My question is: What if Gore or Bush didn’t get enough of the required electoral votes?
besides the fact that then we’d know the public had started getting smarter
As per the Constitution, the House would decide who was elected. The voting in this is a little weird; you tally the votes from each rep for a single state, and whomever has the most votes wins that state. The winner of the election is the first person to get a majority of states to vote for them.
Assuming a straight party-line vote, I think that means that George W. would win (the Congress doing the voting is the current session, not the one that will be sworn in based upon the 2000 elections, so it doesn’t matter who wins Congress in November).
Even without Nader or Buchanan taking a single electoral vote, it’s theoretically possible for there to be a 269-269 tie, which would result in Congress having to decide the winner.
Interesting anecdote:
In a school board election (somewhere in Kansas, IIRC) nobody voted…not even the candidate, who was running unopposed. The board appointed somebody else.