Ok, assume that when all these votes are tallied that one candidate doesn’t get the 270 EC votes needed. It then gets thrown to the House to decide the Presidency and the Senate to decide the Veep slot. I have 2 questions.
What happens to Joe Lieberman’s seat? Does he get to vote for himself? It’s the new congress that decides and they usually convene before inauguration. His seat wouldn’t yet be vacant because he wasn’t appointed Vice President.
The Senate looks like it may be a tie. I know the votes are done by state so what happens if both the house and senate can’t come up with a winner?
IIRC Lieberman also ran for his Senate seat again. Did he win that? If so then either way he is the sitting Senator and the Senator-Elect for his state so yes…he’d be able to vote. If Lieberman lost his Senate seat then I don’t know how it’d work.
If the Senate ties on a vote the VP casts the tie-breaker. Al Gore would cast the deciding vote (and there’s no-issue of a VP-Elect because he doesn’t exist till the vote is made).
Lieberman’s senate seat was up for election. He won. It looks like he might keep it.
The House vote for a presidential run-off is by state. But the Senate vote for the VP is a simple majority, not dictating that senators from the same state vote the same.
Yes. When the new Senate meets on January 7, Joe Leiberman will be one of the senators from Conn. Therefore, he can vote for himself. He does not have to resign his senate seat until he becomes Vice President.
That’s a good question. You could argue that as of January 7, Gore will still be the Vice President. However, I wonder what was done in years past. Did the old VP preside over the senate from the time the Senate convened until the 20th, or did the Senate elect a President pro-tempore until the 20th??
The House of Representatives picks the President, and the Senate picks the Vice-President. Yes, Lieberman could vote for himself. If the Senate split really is 50/50, there would have to be a noble gesture (or at least some Hayes-esque back-room deal) to get the question resolved - presumably then the Senate would wait for the House to get the President picked, then vote for his running mate in the national interest.
This is a moot point now as there isn’t going to be a tie. However, most political pundits said there weren’t sure who would vote to break a tie in the Senate when it was choosing the VP.
My personal belief is that it wouldn’t come up. I imagine that the Senate would delay action until the House chose a president. The Senate would only go ahead and choose a vice president first if it looked like it was hopelessly deadlocked.