Whether or not the wrong person may win this way is debatable; if we exclude the additional confusion caused by wrongly cast votes and illegally disqualified voters in Florida, then it has worked sufficinetly well up to the present historical moment.

I had not realized that there was in fact a provision to cover if they couldn't place a President by the fourth of March following; but of course the votes for Vice President probably fall out the same way that the votes for President do, so that provision doesn't seem to have much meaning since we vote for pairs rather than singlets. I guess it makes more sense to think that the clause about the VP being the President refers to the House votes, not the popular or electoral votes. I do not think that part of the system has ever been tested in practice.

A