False Hopes: A Contingent Election Won't Save us from Clinton or Trump

Some in America are looking for an easy way out of the 2016 election—a fact that is by no means surprising or even unwarranted. Unfortunately this has led to some bad ideas from Johnny-come-lately 3^rd party dreamers to Michael Graham’s “Stupid Simple” plan for a contingent election.  But this idea simply doesn’t hold up in light of realpolitik or historical context.

Simply put, Graham's plan is to convince millions of voters from seven or so various states to vote 3^rd party to deny Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump the necessary Electoral College votes to win the presidency. If this happens, then a contingent election would take place to determine the winner. After that Graham’s plan outlines this step:

“5. So then Congress votes…”¹

Ah, the catch—Congress. “Congress” being the House of Representatives in this case. This is the same Congress that Americans trust dead last behind big business, big banks, the justice system, and organized religion. Americans don’t trust Congress—begging the question of why they should trust this same Congress with the most important decision of the next four years. But Graham continues:

“Congress votes on the election and can choose from the top three electoral vote receivers…”¹

There is no evidence to suggest that Congress would pick anyone other than the leader in Electoral College votes. (The singular exception to this might be that the House would pick Clinton over Trump if Clinton was only slightly behind, but this is just a theory). Graham’s plan can only add Gary Johnson (the questionable Libertarian polling in the single digits) to the list of candidates the House has to choose from. Graham simply assumes the House would elect Johnson over Trump or Clinton and he offers no evidence for this assessment. Again, there is no reason to believe that Congress would pick the candidate the least amount of Americans voted for.

            “But history! John Quincy Adams won the 1824 contingent election as the underdog!” you might say. This being repeated is unlikely. Why did John Quincy Adams win the contingent election? The answer is simple: because the political elites in the House of Representatives loved Adams and hated his rival, Andrew Jackson. They wanted to deny Jackson the presidency and marginalize him and they did—at least temporarily. Arguably Gary Johnson does not have a majority of allies amongst the political elites in the House to help him repeat this feat.

            But history doesn’t end there. The election of 1824 caused Andrew Jackson and his allies to form their own party, the Democratic Party. Four years later Jackson crushed Adams in the Electoral College in 1828, and was reelected again in 1832 for back-to-back victories. Democrat domination of the Presidency would continue until 1856 with only two losses. And what of the political elites who had elected John Quincy Adams and shunned Jackson and his allies? These elites of the National Republican Party lost 28 seats the very next election (1828)—and kept losing seats over the next two elections. It turns out shunned voters remember things like contingent elections. 

            The takeaway relating to Graham’s scheme is three fold.
First, winning a contingent election takes either a majority of allies in the House or arguably a majority of voters supporting the candidate. Johnson has neither.

Second, Representatives who disenfranchise voters face severe consequences. The citizens who vote for Clinton or Trump also elect these representatives and ignoring those voters would be political suicide. In a contingent election Representatives (who also want to be reelected) will try to appease a majority of their voters.

Third, if by some miracle Gary Johnson were elected contingently it would likely be seen as Libertarian disenfranchisement of American voters (a “stolen election”)—much like Adams victory. This is an ironic position for libertarians—who generally champion the NAP—to use Congress to force America into a coercive Presidential relationship. If history is any guide, this would be a long term disaster for the Libertarian party. 

            Thus the “hand it to Congress” argument is a poor line of logic and Graham’s assumption that it will “save us from this dumpster fire” of an election is pure folly. All it can do is hand the election to an untrusted House of Representatives. His idea has caught on for one reason: America desperately wants out of the consequences of the decision it made for itself. His words promise hope for an alternative when in reality there is none. Sorry America, you don’t get off that easy. Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the next president. Next time, in January of 2020, read the hard news about your candidates, what their positions are, and what their poll numbers are. It will be much harder than taking a morally easy (but politically irrelevant) way out. This is the only way to avoid so-called “dumpster fire” elections: by being realistically engaged through the entire process and stopping them before they start. Perhaps then we can stop playing board games and rolling the dice with our government and start making active and informed choices like we should have during the primaries.

           

(Author’s Note: for the sake of clarity I refer to the contingent election as being in 1824, when in reality it took place early in 1825.)