November Tie?
You wake up on November 5th, 2008 to the news that Barrack Obama and John McCain have ended the night before in an electoral deadlock. Both having just 269 electoral votes and both lacking the one vote needed to seat them in the White House. Impossible you say? Not quite according to at least a half dozen different scenarios laid out by the Washington Times.
giving each candidate the states in which they now lead in the polls, only New Hampshire - which went Republican in 2000 and Democratic in 2004, each time by just 1.5 percent - needs to swap to the Republican column to wind up with a 269-269 tie.
Were such a thing to actually happen, Congress becomes the electorate… voting in the House for their candidate, followed by a vote in the Senate hopefully ending in a President-elect.
They took things a step farther in dreaming up several post electoral tie nightmare scenarios… what if there is a split vote in Congress? With a 50/50 tie in the Senate, the final tie breaker vote that would elect a President falls into the lap of Dick Cheney which would more than likely land John McCain as our next President.
Then they bring up the fact that alongside the Presidential election, we’re facing Congressional elections as well and the results of those, could muddy up the process even more… pushing a final Congressional decision beyond January 20th with a failure to pick a clear winner for the Presiden OR the VP. I shudder when I think about it, but if such a scenario were to actually play out… Nancy Pelosi would be the acting President of the United States until a decision is made.
I love political election games personally… but however interesting an electoral tie could play out to be I would really rather such a scenario NOT play out on the country at this time.
How would you react?
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In the event of an Electoral College tie the House of Representatives would pick the new president. Each congressional delegation gets one vote. Since there is a solid majority of blue states in the House Obama would probably be elected president under this scenario.
The VP is then elected in the Senate, each Senator gets one vote and a majority of votes is needed. If the Republicans can get 50 seats, or if they get to 49 and Joe Lieberman votes for Sarah Palin, then there will be a tie in the vote for VP. As the sitting VP, Dick Cheney then gets to break the tie.
And so, we could very well have President Obama and Vice President Palin in the White House.