On Thursday evening, a Twitter account for vice.run promoted a video message to Utahns, thanking them for their support of an independently elected vice president of the United States.
“This makes Utah the first of the 50 states to gather the pledges required to get an independent vice president on the ballot in 2020,” San Francisco businessman and vice.run founder David Blake says in the video. “We are on our way.”
If you’ve never heard of Blake — a Utah native and Brigham Young University alumnus — or his push to directly, and separately, elect the nation’s vice president, you’re not alone. Justin Lee, the state’s elections director, said Friday he was unaware of vice.run’s efforts prior to being shown the tweet.
What’s more, Lee said, current state law appears to impede a candidate for vice president from being independently listed on the Utah ballot.
“I just don’t know what mechanism they would be using to even put a vice presidential candidate on the ballot without a presidential candidate,” Lee said.
Presidential candidates and their running mates are typically listed as a single ballot item, with voters indicating their support for a joint ticket. That is both tradition and law in Utah, Lee said, with the state elections office either requiring presidential candidates to designate a running mate, or requiring a vice presidential candidate to demonstrate they are the chosen running mate of someone seeking the presidency.
Unaffiliated presidential candidates who lack the nomination of a recognized party must submit 1,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot, Lee said. But even if vice.run got 1,000 Utahns to add their names to a vice-presidential candidate’s petition, he said, their candidate would likely be disqualified.
“Pledges don’t really hold any legal weight,” Lee said.
Andrew Sullivan, a campaign strategist for vice.run, clarified that Blake is not seeking the vice presidency in 2020. The campaign’s Utah pledges are a “proof of concept,” Sullivan said, representing 1,000 voters who have indicated their potential support for a hypothetical candidate.
Sullivan said vice.run hopes to build similar levels of support in other states with the aim of persuading elections administrators to list independent vice presidential candidates as a stand-alone ballot item.
“The point is to prove public interest and public support for this concept," Sullivan said. “As we build up support for this, candidates will emerge.”
But beyond ballot access is the issue of the Electoral College, which selects the nation’s president and vice president based on the election outcomes in the 50 states. When voters cast their ballot, they indicate their support for a candidate’s electors, rather than the actual candidate.
Originally, the presidential candidate with the second-highest number of Electoral College votes became the nation’s vice president. That process changed in 1804 with the ratification of the 12th Amendment, which created a distinct Electoral College vote for the vice presidency and launched the tradition of a running mate.
Lee, the Utah elections director, said there are some untested ambiguities within the rules of the Electoral College — like how the unlikely win of a write-in presidential candidate would be addressed — and that it’s unclear how an independent candidate for vice president would fit into that process if he or she gained ballot access and the majority vote in one or more states.
But it’s a question for other states, as that type of candidate can’t be on the ballot in Utah.
“You’d just be out of luck,” Lee said.
The vice.run website includes legal analyses outlining why the campaign believes itself to be on solid constitutional ground. And Sullivan said the campaign is not ruling out litigation settle those questions in court and compel states to qualify independent candidates.
“That’s something that we’ll need to keep in our back pocket as a possible strategy,” he said. “We certainly want to be prepared for any outcome.”
He said the ultimate goal of electing an independent vice president is to break through the partisan gridlock of Washington, D.C. The vice presidency is an important, constitutional office, he said, with the power to cast a tiebreaking vote in the Senate and bridge the executive and legislative branches of government.
But Sullivan said the vice president’s role has transformed into a figurehead or behind-the-scenes operative by linking it to the presidency.
“Turn the VP over to the people,” he said, “and it’s a new ballgame.”
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