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In the United States, a contingent election is used to elect the president or vice president if no candidate receives a majority of the whole number of electors appointed. A presidential contingent election is decided by a special vote of the United States House of Representatives, while a vice-presidential contingent election is decided by a vote of the United States Senate.
In 1836, the Whig Party nominated four different candidates in different regions, aiming to splinter the electoral vote while denying Democratic nominee Martin Van Buren an electoral majority and forcing a contingent election. Ultimately Van Buren won the electoral college outright and the attempt to invoke the 12th Amendment proved fruitless.
The Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA) (Pub. L. 49–90, 24 Stat. 373, [1] later codified at Title 3, Chapter 1 [2]) is a United States federal law that added to procedures set out in the Constitution of the United States for the counting of electoral votes following a presidential election.
Why we have the Electoral College. The rules for the Electoral College are outlined in the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. Because democracy was a new idea at the time, says Field, the nation ...
If neither candidate gets a majority of electoral votes, or in the event of a 269-269 tie, the Electoral College hands the deciding vote over to Congress. In 1824, when four candidates ran for ...
If the Electoral College already benefits smaller and more rural states, the contingent election process – in which each state, regardless of population, has an equal vote – gives them a huge ...
As a result of this change, if the Electoral College vote has not resulted in the election of either a president or vice president, the incoming Congress, as opposed to the outgoing one, would conduct a contingent election, following the process set out in the Twelfth Amendment. [9]
The new law also aims to prevent a repeat of the 1876 election deadlock when three states submitted "dueling slates of electors" -- one slate certified by the state's lawmakers and a competing ...