Under the Electoral College system......................?

Question

. Under the Electoral College system, can we end up with a president from one ticket and a vice president from another ticket?
thnx

Answer 1

It's conceivably possible. Suppose there's a close race and the winning ticket gets, say, 270 electoral votes and the loser get 268. In such a case, it would only take 2 faithless electors to vote for the losing party's VP nominee over their own in order to get a VP from the other party. While some states have laws requiring electors to vote for who they're pledged to, not all do so it could happen.

Likewise, in the above example, if those 2 electors were to vote for someone else, so that neither of the 2 VP candidates received a majority of the votes, then the Senate would get to decide which of them (or that random guy that the faithless electors voted for) would get to be Vice-President. This scenario is probably more likely: imagine that the winning party's VP nominee had some scandal come out about him: some electors might still be required to vote for him, because of the faithless elector laws I noted above, while others would choose not to, and thus failing to give any candidate the majority.

Answer 2

Yes, it is indeed possible -- but unlikely

For this to happen, there would have to be no candidate getting a majority of the electoral votes for either president or vice-president. This can happen in one of three ways:

1. A three-way race where no one ticket has a majority;
2. A two-way race ending in a 269-269 tie; or
3. A two-way race that would normally end with a decision, except for "faithless electors" who vote in a way contrary to the will of the voters.

It's important to note that while the President and Vice-President run together on a ticket, the electoral votes are cast separately.

With no clear winner for president, the US House of Representatives will decide who is President. In this case, the representatives from each state would get together and caucus, and then the state delegation would cast a single vote. So, if a state has 9 representatives, and 5 vote for the democrat and 4 vote for the republican, the state casts a single vote for the democrat. In this way, there will be 50 votes cast for President, and whoever wins the most votes becomes President.

The Vice-President, however, is decided by the Senate in a straight vote.

To recap, if there is no winner in the electoral college, and the makeup of the House would elect a president of one party and the makeup of the Senate would elect a VP of the other, then yes, it is indeed possible.

Answer 3

No, they changed it so the President and Vice President have to be from the same party by law. One time they did have two from different parties and there was so much in fighting that nothing got done. So it was changed that they are voted on together now.

Answer 4

This was the case for a long time, but under the current system, the answer is no.