A procedure that has been in the U.S. Constitution since 1804 and only used once since then is likely to be used this year, due to a special set of circumstances that very rarely shows up in American politics.
Because this procedure is in the Constitution, it cannot be voided by any law that is passed by Congress. Any such law, called a statute, that conflicts with the Constitution, in the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, is itself voided.
The only legal way to void or nullify an amendment to the Constitution is to add another amendment. The 21st Amendment explicitly nullified the 18th Amendment. Link to a page on the History Channel website about these two amendments.
Part of the following amendment has been voided, as mentioned below, with documentation, but every other sentence in this amendment is still valid.
The website of the National Archives says that this amendment superceded part of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. That means that part of Article II, Section 1 has been voided and is no longer a valid part of the U.S. legal system.
When the 12th amendment was passed, it was in the form of one very long paragraph. I'm going to divide it up into three parts because some of the sentences in this amendment were voided by part of the 20th Amendment.
On this blog page, I have referred to the voided part of this amendment as "Part 2" of this amendment. Every other sentence in this amendment, which I refer to as "Part 1" and "Part 3" is still legally valid as a fully-ratified and functional amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The next sentence, however, is grammatically complex. Here it is.
"The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."
There are two main clauses in this sentence, and both of them are in the form of an if-then statement. An if-then statement allows for an action to be taken if a certain condition is met. The two main clauses differ from each other. One specifies a procedure that will be followed if one presidential candidate receives a majority of all of the votes of the appointed Electors (members of the Electoral College). The other clause specifies a procedure that will be followed if none of the presidential candidates receives a majority of those votes.
This is the text of that second clause, copied directly from the amendment.
"... and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."
If no person have such majority,
then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.
The conditional action is that the U.S. House will choose the president. The condition that allows this to happen is none of the presidential candidates having a majority of the votes of the Electoral College.
There are three further restrictions on the voting by the House. They can only consider the three candidates who received the most number of popular votes, and they must vote by ballot. They cannot announce their vote by speaking their choices or by raising their hands, and they must vote immediately. They are not allowed to begin a campaign for their favorite candidate that will take weeks or months to complete.
That second if-then clause is very interesting, because it was followed during one election in U.S history, and I believe that this special procedure will be followed again this year.
That second clause is also interesting because the polling that is being done that includes the top four presidential candidates shows that none of them is close to having a majority. A website called Real Clear Politics mentions these polls. The results of this four-person polling is explained later on this page.
These are the first four paragraphs of another page on the website of the National Archives. All of the links in these paragraphs were on their page.
These are the first two paragraphs of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. These words have not been voided or modified by any amendment.
The number of the Electors has gone up along with the number of the people who are members of the U.S. House of Representatives, but no matter how many people there are in the Electoral College, the Constitution requires that the President must be the person who has at least half of their votes.
During almost all of the previous elections in this country, one presidential candidate had a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. A majority is half of the total, plus one if the number of members is an even number. Half of 538 is 269. but 538 is an even number, so a majority of that group would be 270.
This is a link to a similar page on the website How Stuff Works.
This is a link to a similar page on the Wikipedia website.
This is the Electoral College page on the History Channel website.
The electors only perform one function, and they only do this once every four years. They vote directly for a combination of a President and a Vice-President. Their vote determines which combination will have all the executive power of the White House and all of the military power of the United States Commander-in-Chief. Most of the time, one candidate duo will have a majority of their votes, but if none of the presidential candidates have a majority of their votes, then under the terms of the 12th Amendment, the official members of the U.S. House of Representatives will make an immediate vote, without any time for campaigning.
The immediate vote process was explained earlier in the section about the 12th Amendment.
"Part 2" of the 12th Amendment, but not "Part 1", which includes the process for choosing a president if none of the candidates has a majority of the Electoral College votes.
Link to the 20th Amendment on the website of
As I said earlier, one election very early in American history followed the special procedure in the 12th Amendment that allows for the president to be chosen by a vote of the members of the U.S. House.
"The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House."
This is another copy of the text of that second clause in the 12th Amendment.
"... and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."
In 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives chose the person with the 2nd highest number of Electoral College votes, John Quincy Adams.
In 1824, there were 261 people in the Electoral College. That number is now 538.
As you can see, none of the four candidates received the necessary 131 electoral votes to be President under the conditions of the first clause of this amendment. The candidate who had the most votes didn't even get 100 votes, but 131 votes were necessary because that was "half-plus-one" of the total votes in the Electoral College.
Here is the text of the first clause of that very important sentence in the 12th Amendment.
"The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed ...."
The 1824 election had four presidential candidates. None of them had a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. 131 votes was a majority in that year, but the person who had the most Electoral College votes only got 99 Electoral College votes.
The reason why none of the presidential candidates received a majority of the Electoral College votes is interesting to historians. I will summarize the history of that election by saying that all four of these men were close competitors to each other.
It is also interesting to note that Andrew Jackson, the candidate who got the most Electoral College votes the first time they voted, was not the ultimate winner that year. During the voting by members of the U.S. House, they chose the 2nd place finisher, John Quincy Adams, to be the President.
This is the web page for President John Quincy Adams on the White House's website.
Because this procedure is in the Constitution, it cannot be voided by any law that is passed by Congress. Any such law, called a statute, that conflicts with the Constitution, in the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, is itself voided.
The only legal way to void or nullify an amendment to the Constitution is to add another amendment. The 21st Amendment explicitly nullified the 18th Amendment. Link to a page on the History Channel website about these two amendments.
Part of the following amendment has been voided, as mentioned below, with documentation, but every other sentence in this amendment is still valid.
The 12th Amendment to the Constitution
I copied the text from this page on the website of a U.S. Government agency called the National Archives. This agency has many historical documents, including a 1790 petition that Benjamin Franklin mailed to Congress, asking them to abolish slavery, an 1866 petition for universal suffrage (voting rights for every American man and woman), and 1941 legislation that established Thanksgiving as a national holiday.The website of the National Archives says that this amendment superceded part of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. That means that part of Article II, Section 1 has been voided and is no longer a valid part of the U.S. legal system.
When the 12th amendment was passed, it was in the form of one very long paragraph. I'm going to divide it up into three parts because some of the sentences in this amendment were voided by part of the 20th Amendment.
On this blog page, I have referred to the voided part of this amendment as "Part 2" of this amendment. Every other sentence in this amendment, which I refer to as "Part 1" and "Part 3" is still legally valid as a fully-ratified and functional amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Part 1
The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; -- the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; -- The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.
Part 2 (superceded by Section 3 of the 20th Amendment)
And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.
Part 3
The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
Grammatical analysis of the relevant Text
Most of Part 1 of the text of the 12th Amendment describes the operation of the Electoral College, including this sentence. "the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;"The next sentence, however, is grammatically complex. Here it is.
"The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."
There are two main clauses in this sentence, and both of them are in the form of an if-then statement. An if-then statement allows for an action to be taken if a certain condition is met. The two main clauses differ from each other. One specifies a procedure that will be followed if one presidential candidate receives a majority of all of the votes of the appointed Electors (members of the Electoral College). The other clause specifies a procedure that will be followed if none of the presidential candidates receives a majority of those votes.
This is the text of that second clause, copied directly from the amendment.
"... and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."
If no person have such majority,
then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.
The conditional action is that the U.S. House will choose the president. The condition that allows this to happen is none of the presidential candidates having a majority of the votes of the Electoral College.
There are three further restrictions on the voting by the House. They can only consider the three candidates who received the most number of popular votes, and they must vote by ballot. They cannot announce their vote by speaking their choices or by raising their hands, and they must vote immediately. They are not allowed to begin a campaign for their favorite candidate that will take weeks or months to complete.
That second if-then clause is very interesting, because it was followed during one election in U.S history, and I believe that this special procedure will be followed again this year.
That second clause is also interesting because the polling that is being done that includes the top four presidential candidates shows that none of them is close to having a majority. A website called Real Clear Politics mentions these polls. The results of this four-person polling is explained later on this page.
The Electoral College
Early history
It was established by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution and modified by the 12th Amendment. When the 20th Amendment was ratified, it modified how this "institution" operates even further, but the institution itself still functions, with a slightly modified operation.These are the first four paragraphs of another page on the website of the National Archives. All of the links in these paragraphs were on their page.
The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.This is the first sentence in the third paragraph. "The Electoral College consists of 538 electors."
The Electoral College process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.
The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators. Read more about the allocation of electoral votes.
Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. For this reason, in the following discussion, the word “state” also refers to the District of Columbia.
These are the first two paragraphs of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. These words have not been voided or modified by any amendment.
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as followsThe 10th Amendment states that
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.In this case, however, it was not necessary to give a power to the states by default. Article II, Section 1 explicitly said that the states have the power to choose their own electors, and there are only two limits on their power. This section determines how many electors there are, and it states that Electors cannot be a current Senator or Representative, or any other person holding an office of trust or profit. Any other person can be chosen by a state to be someone who casts a direct vote for the President of the United States.
The Electors
There are currently 438 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 100 U.S. Senators, not counting vacancies. This page on the website of the Clerk of the House of Representatives shows the vacancies in the House.The number of the Electors has gone up along with the number of the people who are members of the U.S. House of Representatives, but no matter how many people there are in the Electoral College, the Constitution requires that the President must be the person who has at least half of their votes.
During almost all of the previous elections in this country, one presidential candidate had a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. A majority is half of the total, plus one if the number of members is an even number. Half of 538 is 269. but 538 is an even number, so a majority of that group would be 270.
This is a link to a similar page on the website How Stuff Works.
This is a link to a similar page on the Wikipedia website.
This is the Electoral College page on the History Channel website.
The electors only perform one function, and they only do this once every four years. They vote directly for a combination of a President and a Vice-President. Their vote determines which combination will have all the executive power of the White House and all of the military power of the United States Commander-in-Chief. Most of the time, one candidate duo will have a majority of their votes, but if none of the presidential candidates have a majority of their votes, then under the terms of the 12th Amendment, the official members of the U.S. House of Representatives will make an immediate vote, without any time for campaigning.
The immediate vote process was explained earlier in the section about the 12th Amendment.
The 20th Amendment
This amendment was passed by Congress in March 1932 and was ratified by the states in January 1933, according to this page on the website of the National Constitution Center. It has six sections. The third section, whose text is on the page linked above, does modify what I refer to asLink to the 20th Amendment on the website of
| The Annenberg Classroom | The Legal Information Institute |
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As I said earlier, one election very early in American history followed the special procedure in the 12th Amendment that allows for the president to be chosen by a vote of the members of the U.S. House.
The 1824 election
In all of America's history, this second clause was used only once, because only one American presidential election (up until now) featured candidates who were close competitors to each other on Election Day. These are the first three paragraphs of this page on the History Channel website.As no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives votes to elect John Quincy Adams, who won fewer votes than Andrew Jackson in the popular election, as president of the United States. Adams was the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States.This is the last sentence of the third paragraph of the History Channel page.
In the 1824 election, 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president. Although it had no bearing on the outcome of the election, popular votes were counted for the first time in this election. On December 1, 1824, the results were announced. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won 99 electoral and 153,544 popular votes; John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts received 84 electoral and 108,740 popular votes; Secretary of State William H. Crawford, who had suffered a stroke before the election, received 41 electoral votes; and Representative Henry Clay of Kentucky won 37 electoral votes.
As dictated by the U.S. Constitution, the presidential election was then turned over to the House of Representatives. The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House.
"The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House."
This is another copy of the text of that second clause in the 12th Amendment.
"... and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."
In 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives chose the person with the 2nd highest number of Electoral College votes, John Quincy Adams.
The electoral results in 1824
These are the electoral votes that were recorded in 1824 and the first two sentences of the second paragraph of the History Channel website.
|
"In the 1824 election, 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president. Although it had no bearing on the outcome of the election, popular votes were counted for the first time in this election." |
As you can see, none of the four candidates received the necessary 131 electoral votes to be President under the conditions of the first clause of this amendment. The candidate who had the most votes didn't even get 100 votes, but 131 votes were necessary because that was "half-plus-one" of the total votes in the Electoral College.
Here is the text of the first clause of that very important sentence in the 12th Amendment.
"The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed ...."
The 1824 election had four presidential candidates. None of them had a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. 131 votes was a majority in that year, but the person who had the most Electoral College votes only got 99 Electoral College votes.
The reason why none of the presidential candidates received a majority of the Electoral College votes is interesting to historians. I will summarize the history of that election by saying that all four of these men were close competitors to each other.
It is also interesting to note that Andrew Jackson, the candidate who got the most Electoral College votes the first time they voted, was not the ultimate winner that year. During the voting by members of the U.S. House, they chose the 2nd place finisher, John Quincy Adams, to be the President.
This is the web page for President John Quincy Adams on the White House's website.
Summary of the 12th Amendment
It is the process that officially chooses the U.S. President. Part of this process is a vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to select a president if a certain condition is met. That condition is a lack of a majority vote by any of the presidential candidates, which can be thought of as a lack of support for any one presidential candidate over another presidential candidate.The 2016 election
The current poll results
In 2016, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are also close competitors to each other, but they are not the only candidates who will be on ballots in November.These two sentences are on the 2016 Presidential Candidates page of the Ballotpedia website. All of the links, including the clickable footnote, were on their page.
As of August 15, 2016, a total of 1,840 candidates had filed a Statement of Candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.[1] A full list of these candidates and their parties and filing dates can be found here.The top of this page mentions four major party candidates, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, and Gary Johnson. Remember, there were four candidates in 1824 also.
These are the first two paragraphs of an August 26, 2016 NewsMax article. The link was in their article.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are in a virtual tie, according to the USC Dornsife/LA Times tracking poll.As of late August, less than one percentage point separated the Republican nominee from the Democrat nominee in this "tracking poll", which samples the same group of 3,000 eligible voters over a long time period.
Trump owns the slight edge over Clinton: 44.3 percent to 43.6 percent.
These are the first two paragraphs of an August 28, 2016 Morning Consult article.
Donald Trump trails Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by only 3 percentage points in a new national poll from Morning Consult, shrinking a deficit that has alarmed GOP operatives who fear their unconventional nominee may harm the prospects of other Republican candidates on the ballot this fall.This is the second sentence of the second paragraph
In a survey taken Aug. 24 through Aug. 26, Trump halved the 6-point distance between himself and Clinton from the previous week’s poll. In the most recent head-to-head matchup, 43 percent of registered voters say they will vote for Clinton, and 40 percent say they will vote for Trump; 17 percent don’t know or have no opinion.
"In the most recent head-to-head matchup, 43 percent of registered voters say they will vote for Clinton, and 40 percent say they will vote for Trump; 17 percent don’t know or have no opinion."
I don't believe this writer. I think that third group of voters, 17% of the total, who are described by the writer as "don't know or have no opinion", do have an opinion which the writer does not wish to mention. Their opinion is that they don't like Hillary or Donald and will instead vote for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Evan McMullin, or someone else.
The Real Clear Politics website includes a page that shows the average of several recent polls that included the names of four candidates,, specifically the four candidates who are likely to receive the most votes. Their page shows
- the dates that the polling was performed,
- the name of the organization that conducted the poll,
- how many voters were sampled,
- whether these were "likely" voters or "registered" voters, and
- the votes for each of the four candidates.
The nominees of the Democrat Party and the Republican Party are both highly unpopular with voters, but they are equally unpopular. That means that they are both losing support to the candidates of other parties, including the Libertarian Party, whose presidential candidate is Gary Johnson, the Green Party, whose candidate is Jill Stein, and Evan McMullin, who was a Republican but is now an independent candidate, not a registered Republican or Democrat. This August 8, 2016 Politico article has more information about him.
According to that same page of the Real Clear Politics website, Gary Johnson has 8.3% of the vote, and Jill Stein has 2.7% of the vote.
Third-party candidates, especially former Governor Gary Johnson, have more support in 2016 than they have received in many other elections because so many Democrats dislike Hillary and so many Republicans dislike Donald.
The headline of this September 14, 2016 Wall Street Journal story is "Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson to Appear on Election Ballots in All 50 States". The sub-headline of the same story is "No third-party presidential ticket has qualified for all 50 state ballots since 1996".
Here are the first two paragraphs of that story. All of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s campaign said Tuesday that he will be on the ballot in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, marking the first time in two decades a third-party presidential ticket has appeared on every state ballot.
“With a majority of Americans wanting a choice other than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, today we now know for certain that on Election Day, every voter in America will have that alternative option,” Mr. Johnson said.
The story in a major-city newspaper
This section was added October 29, 2016.These are the first paragraphs of an October 29, 2016 Los Angeles Times story. The two links in the third paragraph were in their story.
If you think 2016 will stop being weird come Nov. 8, please look at your calendars: This whole election process actually lasts almost an additional two months beyond that, finally ending when Congress counts the electoral votes in early January. But just because it's been a weird year, that doesn't mean it has to end badly. There's reason to hope.
Consider independent write-in candidate for president Evan McMullin. He has virtually no chance of winning the election on Nov. 8, but he does have a shot at becoming president by the end of December.
It's a long shot. Very long. But if Mr. McMullin managed the greatest upset of all time, it would be a very good thing, and not just because so many of us would rather see someone other than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the White House.
If the vote in November agrees with the current poll results
The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says how the Electoral College operates. This is the actual process that will formally choose the next President of the United States. If one candidate can get more than 50% of the votes of the members of the Electoral College, then the first part of this grammatically complex sentence will be used to formally and legally declare the winner of the 2016 presidential race."The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed ...."
However, if Hillary and Donald both receive less than 50% of the votes of the members of the Electoral College, which is likely, given the current poll results for the polls that have four names in them, then the second part of the last grammatically complex sentence that I quoted earlier in this essay will be implemented.
"... and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."
A likely set of events in November
On the day that this essay is being published, it is likely that neither Hillary nor Donald will receive more than 50% of the popular votes.It is therefore likely that the U.S. House of Representatives will vote for the next President. Each member of that legislative body will receive one vote. U.S. Representative Paul Ryan is the Speaker of the House and will therefore be in command of the process.
According to the 12th Amendment, the members of the Electoral college can vote for any of the three candidates that received the most votes. Even though there are two major political parties in this country, and even though every president up until now was a member of one of the two major parties, those "electors" could legally choose a candidate from a minor party and make that person the next President.
On the day that this essay is published, Gary Johnson, the former Governor of New Mexico, is in 3rd place among the presidential candidates. He is likely to be the 3rd person who is eligible to be the next President if the House of Representatives makes the selection.
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate, could be the next President!
I don't want him to be President, but the Constitutional process that selects the President allows this to happen.
My preferred outcome
I want Senator Ted Cruz to be the next President. I said so, and I said why I want this outcome in this May 26, 2016 American Thinker article.There are several ways that this could happen. The Republican National Committee has several rules that determine the allowable actions of their members, including their Presidential Candidates. If they decide that Donald Trump has violated their rules, they have the legal ability to withdraw his name from the November ballot and to substitute another name.
It's also possible that a large percentage of America could write the name "Ted Cruz" onto their ballots. That is what I myself will do in November, with the approval of the U.S. Constitution and my town hall.
It's also possible that health problems, business problems (like a lawsuit against Trump University) or a hidden personal scandal, could force 70-year-old Donald Trump to drop out. He could even drop dead from a heart attack, a stroke, or because of a violent act committed by the hate group Black Lives Matter, which has already murdered police officers in several states and which continues to threaten to murder more police officers.
July 17, 2016 Gateway Pundit article.
September 5, 2016 article on Megyn Kelly's unofficial website.
Face the facts, please
The head-to-head polls are unimportant
As long as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are getting significantly less than 50% support in national four-person polls, then a procedure in the 12th Amendment, only used once in American history, is likely to be used this year.As of this publication date, Hillary was 8% away from her majority and Donald was 9.1% away from his majority.
This is a repeat of a Real Clear Politics page that shows the average of several recent polls of four presidential candidates. The top line in this chart shows the average poll results. Every time the results of a new poll are released, the average results will change.
Gary Johnson could be the next president.
It's not likely, but it is possible. He is likely to be the third name that will be a candidate for votes by the U.S. House of Representatives. |
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Evan McMullin could be the next president.
As I showed earlier in this essay, if the U.S. House of Representatives participates in the U.S. political process by selecting the next president, they will be allowed to vote for up to three names. If Evan McMullin, a presidential candidate who is not registered in any political party, can win one state, he would be eligible to be selected.Evan's biography, on his campaign website.
These are the first five paragraphs of an October 17, 2016 story in The Hill. All of the links in these paragraphs were in their article.
Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin is statistically tied with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the reliably red state of Utah, according to a new poll.
Trump (R) has 30 percent support among likely voters compared with McMullin’s 29 percent and Clinton’s (D) 28 percent in the survey from the right-leaning Rasmussen Reports out Monday.
Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson takes 5 percent, followed by Green Party nominee Jill Stein, with 1 percent.
Two percent of Utah’s likely voters support another White House hopeful, and 4 percent remain undecided.
Clinton and Trump are both deeply unpopular in the state. McMullin is seen more favorably but has less name recognition.
Please remember. In order for Evan to win the White House, he only has to meet two objectives.
- Win his home state of Utah
- Capitalize on the historically low popular support among Democrats for Hillary and among Republicans for Donald by asking for and then receiving the support of a majority of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives when they vote for the president under the terms of the 12th Amendment.
The Utah polls
This section was added November 1, 2016, one week before the official election day.The Real Clear Politics website includes this page that shows the average of the Utah statewide polls with five names being polled. Here are the five names and the average poll results, as of November 1st.
- Donald Trump, Republican, 31.3%
- Evan McMullin, independent, 25.3%
- Hillary Clinton, Democrat, 25.0%
- Gary Johnson, Libertarian, 7.2%
- Jill Stein, Green Party, 0.8%
I want to highlight one of these polls, which was conducted by Emerson College, located in Boston, Massachusetts, my home state.
Four new polls by Emerson College show Hillary Clinton increasing her favorability and her support in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Missouri while, in Utah, Evan McMullin leads Donald Trump by 4 points, 31% to 27%, with Clinton taking 24%.
There are people who want political and social chaos
This group of people includes Marxists.This is part of the text of an interview conducted with Karl Marx. The text was published in the Chicago Tribune on January 5, 1879 and reprinted on the website Marxists.org. The first paragraph is a question that was asked by a reporter whose name does not appear on the Marxist website. The full interview includes many questions and answers. The boldfaced words in the second paragraph were featured that way on the website.
“Well, then, to carry out the principles of socialism do its believers advocate assassination and bloodshed?”An election that features two major-party presidential candidates who can't get close to a majority of the vote of their own party is an election that is likely to have a violent outcome.
“No great movement,” Karl answered, “has ever been inaugurated Without Bloodshed.
“The independence of America was won by bloodshed, Napoleon captured France through a bloody process, and he was overthrown by the same means. Italy, England, Germany, and every other country gives proof of this, and as for assassination,” he went on to say, “it is not a new thing, I need scarcely say. Orsini tried to kill Napoleon; kings have killed more than anybody else; the Jesuits have killed; the Puritans killed at the time of Cromwell. These deeds were all done or attempted before socialism was born. Every attempt, however, now made upon a royal or state individual is attributed to socialism. The socialists would regret very much the death of the German Emperor at the present time. He is very useful where he is; and Bismarck has done more for the cause than any other statesman, by driving things to extremes.”
Violence has already occurred at some of Donald Trump's rallies during the primary season.
| The video on the right was uploaded to YouTube on March 12, 2016 by a British newspaper called the Telegraph. Link to a June 6, 2016 Huffington Post blog page titled Sorry Liberals, A Violent Response To Trump Is As Logical As Any |
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These people have been violent at Donald's rallies in the past, and they could be violent enough before November to try to assassinate him.
They could succeed, too. Robert "Bobby" Kennedy was the brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy. He was murdered while he was a presidential candidate in 1968.Link to the assassination page on the website Bobby-Kennedy.com
The Boston Globe published a story on November 24, 2013 titled Robert F. Kennedy saw conspiracy in JFK’s assassination.
If an individual or a group murders Donald Trump before November, another candidate would have to be chosen by the Republican National Committee, which is responsible for selecting the party's nominee in any presidential election.
Senator Cruz, who was a presidential candidate until he suspended his campaign on May 3, 2016, and who is my favorite presidential candidate, can legally return as a candidate if Donald is assassinated by any violent person or group.
It's also possible that the Republican National Committee could choose a different candidate, such as Senator Marco Rubio, Governor John Kasich, or Dr. Ben Carson. I would sleep easier with any of them being President than with Donald Trump being President, but the next President is likely to be a Republican, thanks to the actions of one Democrat who put the Republican Party in command of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.
Thank you, Barry Soetoro !
| That's his legal name, because he used it when he registered to vote in 2012. Barry Soetoro 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW Washington, D.C. 20500 "Barack Obama" is not his legal name. It is an alias, a knickname. |
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After that election, he said that elections have consequences.
| They certainly do, Barry. They certainly do. |
It was your socialist (if not Marxist) policies that forced Americans all over the nation to vote so enthusiastically for Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.
You insisted on forcing us to accept your socialist Obamacare law, written on thousands of pages with many hidden harmful features, just like a Trojan Horse.
You insisted that Congress vote to approve it before any of them had a chance to read and understand it.
You insisted that companies owned by your political friends, including union members, must have exemptions (officially called waivers) from the harsh requirements of this law.
October 7, 2010 USA Today story.
Even after the 2010 election was over, you and your Socialist Secretary of Health and Human Services insisted on punishing millions of Americans.
These are the first four paragraphs of a November 14, 2010 article on Michelle Malkin's website. "Waiver-mania! The ever-expanding Obamacare escapee list". All of the links in these paragraphs were in her article.
Let us briefly review the rapidly growing rolls of companies, unions, and states bursting out of the Obamacare escape hatch.This is the first sentence in the fourth paragraph.
In early September, I noted the push by Obamacare promoter and Democrat Rep. Ron Wyden for a special state waiver from the very federal mandate he advocated for everyone else.
A few weeks later, McDonald’s finagled its own Obamacare waiver after warning federal regulators that it could be forced to drop its affordable health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 restaurant workers unless it got a pass.
In early October, the Obama administration announced it had granted waivers not only to McDonald’s, but also to several other firms and labor unions.
Now comes word that Torquemada HHS Secretay Kathleen Sebelius has approved a whopping 111 waivers for businesses of all sizes, along with more unions and other providers of health insurance. The escapees include employers of many low-wage and part-time workers whose health insurance plans would otherwise be dropped, including Darden Restaurants — the parent company of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster and other chains, which employ some 34,000 people.
"HHS Secretay Kathleen Sebelius has approved a whopping 111 waivers for businesses of all sizes, along with more unions and other providers of health insurance."
May 16, 2011 Weekly Standard article. "Over Half of All Obamacare Waivers [were] Given to Union Members"
May 17, 2011 Daily Caller. "Nearly 20 percent of new Obamacare waivers are gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, [and] fancy hotels in Nancy Pelosi’s district"
January 6, 2012 article in The Blaze. "How Many Businesses Are Exempt? The Final Number of ‘Obamacare’ Waivers Is In…"
These are the first three paragraphs of a speech that was given by Speaker of the House John Boehner on the floor of the House of Representatives on September 30, 2013. The full transcript is on the website of the current Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.
The American people don’t want a shutdown and neither do I. I didn’t come here to shut down the government. I came here to fight for a smaller, less costly and more accountable federal government. But here we find ourselves in this moment dealing with a law that’s causing unknown consequences and unknown damage to the American people and to our economy. And that issue is ObamaCare.This is the first sentence in the second paragraph.
For those of you who don’t recall, it was passed in the middle of the night - 2,300 pages that no one had ever read - and it’s having all types of consequences for the American people, our constituents, having all kinds of consequences for employers. And as a result, over the last year or so, last couple of years, the president has given his friends in the labor unions some 1,100 waivers to this law. This summer, the president decided, well, we’re not going to enforce the employer mandate. Big employers around the country were all upset about having to make sure they provided health care for their employees, causing big problems. The result of all this is you’ve got employers all over the country who can’t hire people, who are cutting the hours of their workers. It’s having a devastating impact. Something has to be done.
So, my Republican colleagues and I thought we should defund the law for a year. We thought we should delay it for a year. Our friends over in the Senate don’t seem to want to go down that path. But I’m going to tell you what: this is an issue of fairness. How can we give waivers and breaks to all the big union guys out there? How do we give a break to all the big businesses out there, and yet stick our constituents with a bill that they don’t want and a bill they can’t afford? That’s what this fight’s all about.
"For those of you who don’t recall, it was passed in the middle of the night - 2,300 pages that no one had ever read - and it’s having all types of consequences for the American people, our constituents, having all kinds of consequences for employers."
Those "consequences" include the conversion of millions of full-time jobs into part-time jobs because employers must provide health benefits, at a huge cost to their budgets, for any person who works more than 30 hours per week.
November 18, 2013 Christian Science Monitor story. "Obamacare and you: Who is exempt from Obamacare? (+video)"
Op-Ed dated December 22, 2013 in Forbes, "Unions Get [a] Big ObamaCare Christmas Present As Other Self-Insured Groups Get Scrooged"
August 7, 2014 Fox News story. "Millions of uninsured Americans exempt from ObamaCare penalties in 2016, report finds"
October 9, 2014 NewsMax article. "Obamacare Forces Retailers to Drop Coverage"
Because of all this economic punishment, Americans all over the nation decided to punish Democrats again. This time, Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate in the 2014 election, so thank you, Barry.
America's punishment of Barry and his party didn't end, even after the 2014 election. These are the first three paragraphs of a November 10, 2015 story in The Hill.
The Democratic Party is abandoning support for the “Cadillac tax” in the healthcare reform law, leaving President Obama as one of the last defenders of the policy.These are the first three paragraphs of a June 29, 2014 article in Politifact.
The tax on “gold-plated” insurance plans was included in ObamaCare over the furious opposition of labor unions, who warned it would cause employers to abandon generous coverage in droves.
The tax is slated to take effect in 2018, but the movement against it is growing stronger, with Democratic leaders in Congress now joining all of the party’s leading presidential candidates in supporting repeal.
President Barack Obama received a strong rebuke from the Supreme Court last week for his attempt to make appointments when Congress was still technically in session.This is the first paragraph of a February 11, 2016 article, titled Obama’s Abysmal Record Before the Supreme Court, on the website of the Cato Institute. All of the links in this paragraph were in the article.
The 9-0 decision in National Labor Relations Board vs. Noel Canning came just as Speaker John Boehner announced plans to sue Obama for executive overreach.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who defended Boehner’s lawsuit, said the Supreme Court’s ruling was emblematic of Obama’s term. Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the "9-0 decision last week was the 13th time the Supreme Court has voted 9-0 that the president has exceeded his constitutional authority."
I’ve written exhaustively about this administration’s sheer statistical failure at the Supreme Court. It has the worst record of any modern presidency, whether you count in absolute won-loss – where the solicitor general’s office struggles to get to 50 percent, against a historical norm of 70 percent – or by unanimous losses alone.Link to a similar article, dated July 6, 2016, on the website of the Federalist Society.
The Republican majority in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate are a direct result of Obama's unwillingness to work cooperatively with Congress towards any of several mutually shared goals.
If Hillary Clinton is not the next president, that outcome will also be a direct result of Obama's unwillingness to work with Congress.
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