As this recently updated article discusses, while extremely unlikely, given the way this timeline is going it’s possible the electoral college ends in a tie. Nate Silver projects this as a .3% possibility.
Things to think about:
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Only about half of the states require their electors to vote for the person that won their state. Who are the electors? Generally no one you know.
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If there’s a tie, the House elects a president and the Senate elects a VP. Sub-consideration: it is the composition of the House and Senate after the November election that makes those determinations.
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This would all technically be decided on January 6th. And you remember how that went last time.
Regardless, it’s highly unlikely this will happen. Still, this would be utter and complete madness. There is literally a non-zero chance we have a Trump/Harris administration. 🤣
The dems really need to focus on getting rid of the electoral college. It has cost them too many elections where they have won the popular vote.
It can’t really be removed because it’s part of the Constitution. That would take an amendment and the bar for doing that is just too high right now.
There is an alternate plan for states to just agree to cast their EC votes for whoever the national popular vote winner is, but that plan doesn’t kick in until enough states agree that total to 270.
Currently sitting at 209:
You never know until you try. I mean look at Republicans — they’ve been beating the anti-abortion drum since Phyllis Schlafly. And now abortion has been made illegal. Maybe the dems should at least start talking about it rather than just accepting defeat.
An amendment starts with 290 votes in the House, a body who can’t even get a simple 218 vote majority to decide who their own leader is. 290 is out of reach.
If, by some miracle, they get that, then it needs 67 votes in the Senate, a body blocked by a 60 vote filibuster requirement.
Assuming they somehow get both of those, it then goes to the states for ratification.
You need 38 states, and since the losers of the popular vote have all been Republicans, that means getting all 25 Biden states from 2020 + 13 Trump states.
Even then, the base of 25 states isn’t guaranteed as only 19 of them have Democratic state houses. So now you may need as many as 19 Trump states?
So, yeah, an Amendment is not in the cards. Flip it around, let’s say the Republicans want an amendmement to ban abortion nationwide… not going to happen.
We could just do the representatives like we used to and the EC works again.
Man, if only! Congress is dysfunctional now with 435 members.
If we appointed them per 30,000 population, we would have 11,000 congressmen. 😳
I don’t think its dysfunction has anything at all to do with having too many members. A significantly larger House may even end up being much less corrupt and more functional, at least after the growing pains.
The Republicans haven’t won the popular vote for the Presidency since George W. Bush’s second term, and he was riding a high from his post-9/11 actions; he lost the popular election to Gore the first go round. The last time a Republican won the popular vote for their first term was George Bush Sr. in 1988.
And there are accusations the Ohio 2004 election was rigged for Bush.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-it-guru-dies-in-plane-crash/
But that would mean doing something that doesn’t immediately benefit the rich. No can do.
Pay particular attention to the EC votes assigned by Congressional District in Nebraska and Maine.
In the event of a 269-269 tie, it would only take one faithless elector to flip the whole thing.
Faithless electors is a whole deal… Good novel on the subject here:
I didn’t even think about those two apportioned states. Yikes.
Novel sounds interesting, I’ve never heard of it.
Basic premise is there’s an election and the winner dies before the Electoral College votes can be counted. So who wins?
Is it the VP candidate, who got 0 electoral college votes, or the other candidate who got some but less than 270?
Let’s then have trial by combat
/s
Let them have trial by combat
/s
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