Interesting!
Kendall
I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.
-Arthur Hays Sulzberger
-----Original Message-----
From: Janet Perkins Corbett
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 4:55 PM
To: Kendall David Corbett
Subject: Electoral College Football
Got this from CBS news...
Electoral College Football
(CBS) By David Paul Kuhn,
CBSNews.com chief political writer
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The Electoral College ties and Congress chooses the president. State
delegations can't decide. The Senate splits. Republican Speaker of the
House Dennis Hastert becomes president.
The scenario may seem outlandish but it's certainly as plausible as what
the world witnessed four years ago when a split Supreme Court ended the
Florida recount and crowned George W. Bush the leader of the free world.
In 2004, we have new solutions that may create new problems - a federal
mandate to count provisional ballots; electronic voting machines that
give no paper proof that a vote has been cast.
But it's the nearly 220-year-old Electoral College that may be the bane
of Election 2004. Here are some far-fetched and not-so-far-fetched
possibilities:
Electoral Vote Deadlock
How it could happen: John Kerry wins the key swing states of Florida and
Pennsylvania, along with Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon and all of
Maine's split electoral votes. President Bush balances Kerry's Florida
triumph by capturing the Small Three - Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa -
as well as Ohio and New Mexico.
Result: A 269-269 tie - provided that the other 38 states go as they did
in 2000. The Constitution dictates that, in the event of an electoral
vote tie, the House of Representatives selects the next president. And
whether it is mighty California or meek Wyoming, each state delegation
gets only one vote.
President Bush likely wins in this scenario. Republicans have the
majority in 30 state delegations, Democrats in 15. Even if delegations
in states that went Republican, like Arkansas and Tennessee, went
Democratic and the reverse occurred in Illinois and Michigan, the
Republican advantage is too large to surpass.
Only once has the House of Representatives picked a president. After
two-dozen votes, the House handed Thomas Jefferson the presidency over
Aaron Burr in 1800.
But should the state delegations remain split - 25 for Mr. Bush and 25
for Kerry - and the Senate breaks even, come Inauguration Day the
Speaker of the House is next in line for the Oval Office. The speaker
also takes the presidency in the case that Kerry-Edwards ticket wins the
election and both candidates die before taking office.
A Maverick Elector - It Only Takes One
When Americans vote on Nov. 2, they are choosing electors, not the
president. The number of electors a state has is its total number of
congressman plus senators. For example, California has 55 electors, the
most of any state, based on its 53 congressmen and two senators. Wyoming
gets just three for its two senators and one congressman. The amount of
congressman a state is allotted depends on population; more people, more
sway in Congress.
The party that wins a state's popular vote gets to select all its
electors. But federal law does not mandate that the electors follow the
will of the electorate - or the party. What if one elector switched
sides? Take Wyoming, what if one of its three electors went the other
way?
"I can't imagine that would happen," said Wyoming Secretary of State's
Joseph Meyer.
By all polling, Wyoming's popular vote will go Republican; it's Vice
President Dick Cheney's home state. But one of the three GOP electors
could select a Democrat.
"There have been faithless electors," said John Fortier, executive
director of the Continuity of Government Commission at the American
Enterprise Institute. "It has never affected an election."
Win the Popular Vote and Lose the Electoral Vote (or vice versa)
This, of course, is what occurred in 2000. Democratic nominee Al Gore
won the popular vote by 500,000 votes and lost the Electoral College by
5 votes. George W. Bush became the third candidate to lose the popular
vote and win the presidency.
(In 1824, John Quincy Adams won neither the popular nor the electoral
vote. But he became president nonetheless with the support of the House
of Representatives.)
No president has lost the popular vote and won the presidency twice. Mr.
Bush could be the first.
It is also possible that he could win the popular vote but lose the
Electoral College. But that's the most unlikely scenario because it
requires a myriad of small states traditionally Republican to go
Democratic.
A Bush-Edwards Ticket, Or Nancy Pelosi Becomes First Female President
It could happen. If the Electoral College splits for reasons already
stated and it remains deadlocked until Inauguration Day, then the
Speaker of the House takes office.
But what if the Democrats regain control of Congress? The speaker would
most likely be the current House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi of
California.
Speaker Pelosi would then become president provided the state
delegations remained deadlocked. In the most roundabout, yet legal, of
ways, Pelosi would become the first female president.
There's also a chance, however slim, that a split Republican-Democratic
ticket could be elected.
Back in 1800, when Jefferson won the presidency after 36 votes in the
House of Representative, Burr became the vice president, though both
were from the same political party.
Today, should the House of Representatives vote President Bush back into
office, the Senate, which holds the Constitutional power to select the
vice president, could select Democrat John Edwards.
If Democrats win back the Senate, the majority would outweigh Vice
President Cheney's tie-breaking vote. Democrats then could choose
Edwards as vice president and America would have its first true unity
ticket, following a most vitriolic and divisive election.
"The initial Electoral College was designed so the second-place winner
would be the vice president, but the formal power is with the
president," Fortier said. "A Bush-Edwards ticket... Edwards could make
some trouble for the ticket."
Fortier chuckles, and adds, "I'm not sure they even give [Edwards] an
office in the White House."
(c)MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Janet Perkins Corbett
Wyoming INstitute for Disabilities
http://wind.uwyo.edu/
(307)766-2506
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Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
Evelyn Waugh (1903 - 1966), Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)
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