We must speak of contingencies in the presidential election year of 2016 because it has already been so strange.
The Donald Trump phenomenon. A Sherman-esque non-candidacy by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. A third--party candidacy. And efforts to court Mitt Romney or Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., are prime examples.
Certainly a third party could prevent the Democratic or Republican presidential nominees from earning an absolute majority to win in the electoral college.
This is a primer for a contingency, which hasn’t unfolded in American political history in 191 years. It might not happen this round, either but just consider the past year in politics.
The country’s founding fathers feared a direct, “popular” election of the president. So while the founders erected a system for eligible voters to cast ballots for president, they also simultaneously constructed an astonishing three safety valves to potentially curb the will of the masses, diffusing political power when selecting a chief executive.
Creating the electoral college was the first circuit-breaker. The founders distributed “electoral votes” based on the population of each state...
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/14/in-strange-election-cycle-electoral-college-deciding-who-s-president-must-be-mentioned.html
