For two years, No Labels has said unequivocally that we would only offer our ballot line to a Unity ticket if we believed it had a path to outright Electoral College victory (270 votes). Whenever we say that, we often receive some version of this follow up question:
But what happens if no candidate gets to 270 on Election Day? Doesn’t the election then inevitably get thrown to the House of Representatives?
In fact, that’s the question I got asked during a December 20th media briefing.
But the answer to this question is no. The next key step after Election Day in November is not the U.S. House meeting in January; it’s the meeting of the Electoral College in December. At that meeting, it is possible and legal for some electors to vote for a candidate other than the candidate who won their state. In fact, it’s happened over 100 times before. That means a presidential candidate could theoretically negotiate to give their electoral votes to another candidate to get them over 270.
That’s just a fact about how the process works. But as I said during the December 20th briefing – and as reported by NBC – “One thing I really want to clarify: This is not No Labels’ plan. This is not No Labels’ strategy.” And it never has been.
Of course, this hasn’t stopped the people at Third Way – a ringleader of the increasingly unhinged campaign against No Labels – from peddling the lie that No Labels’ plan all along has been to throw the election to the Electoral College. They wrote a memo making this claim in October, and we’ve been swatting it away ever since. In their memo, they cited an interview I did with Michael Smerconish in May where I fielded the same question about what happens if no presidential candidate wins 270 electoral on Election Day.
You can see my response here from the 3:53-4:53 mark and see for yourself how Third Way’s claim that No Labels’ is “planning on triggering a contingent election” depends on deliberately lying about what I said.
None of this, of course, will dissuade Third Way and their other conspirators from backing off their campaign to deny American voters a choice they clearly want in 2024. If you missed it, check out the Semafor story, in which they brag about how they intend to destroy the reputation of citizens who support No Labels and will threaten candidates interested in joining our ticket by coming at them “with every gun we can possibly find.” It’s amazing how a group that claims to oppose Trump increasingly acts just like him.
Fortunately, they aren’t our audience – voters are. And No Labels couldn’t be happier with the response we are getting from across the country.
Over 1,000,000 of them have now signed petitions to get No Labels on the ballot.
There are a lot more where that came from.
