text: Posner claims that the Electoral College prevents a third party jumping in and grabbing enough votes prevent either "big party" candidate from winning. While in a truly direct vote, this could happen, the Electoral College allows for the same exact problem. If a third party candidate manages to win the election in just a few states, he could steal enough electoral votes that no candidate manages to get the 270 votes needed for a victory. Plumer warns that "most worrying is the prospect of a tie in the electoral vote". A tie, with both candidates getting 269 votes, would be solved in the same way as a third party getting enough votes that no one manages to get over 269. The House of Representatives would vote on the president. Here, the bigger states are again cheated of their power, as the delegates for as states, and not individuals. Wyoming's sole representative has as much sway as the 55 from California. On top of this unfairness, the delegates do not have to vote as the states have. If a majority Republican state were to have a majority Democratic representation, the state could very possibly end up voting in the candidate of the opposite party. As the Electoral College was created at the creation of the nation itself, and the president and vice-president didn't campaign together, the Senate chooses the vice-president, indpependantly. If the Senate and House are are opposite parties, the president and vice-president could end up being from opposite parties. Plumer gives the examples of 1968 and 1976, where "a shift of just 41,971 votes would have deadlocked the election," and "a tie would have occured if a mere 5,559 voters in Ohio and 3,687 voters in Hawaii had voted the other way," respectively.