This plan guarantees election of the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. READ MORE: What Was Alexander Hamilton's Role in Aaron Burr's Contentious Presidential Defeat? Pennsylvania and Virginia began to mobilize their militias, wondering if the stalemate would spark a civil war. Or it’s also possible that a third party candidate could win enough electoral votes to prevent any candidate from winning a majority. The candidate who gets 51 votes (majority) will be the Vice-President on January 20th. However, Joe Biden and Donald Trump continue to run neck-in-neck for majority of votes in several states, prompting many to question the likelihood of an election tie. READ MORE: What Is the Electoral College and Why Was It Created? If only it were that easy. READ MORE: These US Elections Saw the Highest Voter Turnout Rates. The tie-breaking vote made Jefferson president, with Burr declared vice president, as the Constitution required at the time. The first one happened in 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were tied with 73 electoral votes from the 16 states. Almost immediately, the existence of warring political parties created headaches for the Electoral College system. It took the House seven days … Each Senator would get one vote, and the winner would be the one who received 51 votes. “Even though the Electoral College has been one of the most controversial institutions created by the framers—there have been over 700 attempts to amend or abolish it—only a few of those attempts have borne fruit, the 12th Amendment being the first of those,” says Alexander. But in 2020, a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College is not out of the question (if you’re skeptical, here are several terrifyingly plausible electoral maps that could result in this outcome). It takes 270 votes to win the Electoral College. A bitterly divided House of Representatives deadlocked 36 times before it finally picked Thomas Jefferson as the winner of the 1800 election, and in the process laid bare a host of problems with the Electoral College that could only be fixed with a constitutional amendment. Since there are 538 electoral votes, it is feasibly possible for the presidential electoral vote to end in a 269-269 tie. Under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, in the case of an Electoral College tie for the vice-presidency, the Senate chooses the vice president. That also comes to 269 electoral votes - and a tied election. When Jackson, who had also won the popular vote, learned that Adams named Clay as his Secretary of State, he fumed at what he saw as a brazenly “corrupt bargain” to steal the White House. These US Elections Saw the Highest Voter Turnout Rates, Why Andrew Jackson Legacy Is Controversial. Jefferson, the Republican’s first choice, and Burr, the party’s second choice, both garnered 73 electoral votes (it should be noted that Jeffersonian … Because only the top three vote-getters moved on to the contingency election in the House, the fourth-place finisher, Henry Clay, was out of the running. This has happened twice in our history. ", What Happens If the Presidential Election Is a Tie, How the US Electoral College System Works. The manner of choos… Map illustrates votes by state, in the U.S. presidential election of 1800, broken down as votes for Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, or 'Blank Ballot. How many electoral votes does a candidate need to win? According to the Constitution, an electoral tie goes to the House of Representatives, where each state casts one ballot to pick a winner from among the two tied candidates. However, there hasn’t been a tie in the Electoral College since the … If there is a tie in the Electoral College, the Senate will select the Vice-President. This arrangement built upon an earlier compromise in the design of the Congress itself and thus satisfied both large and small States. Each Senator gets one vote, and can choose from the top 2 candidates who receive votes from the Electoral College. A faithless elector or a third-party candidate can alter the math, in theory, to send an election to Congress. The Twelfth Amendment (Amendment XII) to the United States Constitution provides the procedure for electing the president and vice president.It replaced the procedure provided in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, by which the Electoral College originally functioned. WATCH: America 101: Why Do We Have a Two-Party System? While Members of Congress are expressly forbidden from being electors, the Constitution requires the House and Senate to count the Electoral College’s ballots, and in the event of a tie, to select the President and Vice President, respectively. Electoral College Ties. ', “[Candidates for president] ran as a ticket,” says Alexander. The 538 members of the Electoral College cast their votes for President and Vice President in meetings held in the 50 state capitals and the District of Columbia in mid-December of presidential election years. Washington, D.C. is not a state, but has three electoral votes. And under the 12 th Amendment, a tie election (or one without a candidate with a majority of Electoral votes) sends the presidential election to Congress to decide in a contingent election. The Members of the Electoral College are chosen by each state and the District of Columbia on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in presidential election years. In addition to creating separate ballots for president and vice president, the 12th Amendment also limited the field of presidential candidates that could be voted on in a contingent election in the House of Representatives. To win the presidency, a candidate must win 270 electoral votes, or a majority of the 538 electors at stake in the election. It's only happened three times in the nation's history. Suggestions have included an amendment with three provisions: requiring every state to award electoral votes based on a popular vote in that state or the nation as a whole; replacing human electors with votes to be cast automatically according to the state's rules; and awarding the presidency to the national popular vote winner if no candidate wins an Electoral College majority.According to the ROPER POLL website. So … As of today, it has been enacted in states representing nearly half of the 270 electoral votes necessary to trigger the agreement in 2016. It's rare. However, the 12th amendment to the US Constitution addresses what happens if … Note that the discussion on this page is mostly written around a 269-269 tie between two candidates. “That created problems when Electors pledged to the Democratic-Republicans cast one vote for each of the two people on the ticket. Melissa Kelly, M.Ed., is a secondary school teacher, instructional designer, and the author of "The Everything New Teacher Book: A Survival Guide for the First Year and Beyond. In the 1796 election, John Adams won the presidency, but the second-place finisher was Thomas Jefferson, Adams’ arch political rival and now his vice president. The Federalists, who still held a majority in the lame duck Congress, were now in the awkward position of picking a president from two enemy candidates. WATCH: America 101: What is the Electoral College? In any case, that person who had the second highest number of Electoral votes was Vice-President (if there was a tie, the winner of the House vote was President; the loser was Vice-President). M.Ed., Curriculum and Instruction, University of Florida. The constitution provides that each state gets a number of members in the electoral college equal to the number of its representatives plus the number of … 2. © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC. The tie vote between Jefferson and Burr in the 1801 Electoral College pointed out problems with the electoral system. It has also happened before. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representative (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the decennial census). If all 538 electors are appointed, 270 electoral votes (i.e., a majority of 538 members of the Electoral College) are required to elect the President and the Vice President. A tie is rare, but theoretically not impossible. One unlikely scenario does, however, have an answer: An electoral college tie must be broken by Congress. And it was the second time since 2000 – when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the Electoral College – that a candidate lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College. Electors cannot vote for a Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate who both hail from an elector’s home state. In the end, there are 538 electoral votes spread across the country. There have been suggested amendments to fix the Electoral College: The American public overwhelmingly favors direct election of the president. If the second-highest vote count was shared by two or more people, the Senate chose between those people. That seemingly harmless provision of the 12th Amendment had serious ramifications in the 1824 presidential election, in which four candidates received substantial Electoral votes, denying the front-runner Andrew Jackson the majority required to claim the presidency. 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