House Party - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
House Party
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It’s quite possible that this year’s election could result in a 269-269 electoral tie. All that would need to happen would be for Obama to win the Kerry states and Iowa, as well as the swing states of Nevada and New Mexico, or Al Gore’s 2000 states plus Colorado. In that case, the incoming House of Representatives would decide who gets elected. One would think that this would be a slam dunk for Obama given that Democrats control the House, but it isn’t so simple, as Charlie Cook explains in the National Journal. Rather than requiring a simple majority vote in the House, each state would only get a single vote, so a candidate would need 26 to win.

Cook wonders:

Would North Dakota and South Dakota’s at-large Democratic representatives — Earl Pomeroy and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin — vote with their electorate or their party? Although Obama is competitive in North Dakota, he is still likely to come up a bit short and has virtually no chance of winning in South Dakota. In her 2004 campaign, Herseth Sandlin indicated that she would be open to voting for the Republican nominee — President Bush in that case — in the event of a tie in the Electoral College.

Given the arguments his campaign was making in the primaries, it would be funny to watch the Obama folks argue that House members should vote for their preference rather than based on who their states voted for.

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