What happens if no presidential candidate secures the required 270 Electoral College votes? (Yes, this has happened before.)
It’s called an ‘contingent election.’
The 12th Amendment dictates that if no candidate wins a majority, then:
The House of Representatives chooses the next president. Each and every state gets a single vote, and a majority wins. If Republicans hold a majority in 26 states in the House after the November elections—the exact number they have before the election—they would undoubtedly elect Donald Trump.
The wackiness doesn’t stop there.
The Amendment also provides that The Senate chooses the next Vice President. Each of the 100 senators gets one vote, and a majority wins. If Democrats keep a Senate majority they would very likely choose Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate.
That’s right, in the unlikely, but still possible, event of an Electoral College tie, we could very well end up with a Trump/Walz administration.
And not for nothin’, but the last time this happened—in the election of 1824—the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams in a deal that became known as “the corrupt bargain.”
Share this post