Campaign 2000: Constitutional Dilemma: What If It's an Electoral-Vote Tie?

The Bush-Gore race is the closest presidential contest since 1976, maybe since 1960. And when the race is that tight, suddenly the unthinkable becomes thinkable. What if one candidate loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College vote? The fantastic, a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College, is also possible--a scenario that would put the election in Congress's hands and plunge the country into a constitutional crisis.

For those who have forgotten their high school civics, the Electoral College was a compromise between those Founding Fathers who wanted direct election of the President and those who wanted Congress to pick...

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