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Originally Posted by iltos just a question.....is it true that an over litigated election is thrown to congress for final outcome? and if so, how does that work? | It is only "thrown"to Congress if there is a tie--meaning the electoral votes are tied. If there is a winner and there is litigation over the vote counting, that would be resolved in the courts, not in the Congress:
Here is what happens when there is a tie: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/ar.../op/op11a.html Quote:
What then? According to the Constitution, if no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives is to immediately choose a president from among the top three candidates. The vote is done by delegation; so, for example, Ohio's 20 House members would cast a single vote for president. Because Republicans have a majority in the Ohio delegation, it's probably safe to assume the state would vote to re-elect Bush.
In the current House delegations, Republicans control 30 states and Democrats 16, with 4 states evenly divided. But the current House would not conduct the vote. According to federal law, the electoral votes are actually counted (before a joint session of Congress) Jan. 6. The Constitution has the new Congress taking office three days earlier, on Jan. 3.
Nevertheless, given that there are few competitive House races nationwide, it's unlikely the Republicans will lose control of the majority of the state delegations on Nov. 2.
Therefore, in the event of an electoral college tie, it's all but certain Bush would be selected to serve for another four years.
Senate selection
The proceedings in the Senate might be even more interesting. The Constitution, in its complicated wisdom, gave the Senate the role of selecting the vice president.
Unlike the House, the Senate votes not by state delegation but by individual senator.
It has 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 1 independent (who caucuses with the Democrats). Obviously, the loss of one seat by the Republicans would result in a deadlocked Senate, something that occurred for a time in 2001 until Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party and declared himself an independent.
If a 50-50 Senate were to cast a party-line vote for vice president, who would break the tie? Well, the Constitution calls for the sitting vice president, as president of the Senate, to break ties. There might be a debate over whether this tie-breaking role ought to be exercised during a nonlegislative vote, but an argument could be made that Vice President Dick Cheney would be constitutionally empowered to place himself back into the No. 2 slot.
Bush and Edwards?
This is largely uncharted territory. It's been 180 years since Congress was faced with the task of acting in the wake of an election that did not produce a majority vote.
Back in 1824, the House chose John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, the candidate who had won the popular vote (although at the time, every state did not hold a popular vote for president).
Perhaps the correct precedent is even older. In 1796, John Adams, a member of the Federalist Party, was elected president. His vice president was Thomas Jefferson, leader of the Federalists' opponents, the Republicans. (This occurred, in part, because before the 12th Amendment, the candidate with the second-highest number of electoral votes became vice president.)
Jefferson would defeat Adams four years later in an election that was itself fraught with controversy and which resulted in our first electoral tie. The tie — between Jefferson and Aaron Burr — went to the House, which voted 36 times before declaring Jefferson the winner.
Far-fetched as this may sound, we could end up with Bush being re-elected president and Democrat John Edwards serving as his vice president.
If the Democrats gain two Senate seats in November, they would hold a majority. In the event of a tie, there would be nothing to prevent them from selecting Edwards over Cheney. Indeed, they would have every reason to do so, because, as president of the Senate, Edwards would then be able to protect Democratic control of that body in the event that his party somehow lost a seat (as happened to the Republicans when Jeffords bolted).
Faithless electors
Another possibility would involve a so-called faithless elector.
Realizing that a tie vote would send the election to Congress, one elector might simply change his or her vote. While unusual, it's happened in the past.
And imagine the pressure on a single elector, particularly when his or her vote might well lead to a chain of events that would once again result in a White House occupied by someone who had failed to secure a majority — and perhaps even a plurality — of the popular vote.
From the perspective of those who wrote the Constitution, however, such an elector would be considered faithful, not faithless. The framers expected those who would ultimately select the president to be free agents, not bound by a popular vote or by the choice of organized political parties.
Indeed, they spent quite a bit of time at the convention considering what to do in the expected event that, without organized parties or a candidate with the reputation of a Washington, no individual would garner a majority of the electors.
Yet so far, this has happened only once in our history. Perhaps we should be glad that George Mason, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, was wrong when, on Sept. 4, 1787, he predicted that such a result would occur "19 times out of 20."
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