Hanging the
Electoral College is not, as a first glance might suggest, a proposal for using an old-fashioned method of
execution on the persons responsible for representing states in the selection of the
President of the United States. Instead, it occurs where the presence of multiple
candidates prevents any one candidate from achieving an absolute majority of the Electoral College.
As of 2008, there are 538 electoral votes, and a candidate must win 270 electoral votes to win the Presidency. However, if, because of a three-way split, no candidate gets over 270 votes, this calls into action the provisions of
United States Constitution Amendment XII. Under the provisions of this Amendment, the election is thrown to the
United States House of Representatives to decide, with each state having one vote for its entire delegation. The field is leveled:
California with its 50+ electoral votes gets one vote, and
New York,
Texas, and
Illinois have exactly the same voting power as
Montana,
Wyoming, and
New Hampshire. Furthermore, Amendment XII dictates that Congress must choose from among the top three recipients of electoral votes, and the candidate chosen must receive the support of the majority of all delegations (at this time, 26 votes).
The Amendment XII procedure has only been used once in American History, in 1824. With four candidates splitting the electoral vote among them, Congress chose
John Quincy Adams over
Andrew Jackson (though Jackson had been the leading vote-getter and had won the largest number of electoral votes).
In the presidential election of 1968,
Alabama Governor George Wallace campaigned hard in the South as a third party candidate with the strategy of hanging the Electoral College. Although Wallace won 46 electoral votes,
Richard Nixon's overwhelming victory in the rest of the country gave Nixon a clear majority in the Electoral College.