HOUSTON – While a tie in a U.S. presidential election is rare, the framers of the Constitution did develop a process to handle such a dilemma. The Senate is required to pick the vice president from the two candidates who got the most electoral votes. If the House can’t break the tie before the end of the presidential term, then the person elected vice president will act as president until the House can break their deadlock. There have been two presidential elections that have ended without an electoral majority, but it has been nearly 200 years since it happened. The first one happened in 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were tied with 73 electoral votes from the 16 states.