It's not just the diehard Berniecrats that believe that, in this close election, a write-in vote is not a protest vote if the goal is to earn an entire state's electoral votes. For example, Politico reported that another candidate is now aiming to use the Twelfth Amendment to deny both candidates the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Of course, the article wasn't about Sanders, but it did claim that Evan McMullin, a relatively unknown Independent had a real shot at the presidency.
"His dream is to block both major-party nominees from getting the 270 electoral votes needed to win — mathematically possible if he steals Utah's six electoral votes."
"Chris Krueger, a well-wired Washington analyst for the investment bank Cowen and Co., wrote in his 'DC Download' newsletter on Tuesday that McMullin is the key player in one of two 'not-impossible scenarios' that would throw the election into the House. Under what Krueger calls 'The Utah Scenario,' if McMullin takes Utah's six electoral votes, Clinton could wind up with 267 and Trump with 265, both short of 270."
That brings us to the next challenge thrown at the Deny 270 crowd. What if Bernie wins electoral votes, denies Trump and Clinton their wins, but doesn't want the job anymore? On October 14, after the write-in Bernie campaign had gone viral, Bernie told Bill Maher that he wished he was still running for the presidency, as the Inquisitr reported earlier. That aside, in the event that the decision is thrown to the house, Bernie can either accept the nomination of the people or refuse it. That's certainly up to him.
If he accepts it, the House will choose between Trump, Clinton, and Sanders. If he rejects it, they will choose between Trump and Clinton.
Sanders knows that he has the cleanest reputation of the lot. Would he be willing to let the House have only Clinton and Trump to choose from, if Clinton's reputation takes many more hits? Given that each state in the House would vote as a singular representative vote, Bernie, not Clinton, would have the only real chance of winning a state like Wyoming. Meanwhile, other blue states would look back at their primaries and caucuses. Bernie did better in the liberal states. He also did great in the current swing state of New Hampshire. See, in a House of Representative vote, states like Wyoming and New Hampshire would have as much of a vote as California. Both Clinton and Trump lost Wyoming miserably. Even the current House Democrats aren't as Clinton-loyal as, say, the Democratic superdelegates were, and the next House Democrats could be even more progressive.
See, while Bernie's supporters have been canvassing, phone-banking, face-banking, decorating freeway bridges in order to let people know that we really could have a President Sanders, and getting electors certified, Sen. Sanders has been busy working on a little thing Berniecrats call a "Brand New Congress." While Hillary and Trump have been throwing insults back and forth, Bernie Sanders was heavily promoting down ballot Progressives even before he lost his party's heavily rigged primary election.
Besides all that, though, Sanders knows how hard people have been working on the write-in campaign. It seems most likely that if he wasn't up for the job, he would have actually announced that he would reject any nomination before early voters could write him in, but he didn't.