President Pelosi ?

Yes some of you may be thinking to yourself "But Nancy Pelosi isn't running for President", and you would be correct. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a very slim possibility that she will become the first female President of the United States of America.

There are several things that have to happen for this to occur, but with the standard majority rule being in place for every scenario, this year could be the first time ever that a President isn't elected from the Electoral College.

Firstly, a candidate has to receive 270 EC votes to become president, a majority of the 538 EC votes in total. That not only leaves room for a 269-269 tie between Trump and Biden, but if it's close by let's say two or three EC votes, then rogue or faithless EC voters could mean that no majority is reached.

This happened in 2016 when several representatives voted for neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump. However that didn't matter because of the gap between the two candidates, with Trump having plenty of EC votes to spare.

So for argument's sake, let's just stick with a 269-269 tie, something that is not at all out of the question given how close this race could be come November, and Maine and Nebraska's system of distributing EC votes by district, as can be seen in the image below.

Seems possible right?

Now if neither candidate reaches 270 EC votes, then the matter is passed onto Congress, which also implements the majority rule.

The House of Representatives votes for who will become president, but it's not one member, one vote. For this extraordinary election process, each state has one vote.

E.g. California has 53 Representatives, after the election let's say they are 33 Dems and 20 Republicans. Then the Democrats get that one state vote. 

Whereas Montana only has one Representative, a Republican. So Trump would win that state vote.

Then let's say Ohio is a tie, 8 Dems and 8 Reps, then nobody get's that State's vote, and that's where it becomes hard to reach a majority.

Some states vote for the popular vote winner, but let's not get into that right now, it's getting more and more complicated already.

Ok so the EC voted 269-269 and the House voted 24-24. Again, they could have voted 25-24, but 26 votes are needed to win the presidency this way. Then the race moves onto the incoming Senate, which is actually quite likely to be tied between Republicans and Democrats.

The Senate votes for the Vice President, who in turn becomes the acting President if the House doesn't reach a majority. In this extraordinary election each Senator has one vote, and 51 votes are required to become VP. But if there's a tie, or one Senator can't make it in for the vote, then the majority rule blocks a president being elected for the THIRD time!

But there's a back-up plan, in the form of the 20th Amendment, which gives instruction for this entire situation. It was written because of several instances in the 1800s when candidates failed to reach a majority, and became even more important (though unused) in the 1900s when third parties began to threaten the two-party system, thus threatening majorities.

And in the case that no candidate reaches a majority in the Electoral College vote, the House vote, or the Senate vote, then Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, would become acting President of the USA.

This of course is dependent on her retaining her position, which by all accounts she should. Thanks for staying with me through that lengthy and somewhat complicated process. And though it may be complicated it is certainly not impossible for the majority rule to lead to the USA having it's first female Commander in Chief.