Now here's a weird possible election scenario...
The next President of the United States could end up being,
(98 year old) Strom Thurmond of the Senate.
A few excerpts from the following Associated Press article
written by Nancy Benac, and printed in the Seattle Times on 11/3/2000:
archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com
ELECTORIAL COLLEGE LESSON:
How and why the popular-vote winner could lose the presidency
The New York Daily News ran the same calculation, and came up with 78 circumstances in which Bush and Gore could tie. A tie in the Electoral College would toss matters to the new Congress, its own makeup a question mark going into Election Day.
That's where the parlor game really takes some twists.
With an electoral tie, the presidential race would go to the House, where each state would have one vote, to be decided among a state's delegation. At least in theory, there could be another deadlock. Or a delegation split between the parties could fail to arrive at a consensus.
While the presidential question was being sorted out, the Senate would be called on to select the new vice president. And the Senate, where each member would have one vote, also theoretically could end up tied.
If no new president or vice president had been selected by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, the Presidential Succession Act would kick in, with the speaker of the House in line to serve as acting president. But if an evenly divided House could not agree on a new speaker, the acting president would be the president pro tempore of the new Senate - who could be Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who turns 98 in December.
"There is a law or a rule for every one of these things," Berns said. "All they have to do is follow the rules, and we'll end up with a president." |
