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It bears repeating: the US presidential election is not an election, but 51. In each of the states of the country and in Washington DC. And the winner is not necessarily the one who gets the most votes overall, but the one who wins the most state voters. In all but two states, the winner will receive all of the state’s electoral votes.
This is the foundation of electoral mathematics that smart people have been tormenting media consumers with for months.
At least 270 of the 538 voters is what the winner needs. Then it’s done.
But 538 divided in two is 269, so it can also end up the same, 269-269.
Now a path opens up to this unusual setting. That is, Joe Biden is declared the winner in Georgia, while Donald Trump wins all other states that had not yet been decided on Thursday.
So no candidate achieves the magic number 270 in the Electoral College. Instead, it will be 269-269.
If this happened The 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution states that the House of Representatives will elect a president.
Before the election, the Democrats had a solid majority that appears to exist despite the party backing some seats in the election.
But the majority does not help Biden, because in this special case, one vote per member does not apply. Instead, states each have their own voice. Therefore, the 53 members from California vote as much here as the only member from states like Wyoming or Delaware.
Before the election, Republicans had a majority in 26 state delegations in the House of Representatives, while Democrats had a majority in 23 (one state, Pennsylvania, has the same number of members from each party).
That situation persists After the election, Democrats seem to be failing to gain a majority in states like Alaska and Montana, both with one member each. Nor does it appear that the party is taking over a majority of the Pennsylvania delegation, which was divided by the same number of members from each party.
Therefore, Trump would win that vote if it were held today.
The procedure has only been used once, after the 1824 elections, when the House of Representatives, after several votes, elected John Quincy Adams president with 13 votes out of 24 (which was the number of states at the time).
Everything is a mess process that probably nobody wants to decide a presidential election in 2020. And then we have not even mentioned that the Senate according to the same addition to the constitution will elect a vice president if the election is a tie.
In theory, it could result in a Trump ruling with Kamala Harris, or Biden with Mike Pence.
