even the unopposed candidate himself. Maybe someone can google it up…
Ummm… I hope you’re saying this with as much tongue in cheek as I did when you consider that if no one but the candidates vote, then it will be a tie, thus, not very helpful.
Peace.
If there is no majority in the Electoral College, the House cannot vote for whomever its wants. The House may only choose among the top three recipients of electoral votes.
It cannot go off the board and pick somebody else.
Presumably if there were no majority for president, then there would also be no majority for the vice president. And in that situation, the Senate chooses the VP, but only chooses among the top two candidates.
Since the Senate votes individually, while the House votes by states, it’s likely that a VP would be chosen first. And if there is a VP ready by January 20 before a Pres, then the VP gets the top job until the House straightens out its act.
God, I love the internet.
Ummm… how?
Not sure how it applies to federal or state elections, but in local elections (at least here in MI) if there is a tie, there is a straw pull. It obviously doesn’t happen all that often, but our city clerk assures me that she remembers it happening on the west side of the state about 5 years back.
of course in an actual election where people vote, a tie wouldn’t be called until there was like 50 recounts all with the same result.
BobT is right about the procedure. But for it to start a report from the electors must be delivered, and with no electors there would be no report.
My state orders a new election ASAP to break ties, unless both parties agree to a coin flip, a flip has only occurred a handful of times in state history.
There was a tie in some small town a few years ago and one candidate agreed to the flip, the other didn’t but both thought it silly to have a special election. The non-flipper went to the clerk and was shown some sort of tally sheet(this is small town America folks).
He noticed there had been an addition error and if corrected he would have won. So he filed some sort of recount claim to quickly end this nonsense. But however he filed it, the rule was “if a loser requests. . .”. Of course he was a tie-ie not a loser so the story went on. Sorry to leave you handing, I didn’t see have it came out.
Unless the candidates were from the same state, the election would not be a tie. Each candidate would cast his vote in his home state, which if no other ballots were cast that candidate would win the electors from his state. Assume a Bush v Kerry match in which only Bush and Kerry voted. Bush would win the electors from Texas and Kerry would win the electors from Massachusetts. However, neither candidate would have a majority of the electors in the electoral college, which would mean that the HoR would still decide.
But to throw another monkey wrench into things…during the Florida debacle, there was a lot of talk about how the Florida legislature could vote for a slate of electors. I can’t recall the specifics, but if enough states had some provision for other than the popular vote count to select electors then even absent any voters in that state there could be enough electors sent to elect one candidate or the other.
Ah, but if only two candidates get electors (as in the Bush/Kerry scenario I postulate) then everyone eligible for the office of president has finished in the top three, which in our fantasyland frees the HoR to vote for anyone as one of the top three finishers.
I think if no one voted in the presidential election. at least one state legislature would meet in special session. That legislature would send its slate to Congress. At the time appinted by law Congress counts the one state that sent a slate win . and we have a president.
This reminds me of something my Pastor told me in 2000: “If God had meant for man to vote, he would have given us candidates”.
I’ve found it! 1876
After months of dispute over electoral votes from a few states, Hayes beat Tilden 185 to 184.
One state’s electoral votes were not in dispute – Colorado. Their three electors were selected by the legislature and voted for Hayes, giving him the victory.
But no one voted in the presidential election in Colorado in 1876, because no election was held. Colorado had been recently admitted to the Union, and in order to save money, the legislature decided not to hold the election.