Why does kevin costner end up being the deciding vote in swing vote?

Question

how is that situation even posiable

Answer 1

Because his daughter had registered him as a voter so he went to vote.  Upon voting, the electronic system went down and disabled him from casting his vote.  Since everyone else had already voted, it ended up as a tie when the ballots were counted.  He was the last one to sign in and so it was his decision to cast the deciding vote for president. So that is why both candidates tried to bribe him for his vote..

However, this would NEVER happen in real life.  In the times we live in, if there was a tie, then the ballets would be recounted and then everyone would have to vote again.

Answer 2

When Costner is coaxed by his 12-year-old daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll) to take more of a serious approach to life, she sees an opportunity on election day to energize her father. The election is a "dead heat" and Costner's initial vote didn't count because of some mechanical failure in the voting booth.  So he ends up with the sole deciding ballot to be resubmitted and is, therefore, wooed by candidates from both sides, the incumbent Republican Andrew Carington Boone (Kelsey Grammer) and the opposing Democrat, Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper).

The premise of the movie is theoretically possible, but the probability becomes much more remote. A more plausible premise might have been one precinct whose votes had to be thrown out and re-cast, with the state's electoral votes and the whole shebang in play. Similar catastrophic virtual-tie outcomes have occurred with our Electoral College and Presidential election mechanisms repeatedly through our history. 1876 is the biggest and clearest example, but there are also 1824, 1800, and (to be charitable to Republicans) 1960. The reality is, our system overseeing Presidential elections screws up periodically, and it hasn't been fixed yet.