I was just reading an editorial about the Electoral College system and how close this election is. It raised one pesky question but did not answer it. How do you resolve a tie in the Electoral College vote? I seem to recall that it would then be put to a vote in the House of Representatives. If so, do the newly elected Representatives do the voting?
From the 12th Ammendment:
Looks like the current members of the House do the choosing.
The House votes for the President and the Senate votes for Vice President. They can vote for whoever they want. It is voted on by state.
I knew the answer to that one but what does the college do if there is an absolute tie in the popular vote for a particular state? For instance, what happens is tied between Gore 2,822,321 to Bush 2,822,321? Could happen!
What I meant to say was:
What happens if the popular vote in Florida is tied between Gore 2,822,321 to Bush 2,822,321? Could happen!
There are no provisions in the Constitution for a popular vote tie. (Of course, the Constitution didn’t expect there to be a popular vote.) If there were a tie (and that would mean it might take months to determine it, with recounts and challenged ballots), and that tie made a difference in the electoral vote, it would be a thorny legal issue.
My guess is that the state of Florida would not cast any electoral votes, and the candidate with the majority of the rest would be declared the winner – though that would create even more lawsuits.
The final result might take years to determine. The winner of the truncated electoral college vote would probably have a stronger claim to office, but who knows?
NARA has part of the answer, but it isn’t specific to any one state:
http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/faq.html#tie
Well, that certainly takes a new light considering the view that the Constitution is a living document.
What about the possibility of the Florida State Legislature voting for the electoral votes? Don’t know if that is the legal avenue but it makes sense to me.
Obviously it has to be a tie of Electoral votes, not popular votes, before it goes to the House. But the ultimate question is who is the ultimate tiebreaker. If the House vote by state is 25-25, who casts the tiebreaker there, the Speaker of the House? Would it go to the Senate? If there’s a tie in the Senate, does the Vice President get to cast the deciding vote?
States all have rules regarding what happens when there is a tie in an election. Some flip a coin. Others hold a new election.
If an entire state tied on its vote for president, someone would have had to do some fudging of the votes. Both parties would ask for a recount and it would be watched over very, very, very closely.
If the vote to decide the president goes to the House of Representatives and the states tie 25-25, they vote again. And again. And again. There is no tiebreaker in this situation. Some state has to break ranks.
That’s what happened in 1800 with Jefferson and Burr. Finally, some states (with the prodding of Alexander Hamilton) went over to Jefferson, whom Hamilton regarded as the lesser of two evils.
In the present House, the Republicans have a slight edge in the majority of the 50 state delegations.
There are 25 majority Republican delegations, 19 Democrats, 1 state which has one independent (Vermont’s Bernie Sanders), 1 state which has 5 Dems, 5 Reps, 1 Ind, and 1 vacancy (Virginia), and 4 states which are evenly split.
I don’t think that even if the House goes Democratic that the number of states having Republican majorities would change much.
It is the NEW Congress (taking office January 3) that will certify the Electroal vote and would be called on to vote for Pres. if no candidate gets a majority.
Actually, I ran across a little known section of the 12th Amendment that states that the electoral college tie breaker will now follow the same procedures as the NFL does in deciding playoff spots.
BobT,
There are some threads that actually aren’t about sports.
I would say that the electoral college survived a worse crisis - the Hayes / Tilden election. There, you had 4 states with disputed results, whose total was, indeed, enough to sway the election (allowing Hayes to win by one vote if he got them all). That was settled by a fifteen person committee that, in the end, gave all the votes to Hayes by an 8-7 vote exactly along party lines.
I am aware of that. I thought I would get more credit for figuring out the composition of the 50 state delegates 
Anyway, when I examined them I wondered. Would the representatives vote their party or would they feel that they have to vote the way their state did.
E.g., Texas has more Democratic reps than Republicans. Tennessee has more Republicans than Democrats.
Illinois is split 10-10 and I would hate to see the infighting there as someone tried to make a decision.
In voting to break the tie, representatives could vote however they please, but I would expect them to vote along party lines.
Note: in the Senate, they vote individually, not by delegation, but it probably wouldn’t make any difference. Assuming a party-line vote, the same person would be elected VP whether the vote was individual or by delegation.
One aspect of the tie breaker is that the new president and vice-president could be of different parties! For instance, there could be more Republican dominated delegations in the House, while the Democrats could take a majority in the Senate. That would make for an interesting administration…
To answer mavpace, the Florida popular vote wouldn’t matter. I think we could expect the representatives to vote along party lines.
As Bob T notes, Texas has more Democratic representatives than Republican. I think we can expect Bush to carry his home state; but, if the election were thrown to the House, the Democratics in the delegation would likely give the state to Gore.