Could Mitt Romney and Joe Biden Share the White House? The U.S. Constitution Says It COULD Happen

Alright, so presidential politics is weird enough, right?  And what I’m about to explain isn’t very likely.  BUT, since this presidential election is so razor-close right now, there’s actually a possibility that Romney could win the election and Joe Biden could be his vice-president.  Sounds stupid, right?  Well, the U.S. Constitution says it’s absolutely legal.

Again — let me not be misleading.  The chances of this happening are pretty dang slim.  But it blew my mind to read this, and I thought I would share it with you.  If this presidential election comes to a tie, things could get weird quick.

It all starts with the Electoral College.  Remember, the president is actually elected by 538 delegates, not by the popular votes we cast at the polls.  Tradition states that the electors should follow the popular vote, but there’s not many laws forcing them to — and that’s a whole other story.  All you really need to know about the Electoral College is that the president needs the magic number of 270 electoral votes to win.

There’s the possibility, though — however slim — that we could get a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College.  (If that happened, I think there would be riots in the streets and all kinds of court battles.)  But unlike the 2000 election between Bush and Gore, which was decided by the Supreme Court, this battle would go to Congress.

Under the Constitution — specifically the 20th and 25th amendments — the U.S. House would break the tie by choosing the next president.  Since the House is led by Republicans, you can count on Mitt Romney to win that vote.  The Senate, meanwhile, has the power to choose the vice-president.  Guess who controls the Senate — that’s right, the Democrats.  You can expect Joe Biden to win that vote.  Strange but true.

So that means that there is a mathematical probability that Romney and Biden could share the White House for the next four years.  Is it likely?  Not so much.  Is it weird?  Yeah, pretty much.  In fact, it sounds like a nightmare to me.

But there would be one silver lining in it — you can pretty much guarantee that if it happened, the Electoral College would be dead in a week.