Electoral Apocalypse Doomsday Scenario: Obama And McCain Tie, World Explodes, Nancy Pelosi Is President
Remember how much fun the primaries were, with the math and numbers and the whole "If Hillary gets enough superdelegates then two plus two will equal five, within the confines of Michigan and Florida before May 31 divided by two"? Dust off your abacus because now your favorite News Analysts will be giving themselves mental hernias as they strain to figure out in which way our electoral college and its nutty rules could again leave infuriated Americans ready to hop on the first spaceship to France.
If Barack Obama wins all the states John Kerry won, plus Iowa, Nevada, and New Mexico, he will have 269 electoral votes. So will John McCain. In the event of such a terrible occurrence, the vote would go to the House of Representatives, where each state would get a vote. If neither candidate could get 26 votes, it would go to the Senate. And if the Senate deadlocks, then our president is automatically Nancy Pelosi.
Something pretty much like this happened in 1800 when Thomas Jefferson got picked over Aaron Burr so that Burr could get to work killing Alexander Hamilton. Little-known historical fact: after Hamilton lost to Burr in that fateful duel, Nancy Pelosi became Secretary of the Treasury.
Tie Vote? Obama-McCain 'Doomsday Scenario' [ABC News]