Electoral College tie possible in Obama-Romney race

CNN ^ | July 26 2012 | Peter Hamby

[ElPaseo]

An Electoral College tie.

It's the white whale of American elections: elusive, mythical and never realized. But could it finally happen this year?

The likelihood that President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will each net 269 electoral votes in November, instead of the 270 needed to win, is actually not so farfetched -- and for close observers of the Electoral College system, a tie would set off a wave of constitutional and political mayhem that would make the 2000 Florida recount seem like a tidy affair.

Check out the CNN electoral map and calculator

Election results in key states would immediately be subject to legal challenges. Electors, normally an anonymous batch of party insiders elected to ratify each state's winner with their electoral votes, would be lobbied to change their votes by friends, neighbors and political leaders.

[cripplecreek]

I just think Romney’s conservative support has peaked and all he can do it hope to pull liberals to his side. Its a dangerous maneuver to try when conservatives are considerably less than enthusiastic.

I wish he had done the right thing when it was so clear that voters wanted someone who isn’t Mitt Romney. Unfortunately he’s spent the past decade running for president and convincing himself that its his turn and the little people be damned.

[Bender2]

Re: The House would vote by State, a majority in the delegation counting as 1 vote. 26 State delegations for 1 candidate needed to be elected.

I count more than 26 states in Mitt's camp... let the booze flow!!!!!

[newzjunkey]

We’ve heard this for a few cycles now. I think it’s boilerplate to run for a bored media on a slow political news day.

[newzjunkey]

Any tie is a win for Obama and the Democrats. In fact, any win for the Republicans that is even close to a tie is a win for the Democrats.

THIS. The damage done to the Bush presidency before he was even sworn in can never been calculated. Even after 9/11, he was an "error," a "stolen" presidency. Al Gore did phenomenal harm to the body politic.

[oldbill]

The election will not be close.

Don’t worry about this.

Worry about enough Republican voters (especially conservatives if Mitt does an “Etch-a-Sketch”) staying home to allow the fraudulent Democrat votes to prevail. Those 11-20 million illegal aliens will be voting in large numbers, all democrat.

[Verginius Rufus]

If there is an electoral college tie, Obama will win--all it takes is for one Republican elector to be blackmailed or bribed into changing his vote. It's only the Democratic side that would have the nerve and the shamelessness to engage in such tactics.

If Pat Buchanan had not been on the ballot in Florida, Bush's margin would probably have been too great for Gore to think he could steal Florida's electoral votes, so we would have been spared the 36 days of recounts. Nixon, for all his faults, put the country first in 1960. Gore put his own ambition ahead of the national interest in 2000.

RFK Jr., the now-newly-bereaved widower, tried to claim that Bush stole the 2004 election too--Bush's margin of popular votes in Ohio was about what JFK's margin was in the whole country in 1960, but RFK Jr. alleged assorted Republican dirty tricks stole Ohio from Kerry.

[ops33]

Incoming House of Representatives, voting as a bloc, each state getting one vote.

[Combat_Liberalism]

There are more than twenty six states with Republican majorities in their congressional delegations. Romney would easily be elected under the 269-269 scenario.

[jmaroneps37]

Grab another straw; that one is a bit slippery.