The Wall Street Journal has this article by Karl Rove, which is on the subject of whether Donald Trump could get on ballots as an independent if he waited until the Republican convention to begin.
The article has many factual errors. It says that Colorado requires 5,000 signatures by June 6. Actually Colorado requires no signatures, merely payment of $1,000 and a list of presidential elector candidates by August 10.
It says that Vermont requires 1,000 signatures by June 16, but actually the signatures are due August 1.
It says Rhode Island requires 1,000 signatures by June 29, but only a declaration of candidacy is due on June 29, and the signatures are not due until September 9.
It says that Florida requires signatures by July 15. Although that is true for an independent presidential candidate, Trump could easily create his own party in Florida, or use one of the many ballot-qualified minor parties that already exist, which would leave him until September 1 to need to act.
It mentions that South Carolina requires an independent petition by July 15, which is true, but doesn’t say that South Carolina, like Florida, already has several ballot-qualified parties that would probably nominate him with no need for a petition.
Shock horror Karl Rove gets his facts wrong.
Is he still waiting for Ohio to declare for Romney ???
The GOP convention is July 18-21. If Trump is not nominated and decides he dislikes the GOP establishment so much that he is willing to throw the election to Hillary by running an independent campaign, he would likely start the process on Monday July 25th. Given there would be no problem with money, how many state ballots could he realistically get on? And how many electoral votes would that represent?
IMO, Trump will be the nominee for the simple reason that the GOP establishment realizes that keeping the party going (in both meanings of the word “party”) is paramount. They have no problem with electing Hillary, but they are petrified that the GOP donor class will stop writing checks and that the party establishment’s hold on power would be severely, possibly fatally, damaged. Losing their positions of power is the single most important thing to them. Frankly, I hope they nominate Kasich or Ryan so that the party blows up. After what it has done to limited government candidates since WW II (e.g. Taft, Goldwater, Paul), it deserves to die.
If he got on every ballot where the deadline was in August or later, he would have access to 341 electoral votes. At that point, his best hopes of becoming president rely on denying Clinton 270 electoral votes, ironically doing the same thing Cruz and Kasich are doing to him. Even then, the Republican House members may be split between Cruz/Kasich, Trump, and maybe even Gary Johnson(at this point, Johnson looks like their best option if Cruz is the nominee).
Is it possible that state chapters of the GOP could break off from the national party and nominate a candidate who does not receive the endorsement at the convention?
Clay, that is legally possible but extremely unlikely. It last happened to the Republican Party in 1912, when the California Republican Party and the South Dakota Party put Theodore Roosevelt on the November ballot as their nominee. Because of those actions, William Howard Taft was not on the ballot in either state. He got write-ins in California, only one-half of 1%.
It last happened to the Democrats in 1968, when the Alabama Democratic Party put George Wallace on the November ballot as its nominee. But Hubert Humphrey still got on the Alabama ballot as the nominee of a minor party.
Did the names of Teddy Roosevelt and Hiram Johnson appear on the 1912 California ballot? I thought that the Republican primary that chose delegates to the state convention that chose the presidential electors was quite late, and chose electors favoring Roosevelt and Governor Johnson. It was too late for Taft-ites to qualify another party.
Remember that individual elector names were on the California ballot in 1912, which made it even more difficult for Taft supporters since they had to write-in names of the electors. The individual election of electors also resulted in Roosevelt and Wilson splitting electors. This was possibly a result of some precinct officials only recording the votes for the first elector candidate, which was later canvassed as if a voter had only voted for one.
In regards to the specifics of running for President as an independent, on ballotpedia.org it states: “…Sore loser laws apply to presidential candidates in only two states: South Dakota and Texas…” If Bernie Sanders were to run as an independent and certify the needed signatures in all of the other states by their deadlines, what other options would there be to run and/or appear on the ballot in Texas and South Dakota? Are there ‘several ballot-qualified parties that would probably nominate him’ in both Texas or South Dakota? Would sore loser laws impact Bernie’s potential ability to run as a write-in candidate in Texas(apparently South Dakota prohibits write-in candidates)?
I think it is overwhelmingly likely that Sanders would not run for president outside the Democratic Party.
But, answering the question, the Green Party is on the Texas ballot. Texas would claim that Sanders could not even be the Green nominee. So there would probably be a lawsuit. In 1996 the US Taxpayers Party (now called the Constitution Party) filed a lawsuit against Texas and said it wanted to nominate Patrick Buchanan for president but he had run in the Texas Republican presidential primary. The judge should have said the lawsuit was dismissed on the grounds that Buchanan didn’t want the US Taxpayers Party nomination, and the issue was hypothetical and federal courts cannot adjudicate hypothetical disputes. But he went ahead and said Texas has a right to bare sore losers from presidential primaries. So Texas would cite that case.
Even more evil corrupt byzantine reasons to ABOLISH the super time bomb Electoral College.
How about getting an extremist party hack Prez who gets 35 percent of the popular votes ??? — in control of nukes, etc.
i.e. instant Civil WAR II.
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Save Democracy
1. Uniform definition of Elector-Voter in ALL of the USA.
2. ONE election day — NO robot party hack primaries, caucuses and conventions.
3. Ballot access ONLY via equal nominating petitions.
4. P.R. for legislative bodies and NONPARTISAN App.V. for executive/judicial offices – pending Number Votes (1, 2, 3, etc) with YES/NO tiebreakers.
OK, and on the second point? Just wondering if Bernie could run and have votes tallied for him as a write-in option in Texas? (though he wouldn’t appear on the ballot)
@John P,
Probably not. In Texas, a write-in candidate for president and vice president must file an application that is consistent with that for an independent candidate, except a petition is not required. In particular the application must include the list of 38 presidential elector candidates.
The sore loser law applies to independent candidates for president. So an application by a write-in candidate could not be by a sore loser, because that application would not require the petition.
Demo Rep – “extremist party hack Prez who gets 35 percent of the popular votes”. At first I thought you meant DJT because of your invectives, but after thinking about it, it is clear to me that you mean Hillary, right? That would make two Clintons who will have gotten elected Commander in Chief with a vote total far below 50% because of a split in the R side of the ballot.