Let’s give the parties a mulligan

With each of our dominant political parties apparently on course – albeit reluctantly – to nominate a presidential candidate whom polls say Americans do not want to reinstall in the Oval Office, it’s time to consider a way to avoid a potential electoral debacle.

It might be avoided naturally, if either of the disliked but likely potential candidates were to drop out . . . which seems unlikely.  The emergence of a viable third party candidate might result in none of the candidates receiving the majority electoral college vote necessary for election and thus refer the contest to the House of Representatives for resolution.  Because that body would not be limited to choosing between the candidates on the ballot, a reasonable individual might be selected . . .  but odds are, a president resulting from that messy process would not be accepted as legitimate by enough citizens to be able to unify the nation and govern effectively.

Therefore, it’s reasonable to consider a do-over by giving our political parties what in golfing is called a mulligan – another shot when the previous one was poorly played. 

This could be done by changing our election laws to require that the ballot for every federal office contain a None of the Above choice.  And if that won, the office would remain vacant until a new election were held something like 90 days out.  The rejected candidates would be ineligible for listing on ballots in the new election.  Each of the contending political parties thus would have an opportunity to nominate an eligible new (and hopefully acceptable) candidate.

In the case of the presidency, the amended election law should provide for the executive function in the intervening period to be exercised jointly by the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, with any deadlock being resolved by the sitting governor of whichever state had the lowest percentage difference in the votes cast for the two rejected top candidates. 

Similar provisions could be made for filling vacant House and Senate seats resulting from None of the Above victories in elections for those positions or they could be left to the states, leaving them free to adopt, test, and experiment with various possible courses of action. 

The time for action is nigh as an overwhelming majority of the people understand that our major political parties seemed to be doomed to limiting our presidential choices to two dreadful alternatives.

Image: Descrier, via Flickr // CC BY 2.0