by population (mostly) to the 50 States and DC. To become president you need to win a

majority of those votes. But, 538 is an even number, so what happens when the race for

president is tied?

Don't worry, there's an 18th century solution to the problem: if the Electoral College is

tied, the House of Representatives breaks that tie.

As the name implies, the House is filled with representatives from each of the states. The

more people in a state, the more Representatives it has and their are 435 in total -- thankfully

an odd number and guaranteed tie breaker... except there's a catch: each representative

doesn't get one vote, it's each *State* that gets one vote. So, Florida's 27 representatives

have to decided amongst themselves who to support before casting Florida's one vote

to help break the tie.

Meanwhile, thinly-populated Alaska's sole representative, has only to consult himself

before casting Alaska's vote.

This is an incredibly disproportionate system because just ten states, California, Texas,

New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina

contain more than half the population of the United States but get only 20% of the votes

if the race for president is tied and the other 40 states with less than half the population

get 80% of the votes.

While an exact tie is unlikely, this system is also used if they're more than two candidates

for president and none of them gets a majority in the Electoral College.

Which is exactly what happened when four candidates ran for president in 1824. Andrew Jackson

got the most votes from Americans and the most votes in the Electoral College, but not

a majority, so the race was turned over to the House of Representatives voting as states

who picked John Quiny Adams instead.

In a modern America with more states a three-way race can have horrifically disproportionate

results: consider a third-party candidate who the loves the small states and who the

small states love in return.

He gets the fewest Electoral College votes, but enough to ensure that neither of the two

more popular candidates get a majority so now the House decides the winner -- and those

26 smallest states representing just 17% of the population can pick their man as president

even though 83% of Americans didn't vote for him.

It's unlikely, but it really shouldn't even be possible.

Anyway, all this talk of presidents has left the Vice President unmentioned: a reasonable

person might assume, just comes along with the President, but no.

When there's a tie the *Senate* independently picks the Vice President so the United States,

could end up with a President from one party and with a Vice President from the another,

which might make for some very uncomfortable meetings.

But even this crazy system for resolving a tie isn't guaranteed to work because are 100

members of the senate and in the House of Representatives they're forced to vote as

50 states and many of those states have10 or 8 representatives making the whole system

tie-tackular with all of those even numbers.

So if the House can't pick the president but the Senate has picked the Vice President then

the Vice President becomes acting president until the House can make up its mind. But

if neither the House can pick the president nor the Senate can decide the Vice President

then the speaker of the House becomes president until either branch of congress picks *someone*.

So this systems is how the United States would resolve a tied race for president, though

it might be faster (and more fair) to just flip a coin.

Of course you could just get rid of the electoral college, and thus this whole crazy system,

and instead have a national vote, perhaps even with something fancy like preferential

voting, maybe that's just a crazy idea.