State delegation TIE in an EC tiebreaker...

[MillennialModerate]

So in the case of an electoral college TIE, the House of Representatives choose between the top 3 candidates who is President. They do this by virtue of each STATEs HOUSE delegation getting 1 vote. (They vote amongst themselves and whichever candidate wins that vote, gets that states single VOTE in the House tiebreaker).

Here is my question... what if the state has an even amount of representatives? Then what?

By same token, when the Senate votes for VP. What if the vote is 50/50? Then what?

[adrac]

I'm not sure about the Senate, but I know in that in the House both sets of votes (the vote within a state's delegation and the vote between state delegations) require full 50%+1 majorities. A tie is a non-vote.

[SteveRogers]

That state would be deadlocked and unable to cast its vote until such time as one of its reps decided to cross party lines. If enough states were so deadlocked, it’s possible that no candidate could get the necessary 26 votes to win the presidency, since a majority of the whole number of states is required to win. Balloting would then continue in the House until the deadlock could be broken. If the deadlock was not broken by January 20th, then the Vice President-elect would act as president until the deadlock could be broken in the House.

In the Senate, a 50-50 tie could potentially raise a constitutional question. By the most straightforward reading of the 12th Amendment (which I think is pretty clear), the sitting Vice President does NOT get a tie breaking vote in this scenario. But of course this has never been decided by the courts, so it might potentially have to be decided by SCOTUS.