Monday, October 6, 2008

The Law of Unintended Consequences: Blame D.C.

I thought I'd posted on this before, but can't find any record of such a post on my once and (I hope) future blog. It seems important.

VodkaPundit and others have mentioned the real and terrifying possibility of a 269-269 Electoral College tie, which would throw the election into the House of Representatives. It is worth noting that such a tie is only possible because the 23rd Amendment granted federal voting rights to the District of Columbia. The number of electoral votes had been odd since 1903 and for much of the time before then, since the total number of Senators (necessarily even) plus the total number of members of the House (traditionally odd) generally added up to an odd number. With 3 electoral votes added for D.C., the Electoral College now has an even number, and is therefore vulnerable to tie votes. It will remain so until D.C. gains enough population to earn another pseudo-Congressman or Congress adjusts the number of actual voting Congressmen to make it even instead of odd, which would make the number of electoral votes odd instead of even. Either of these events is highly unlikely, and the latter would theoretically increase the number of tie votes in Congress, though anything like perfect attendance in a body of 435 must be quite rare.

I wonder if anyone noticed this possibility when the 23rd Amendment was up for ratification.

Footnote: The fact that Nebraska and Maine may split their electoral votes increases the number of ways in which a tie could happen, but it is the even number of electors that makes it possible in the first place. (Or at least, makes the possibility more than minuscule: even with an odd-numbered Electoral College, it could happen that one elector would drop dead or be run over by a bus on the way to the vote and the rest could then split evenly.)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It's even less likely to change than you think: D.C.'s electoral vote count is pegged to the electoral vote total of the least populous state.

(Source: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html)