>Bruce,
>
>>Still not too likely, but by no means impossible. And wouldn't that be a fine-feathered mess... They showed a newspaper headline from 1888 or whenever the last time it happened, it said:
>>
>>"Loser Wins!"
>
>The more intriguing possibility to me is a tie in the electoral votes, in which case the official vote of the electoral college MIGHT be a tie, or might go one way or the other, depending on whether the electors stick with their assigned candidates.
>
>If a tie there, as in 1800, the newly-elected House of Representatives will decide, with one vote per state delegation. In 1800, it took over 30 votes before Thomas Jefferson was elected over Aaron Burr. The VP would be decided by the Senate, which might mean a President and VP from different parties!
>
>An electoral tie would certainly be high drama, although I much prefer a clean-cut Bush win.

David,

I agree. An Electoral College tie would indeed be high drama. 36, if I correctly recall, was the vote count.

One other thing they did back then was have a separate vote for President and Vice-President. It was also based in the notion of keeping as much power out of the hands of a Federal Government as possible. Again, for the interested party, read "The Federalist Papers" for the "real scoop" <g> on this issue. Funny how that has been almost entirely turned on its head.

I happen to think that FDR is probably the largest culprit here with respect to damaging the original intent of the framers. Who was it; Madison? who said that when the citizens found that they could vote themselves money that the Republic was doomed... Heh.. Just look at all the ticks these days - a 'tick' being defined as someone who lives off the blood (hard work, sweat and labor) of another. I have a buddy of mie who makes US$120,000 per year and over US$40,000 of that goes to someone else who is allegedly in more need of his money. I'm all for charity and Americans still give more than any other group out there but the notion that some distant disintertested individual knows who on my block is the real needy person v the 'tick' is just plain dumb - and stupid to boot. And yet people just sucker in.

I'm not too optimistic about the intelligence of many fellow citizens, that's for sure. <g>