Presidential Election In the U.S. A simple majority of 270 ballots can produce a President. But if neither of them could come up with that, the Constitution would let the House of Representatives to select the next President. However, this has never happened for the past 200 years. Most of the presidential elections allow a candidate to win if he wins over more than half of the popular vote and the Electoral College, 2000 is an exception. The Democratic candidate Al Gore won over a half million of the popular vote and had a clear control on 266 Electoral College votes. But his challenger, Republican candidate George W. Bush, led by a tiny fraction in the State of Florida. Gore demanded a recount of the ballots, which Bush challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. About a month after the election, the court sided with Bush and gave him Florida's 25 electoral ballots and the White House. The two parties are entrenched in the fighting of the current election system that the American University Professor Dennis Johnson says he doesn't expect anything change on this. "Both parties are looking over their strategies, they are looking over the map and saying,' you know, for us, no, let's keep it the way it is, the winner take all.' " Johnson also says that the Democratic Party's domination of the nation's cities means that the Republicans, who take control in much less populated rural areas, are not inclined to support the change on direct election.