With the March 8 presidential primary contests in the books, it’s looking more and more likely that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. He now has 458 delegates, 99 more than Ted Cruz. Betting markets give Trump a 67 percent chance of winning the nomination.
Yet, in a recent CNN poll, 48 percent of Republicans who don’t currently support Trump said they probably wouldn’t vote for him. There is a growing contingent of conservatives who say they would never support Trump. Some have floated the idea of running a conservative candidate as an independent or seeking a third party nomination.
Here’s an alternative, long-shot proposal.
Take a Republican candidate, like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or even Mitt Romney. Run one of them in a handful of deep-red states, but only those states. It’s important deliberately to avoid getting on the ballot in a typical swing state. Technically, the candidate needs to win only one state, but the plan is more likely to succeed if he wins more. When electoral votes are split enough that neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton have a majority, Congress gets to decide the winner from the top three vote-getters in the electoral college.
Let’s go over this in detail. Pretend Ted Cruz is the chosen candidate to run against Trump as the GOP nominee and Clinton as the Democratic nominee. Let’s put Cruz on the ballot in his home state of Texas and the 11 other states Mitt Romney won in 2012 with more than 60 percent of the vote (after rounding). In theory, those states should be easier for Trump or Cruz to win, without splitting the GOP vote so far that Clinton would take the state’s electoral votes. If Cruz were on the ballot in every state, Cruz and Trump would probably split the GOP vote, turning swing states into Clinton states and the election into a Clinton landslide.
Those 12 states add up to 107 electoral votes. Let’s say Cruz wins 76 of those votes. Let’s say Trump takes all of the remaining Romney states, as well as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Let’s also say Clinton takes the remaining states President Obama won in 2012. That leaves the electoral college at Clinton (252 electoral votes), Trump (210) and Cruz (76).
With all three candidates short of the required majority (270), the election turns to Congress. As the 12th Amendment to the Constitution reads, “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.”
Then, the process gets a little wonky. It’s not as simple as one vote per member. The congressional delegation from each state gets one vote: “in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; … a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.” Instead of having 435 votes, there are only 50.
The good news for Republicans: 33 states currently have a majority of Republicans in their congressional delegation. Clinton would have little chance of winning a presidential election decided by Congress. Cruz isn’t exactly loved by Congress, but he does have 24 endorsements from the House of Representatives. Trump has only four. Rubio has 48, if he’s your preferred candidate for this kooky idea.
This plan has its downsides. The independent candidate would not be able to participate in the presidential debates. The debates require candidates to be on enough ballots to win a majority vote in the Electoral College, and this strategy deliberately involves not being on that many ballots.
The independent candidate would also have to go through the awkward experience of opposing the Republican political machine. If Trump is the Republican nominee, all of the party’s funding and organization would back him.
There’s also the issue of ballot requirements. For this plan to work, the Republican running as an independent would have to make a special effort to get on the ballot in the several desired states, as opposed to automatically qualifying as a Republican. In some states, these requirements are trickier than in others. In Texas, for example, an independent candidate has to get an adequate number of signatures from people who did not already vote in the Republican or Democratic primary. The independent candidate would also have to contend with filing deadlines.
This scenario probably isn’t going to happen. But it’s a fun thought experiment. If someone like Romney or Rubio wanted to try, it might be feasible if he started in the next month. He could always start the process now and drop out later if polling shows success isn’t in the cards.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
