British vote may not pick winner

LONDON - Just a day before Britons go to the polls, politicians and parliamentary experts are getting ready to answer a tricky question they haven't faced in decades: Under the country's unwritten constitutional rules, who gets the keys to No. 10 Downing Street in the event of an inconclusive result?

As the three main party leaders crisscrossed the country in the frenetic final hours of campaigning Wednesday, polls suggested today's vote would produce a hung Parliament, in which no party wins enough seats to govern outright.

Britain looks destined for a period of wrangling instead of the usual day-after-an election ritual, which sees the victorious party leader drive to Buckingham Palace, where Queen Elizabeth II asks him or her to form a government.

"The normal thing is someone wins, someone loses, the guy who loses will resign by lunchtime and will advise the queen to call for the person who's won," said Peter Riddell, senior fellow at the Institute for Government, said Wednesday.

Maybe not this time. This four-week campaign has been the most unpredictable in years. Early on, many predicted outright victory for the Conservatives under David Cameron. Then, the third-party Liberal Democrats surged on a charismatic television-debate performance by leader Nick Cle

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