The Third Party Disaster

Amanda Carpenter: “It’s not just that a third-party ticket can’t win or that it would be likely to help Donald Trump—although both of those things are true. It’s that even if a third-party ticket succeeds, meaning it wins any states, it could cause an even worse disaster.”

“Why? Because under the Constitution, whoever gets the most votes in the Electoral College is not automatically elected president. If no one wins a majority of electoral votes—at least 270—then the election results are functionally voided and the House of Representatives picks the next president in a ‘contingent election.’ Given how closely divided the country is, it’s possible that we could be in precisely this position if a third party wins even a single state.”