Economist.com's latest election forecast is 269-269

Founding fathers thought it would be really, really funny if there was a tie.

Electors are calculated based on each individual state -- one for each Senator (two) plus an amount scaled for the amount of Representatives.

You don't just "add more electors" because that's not how they are summed.

The Constitution has a function built in in the event of a tie in the 12th Amendment:

• The House of Representatives chooses the next President. However each separate state casts a single vote, regardless of population, meaning that California and Kansas are considered equal in this scenario, just like how British parliamentary bullshit goes.

• The Senate chooses the next Vice President.

inb4 "that's r-slurred"

There is absolutely no written law or mandate in the UK that there has to be a Prime Minister, and there is absolutely no governing procedure to determine how he is chosen. The King just randomly points at someone and says "you." Parliament does a vote and makes a suggestion and quite often it is who the King wants for the job that doesn't exist. !burgers they actually do this in England:

The office of prime minister is not established by any statute or constitutional document, but exists only by long-established convention, whereby the monarch appoints as prime minister the person most likely to command the confidence of the House of Commons.

!historychads

It's so !grillers get represented, genius

The tie break can also tie btw

But I think it's unlikely this time around

I'm pretty sure this is Nate Silver's fault somehow.

The electors are apportioned according to the number of each state's Senators and Representatives, to mimic the compromise established for the legislative branch. So far, so good.

When the size of the House of Representatives was fixed at 435 instead of increasing with population, there were 48 states with 96 Senators (two per state), making for 531 electors. Adding Hawaii and Alaska to the union added 4 Senators so made 535 electors. But then they messed it up by giving 3 electors to the District of Columbia because they whined about not getting to vote for President since it is not a state, which makes 538.

They aren't evenly split among states....