A Tie in the Electoral College!
Despite the best efforts of the renegade electors, in the end there are not enough of them to move the vote from Bush to Gore.
Now, though, they have caused something unusual: a precise tie in the Electoral College!
In all U.S. history, there has only been one tie in the Electoral College. That was in the year 1800, when Thomas Jefferson and his "running mate" Aaron Burr (the term did not fully apply back then) both received 73 votes. Under the original plan for the Electoral College, the person with the most electoral votes would be president, while the person who came in second would be Vice President. However, all Jefferson's supporters cast their second ballots for Burr.
The Electoral College had not been designed with political parties in mind. After the 1800 election, it became clear that the U.S. had political parties and the Electoral College needed a redesign to acknowledge that development -- so Congress wrote (and the states ratified in 1804) the Twelfth Amendment, which gave us the Electoral College system we use today.
The Constitution requires that when no presidential candidate gets a clear majority of votes in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives makes a decision. That was what happened in 1800, and it is about to happen again.
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