The United States picks its president with the Electoral College, 538 votes distributed by population, mostly to the 50 states and DC.

To become a president, you need to win a majority of those votes. But 538 is an even number, so what happens when the race for president is tied?

Don't worry, there's an 18th century solution to the problem. If the

electoral college is tied, the House of Representatives breaks that tie. As the name implies,

the House is filled with representatives from each of the states. The more people in a state,

the more representatives it has, and there are 435 in total. Thankfully, an odd number and a

guaranteed tiebreaker. Except Except there's a catch.

Each representative doesn't get one vote, it's each state that gets one vote. So Florida's

27 representatives have to decide amongst themselves who to support before casting Florida's

one vote to help break the tie. Meanwhile, thinly populated Alaska's sole representative has only to consult himself before casting Alaska's vote.

This is an incredibly disproportionate system because just 10 states, California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina

contain more than half the population of the United States, but get only 20% of the votes if the race for president is tied. And the other 40 states, with less than half the population of the United States but get only 20% of the votes if the

race for president is tied. And the other 40 states with less than half the population

get 80% of the votes. While an exact tie is unlikely, this system is also used if there

are more than two candidates for president and none of them gets a majority in the

Electoral College. Which is exactly what happened when four candidates ran for president in 1824. Andrew Jackson got the most votes from

Americans and the most votes in the Electoral College, but not a majority, so the race

was turned over to the House of Representatives voting as states who picked John Quincy Adams

instead. In a modern America with more states, a three-way race can have

horrifically disproportionate results. Consider a third-party candidate who loves the small states

and who the small states love in return. He gets the fewest electoral college votes, but enough to

ensure that neither of the two more popular candidates gets a majority, so now the House decides

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