It is a hypothetical, and a lot of the numbers say achieving a 269-269 tie would be mathematically difficult… but just suppose.
It is my understanding that such an election would be thrown to the House of Representatives. Each state’s delegation gets one vote. And since Republicans tend to carry more of the small states it seems likely Romney would take it.
IIRC, its the incoming Congress that votes in the event of a tie. So in the extremely unlikely event that there was a tie in the Electoral College but the Dems cleaned up in House races, Obama could be President.
But realistically, the majority of House delegations would still be majority GOP in the next Congress, so a tie would result in President Romney.
And to add to the fun… in the even of a tie the Senate elects the VP. If the Dems hold they could elect VP Biden… or could they change the candidate and elect a VP Obama?
They need to choose from the two people with the highest number of votes in the Electoral College for VP, which presumably would mean a choice between Biden and Ryan.
In retrospect, its kind of silly to have an even number of Electors. Increasing the size of the House by one would make this scenario much more unlikely.
How do we have an even number of electors? The size of the HoR is fixed by law at 435 members.
DC has 3 electors and zero representatives.
By…CHANGING the law?
Unless I’m misremembering, each state gets a single vote in the case of a tie in a presidential election, meaning that there are 50 electors.
Your misremembering. Each state gets a number of electors equal to its congressional delegation (so, two for their senators plus however many for their Reps). So the total used to be 435 (number of Reps) + 100 (number of senators) = 535. An odd number.
Then DC was given three electors, which would be the size of its Congressional delegation if it had a Congressional Delegation. Thus 538 electors. An even number.
In the event that no one Candidate gets a majority of electors, the incoming House of Reps votes, with each state getting one vote. So in that case there are 50 “votes”, which may be what you were thinking of.
As you can see by my edited comment, I thought he was talking about something else.
No, there’s no chance of Obama getting elected by the House of Representatives if there’s a 269-all outcome. It’ll be President Romney.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/08/30/mitt_romneys_one-vote_edge_115269.html says:
Here’s a question for you though: how is the VP selected if the Senate has a 50-50 split?
I suppose the current vice president would have to break the tie.
Just in case…538 has the odds of an electoral vote tie at 0.3%.
Does he still hold the office of vice president when Congress meets to tally the electoral college vote?
Yes. He’s the one that certifies the vote, so he’s not only still in office but physically present when the electors votes are tallied.
The new Congress meets on Jan 6th to certify the Presidential results, the old VP and Pres leave office (and their replacements take office) on Jan 20th.
I’m pretty sure he’s vice president until a new vice president is sworn in.
He holds the office until the new one is sworn in.
ETA: ninja’d.
Although, now I’m wondering whether the vice president has a tie-breaking role in this situation.
Vice President Biden’s current term expires on January 20, 2013. Pretty sure any putative HoR presidential elections would take place well in advance of this.