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What If the Electoral College is Tied? - Video học tiếng Anh
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What If the Electoral College is Tied?
What If the Electoral College is Tied?
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The United States, picks its president with the Electoral College, 538 votes distributed
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by population (mostly) to the 50 States and DC.
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To become president you need to win a majority of those votes.
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But, 538 is an even number, so what happens when the race for president is tied?
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Don't worry, there's an 18th century solution to the problem: if the Electoral College is
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tied, the House of Representatives breaks that tie.
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As the name implies, the House is filled with representatives from each of the states.
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The more people in a state, the more Representatives it has and their are 435 in total -- thankfully
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an odd number and guaranteed tie breaker... except there's a catch: each representative
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doesn't get one vote, it's each *State* that gets one vote.
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So, Florida's 27 representatives have to decided amongst themselves who to support before casting
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Florida's one vote to help break the tie.
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Meanwhile, thinly-populated Alaska's sole representative, has only to consult himself
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before casting Alaska's vote.
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This is an incredibly disproportionate system because just ten states, California, Texas,
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New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina
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contain more than half the population of the United States but get only 20% of the votes
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if the race for president is tied and the other 40 states with less than half the population
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get 80% of the votes.
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While an exact tie is unlikely, this system is also used if they're more than two candidates
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for president and none of them gets a majority in the Electoral College.
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Which is exactly what happened when four candidates ran for president in 1824.
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Andrew Jackson got the most votes from Americans and the most votes in the Electoral College,
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but not a majority, so the race was turned over to the House of Representatives voting
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as states who picked John Quiny Adams instead.
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In a modern America with more states a three-way race can have horrifically disproportionate
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results: consider a third-party candidate who the loves the small states and who the
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small states love in return.
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He gets the fewest Electoral College votes, but enough to ensure that neither of the two
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more popular candidates get a majority so now the House decides the winner -- and those
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26 smallest states representing just 17% of the population can pick their man as president
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even though 83% of Americans didn't vote for him.
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It's unlikely, but it really shouldn't even be possible.
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Anyway, all this talk of presidents has left the Vice President unmentioned: a reasonable
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person might assume, just comes along with the President, but no.
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When there's a tie the *Senate* independently picks the Vice President so the United States,
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could end up with a President from one party and with a Vice President from the another,
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which might make for some very uncomfortable meetings.
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But even this crazy system for resolving a tie isn't guaranteed to work because are 100
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members of the senate and in the House of Representatives they're forced to vote as
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50 states and many of those states have10 or 8 representatives making the whole system
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tie-tackular with all of those even numbers.
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So if the House can't pick the president but the Senate has picked the Vice President then
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the Vice President becomes acting president until the House can make up its mind.
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But if neither the House can pick the president nor the Senate can decide the Vice President
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then the speaker of the House becomes president until either branch of congress picks *someone*.
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So this systems is how the United States would resolve a tied race for president, though
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it might be faster (and more fair) to just flip a coin.
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Of course you could just get rid of the electoral college, and thus this whole crazy system,
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and instead have a national vote, perhaps even with something fancy like preferential
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voting, maybe that's just a crazy idea.
