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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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Phụ đề (51)
0:01
The United States, picks its president with the Electoral College, 538 votes distributed
0:05
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?
0:18
Don't worry, there's an 18th century solution to the problem: if the Electoral College is
0:22
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.
0:29
The more people in a state, the more Representatives it has and their are 435 in total -- thankfully
0:35
an odd number and guaranteed tie breaker... except there's a catch: each representative
0:40
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
0:48
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
0:56
before casting Alaska's vote.
0:58
This is an incredibly disproportionate system because just ten states, California, Texas,
1:03
New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina
1:06
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
1:22
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.
1:30
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
1:39
as states who picked John Quiny Adams instead.
1:42
In a modern America with more states a three-way race can have horrifically disproportionate
1:47
results: consider a third-party candidate who the loves the small states and who the
1:51
small states love in return.
1:52
He gets the fewest Electoral College votes, but enough to ensure that neither of the two
1:56
more popular candidates get a majority so now the House decides the winner -- and those
2:00
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.
2:12
Anyway, all this talk of presidents has left the Vice President unmentioned: a reasonable
2:16
person might assume, just comes along with the President, but no.
2:20
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
2:46
tie-tackular with all of those even numbers.
2:49
So if the House can't pick the president but the Senate has picked the Vice President then
2:52
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
3:00
then the speaker of the House becomes president until either branch of congress picks *someone*.
3:05
So this systems is how the United States would resolve a tied race for president, though
3:09
it might be faster (and more fair) to just flip a coin.
3:25
Of course you could just get rid of the electoral college, and thus this whole crazy system,
3:29
and instead have a national vote, perhaps even with something fancy like preferential
3:33
voting, maybe that's just a crazy idea.
