Posted on 09/24/2008 2:18:42 PM PDT by kidd
In the increasingly possible case of an electoral tie this election, the 12th Ammendment requires that Congress vote to select the next POTUS/VPOTUS.
The vote is on a state-by-state basis (each state gets one vote).
The House votes to select the President. The Senate votes to select the Vice President.
McCain loses in this case: there are only 21 states with a majority of GOP House members and two that are tied.
However.
There are 17 states with 2 GOP senators, 16 states with 2 DEM senators, 2 states with a dem plus an independent and the rest have one dem and one GOP senator.
The two states with independents are Connecticut (Lieberman) and Vermont (Saunders). Lieberman would vote for Palin and would thus cancel out Dodd's vote for Biden. Saunders would likely vote for Biden.
Thus, there would be a 17-17 tie for the VP vote. Dick Cheney then gets to break the tie.
So...in the case of an electoral tie...we would end up with Obama as President and Palin as VP!
Hagel gives it to Biden.
Congressman Billybob
Hagel, Snowe, Collins or/and Specter gives it to Biden.
Obama/Palin would be a very interesting scenario.
No. The language in the 12th ammendment is “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately...”
However, I may have been incorrect on how the Seantors vote...I think it is one vote for each Senator. Nevertheless, there is still a tie in this case.
Hagel, maybe.
Snowe and Collins might stick with their fellow sister on this one.
I recall some bad blood between Specter and Biden.
The worst case scenario would be to make Obama President and MccCain VP.
Cheney doesn’t get to break the tie. The Amendment says that the winner needs to have a majority of the whole number of senators, which means 51 senators, not 50 senators plus a tie-breaking VP.
They vote immediately...immediately after counting the electoral votes, as described earlier in the Amendment. And they do that in January after the new Congress is sworn in. The full timeline is here.
The Senators voting will be in the new Congress to be elected in November, so there could be a larger number of Democrats (at least they are widely expected to pick up several Senate seats).
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