{"id":25914,"date":"2016-10-08T00:14:42","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T05:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=25914"},"modified":"2016-10-08T13:34:53","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T18:34:53","slug":"what-happens-if-trump-drops-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2016\/10\/what-happens-if-trump-drops-out\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens if Trump Drops Out?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Donald_Trump_-_Caricature\"<\/a>What happens if Donald Trump drops out of the presidential race?\u00a0 Some Republican politicians have begun to call on Mr. Trump to step down as the Republican nominee for President (he cannot be forced out).\u00a0 If this happens, the Republican Party would then select a new nominee for President.<\/p>\n

It might be conceivable for Donald Trump to voluntarily step down, and for the Republican Party to select an alternative nominee.\u00a0 However, the real issue is whether the name of the alternative nominee would appear on the ballots of a sufficient number of states to permit an Electoral College victory.\u00a0 At this late date in the election cycle, the names of presidential candidates on absentee ballots have already been finalized\u00a0in many states.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, early absentee voting using the final ballots\u00a0already is underway in Wisconsin and many other states such as California, Ohio and Indiana.\u00a0 Every day, more state deadlines for placing\u00a0names on the ballot pass,\u00a0and it is probably already too late to prevent Donald Trump’s name from appearing as the Republican nominee on a majority of the ballots used by states across the country.\u00a0\u00a0To get state officials to print new ballots\u00a0and then allow re-voting of ballots already turned in would require 1) litigation in state courts across the country and 2) the willingness of a large number of these state court judges\u00a0to adopt an unprecedented procedure based upon vague “emergency” arguments.\u00a0 Such a high stakes multi-state litigation effort would make the combative Bush v. Gore<\/em> lawsuit look like a law school moot court competition in comparison.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One possibility, if Donald Trump steps down, is for the Republican Party to\u00a0urge voters to select\u00a0Trump’s name on the ballot, while promising that\u00a0the\u00a0electors in the Electoral College who get\u00a0selected as a result\u00a0would in actuality\u00a0cast their Electoral College votes for an alternative nominee.\u00a0 In other words, “vote for Trump and get Pence (or Cruz or Rubio).”\u00a0 The difficulty with this strategy is that\u00a0many states have laws requiring electors to cast their vote in the Electoral College for the actual person named on that state’s ballot.\u00a0 If these electors follow their state’s law, there probably wouldn’t be enough Electoral College votes available for\u00a0the Trump alternative to win.\u00a0 Some have argued that these state laws violate the U.S. Constitution, and that electors are free under the Constitution to vote their conscience.\u00a0 However, it would take a\u00a0lawsuit in federal court to secure a ruling to that effect, and without\u00a0Justice Scalia anchoring a 5-vote conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court it is hard to envision any federal court adopting this argument.\u00a0 Would a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals really make such a consequential ruling, given the current deadlock on the high court and the knowledge that its ruling would be final?<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, the reason why both of these scenarios to replace Trump as the nominee are longshots is that both require judges to throw out existing procedures under state law while in the midst of an election campaign.\u00a0 Judges should hesitate to change the rules in the middle of an election, just because one political party finds itself at\u00a0a disadvantage under the existing law.\u00a0 Donald Trump is the nominee chosen by\u00a0the Republican Party, and it is not the job of the judiciary to ameliorate the consequences of that selection.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What happens if Donald Trump drops out of the presidential race?\u00a0 Some Republican politicians have begun to call on Mr. Trump to step down as the Republican nominee for President (he cannot be forced out).\u00a0 If this happens, the Republican Party would then select a new nominee for President. It might be conceivable for Donald […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[126,111,68,44,122,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitutional-law","category-election-law","category-judges-judicial-process","category-political-processes-rhetoric","category-public","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}