The United States, picks its president with
the Electoral College, 538 votes distributed by population (mostly) to the 50 States and
DC. To become president you need to win a majority
of those votes. But, 538 is an even number, so what happens
when the race for president is tied? Don't worry, there's an 18th century solution
to the problem: if the Electoral College is tied, the House of Representatives breaks
that tie. As the name implies, the House is filled with
representatives from each of the states. The more people in a state, the more Representatives
it has and their are 435 in total -- thankfully an odd number and guaranteed tie breaker...
except there's a catch: each representative doesn't get one vote, it's each *State* that
gets one vote. So, Florida's 27 representatives have to decided
amongst themselves who to support before casting Florida's one vote to help break the tie. Meanwhile, thinly-populated Alaska's sole
representative, has only to consult himself before casting Alaska's vote. This is an incredibly disproportionate system
because just ten states, California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina contain more than half the population of the
United States but get only 20% of the votes if the race for president is tied and the
other 40 states with less than half the population get 80% of the votes. While an exact tie is unlikely, this system
is also used if they're more than two candidates for president and none of them gets a majority
in the Electoral College. Which is exactly what happened when four candidates
ran for president in 1824. Andrew Jackson got the most votes from Americans
and the most votes in the Electoral College, but not a majority, so the race was turned
over to the House of Representatives voting as states who picked John Quiny Adams instead. In a modern America with more states a three-way
race can have horrifically disproportionate results: consider a third-party candidate
who the loves the small states and who the small states love in return. He gets the fewest Electoral College votes,
but enough to ensure that neither of the two more popular candidates get a majority so
now the House decides the winner -- and those 26 smallest states representing just 17% of
the population can pick their man as president even though 83% of Americans didn't vote for
him. It's unlikely, but it really shouldn't even
be possible. Anyway, all this talk of presidents has left
the Vice President unmentioned: a reasonable person might assume, just comes along with
the President, but no. When there's a tie the *Senate* independently
picks the Vice President so the United States, could end up with a President from one party
and with a Vice President from the another, which might make for some very uncomfortable
meetings. But even this crazy system for resolving a
tie isn't guaranteed to work because are 100 members of the senate and in the House of
Representatives they're forced to vote as 50 states and many of those states have10
or 8 representatives making the whole system tie-tackular with all of those even numbers. So if the House can't pick the president but
the Senate has picked the Vice President then the Vice President becomes acting president
until the House can make up its mind. But if neither the House can pick the president
nor the Senate can decide the Vice President then the speaker of the House becomes president
until either branch of congress picks *someone*. So this systems is how the United States would
resolve a tied race for president, though it might be faster (and more fair) to just
flip a coin. Of course you could just get rid of the electoral
college, and thus this whole crazy system, and instead have a national vote, perhaps
even with something fancy like preferential voting, maybe that's just a crazy idea.
You know, all this makes me wish that the framers of the Constitution would've just made it easier on themselves and all of us if they had made it so in the event of a tie or no one getting a majority, the popular vote would be the tie breaker.
So doesn't this mean Tom James would only be "acting president" until the House picked?
Unless the House picks Tom and the Senate picks Selina, which may be possible.
Damn, a big electoral reform is needed. What a mess.
It's already scandalous that a president can win without winning the popular vote (Bush in 2000).