A Member of the House, together with one Senator, objecting during the electoral count to the validity of the votes of a state's electors based on either (1) a dispute over the credentials of the electors who cast those votes, or based on (2) the electors having been "faithless," meaning they had cast votes for candidates other than the ones to whom they had been pledged when elected.

Congress choosing between two different vote certificates from the same state issued by two competing slates of electors.

Congress deciding whether the majority needed to win is calculated on the entire number of electors extant [538], or is calculated on the number of electors duly certified by their states, minus any states from which no electoral ballots had been received.

The Electoral College votes will be counted officially in a joint session of the U.S. Congress, scheduled for January 6, 2001 at 1pm, a date and time established by law unless changed by Congress. The Senate has proposed changing the date to January 5 [S.J.Res. 55] -- but the House must still pass, and the President still sign, the resolution in order for the date to change. The joint session takes place on the House floor. The President of the Senate presides.

The Constitution names the Vice President of the United States as the President of the Senate. So, the current Vice President, Al Gore, would preside over the electoral vote count and would announce the results and declare the next president and vice president. Vice Presidents in the recent past have announced their own victory – George Bush in 1989, and their own defeat -- Richard Nixon in 1961 and Dan Quayle in 1993.

After the ballots are counted and the results announced – if no majority materializes behind one candidate, then pursuant to the Constitution, the House and Senate must "immediately" proceed to an election for president and vice-president, known formally as a "Contingent Election."

In a Contingent Election, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution states "the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President." It further states that the U.S. Senate shall elect the Vice President. Therefore, it is at least theoretically possible for the House to choose a President of one party and the Senate a Vice President from the other.

In the House election for President, the House is instructed by the 12th Amendment to vote state by state, with each state receiving one vote. A majority of the 50 states is needed to elect the President – 26 votes. No direction is given for how each state is to determine its one vote. The Representatives of each state might meet first to take a straw poll within their delegation. In the seven at-large states that have only one Representative [Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North and South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming], the lone Member would make the decision for his/her state.

The House has elected a President twice before in our history. In 1801, the House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson, after 36 rounds of balloting. In 1825, it elected John Quincy Adams, after one round of balloting.

In the Senate, the vote is taken member by member, with a majority of 51 votes from among the 100 Senators needed to elect the Vice-President. The Senate has elected a vice president only once before. It elected Richard Mentor Johnson, President Martin Van Buren's running mate, to be Vice President in 1837.