The Senate is beginning debate on the DC Voting Rights Act, which will also create an extra seat for Utah. In creating two more seats, the bill should create two more Electoral College votes, but that is not going to happen.
However, the 23th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which granted the District voting rights in presidential elections, stipulates that the District only gets as many electoral votes as the state with the fewest. Even if this legislation is enacted (and upheld by the courts), Washington, D.C. will still only have three electoral votes.
As a result, the Electoral College will only increase by one vote, not two. That means that the Electoral College’s members would add up to 539, which, tragically, is an odd number.
It’s a tragedy because ties in the Electoral College will become almost impossible, which means we’ll probably never get to see the House of Representatives decide an election ever again. Of course, it could still happen if a third party candidate wins enough states to deny anyone a majority of the Electoral College. But I don’t see that happening in my lifetime unless they try to bring slavery back or something.
Sens. Byrd and Lieberman are debating the bill on the Senate floor right now. Byrd insists that DC Voting Rights can only be granted by a constitutional amendment.
McCain raised a point of Constitutional order trying to block DC voting rights and only got 36 votes.
and of the Senate — that missing seat:
poor Norm Coleman, the x-senator who is still in denial lost another round.
The Hill via Steve Benen
There are other possibilites though. Suppose Puerto Rico finally becomes a state. Wouldn’t that bring us to 542 electoral votes? Or would PR get more than one House seat?
This whole process is kind of an object lesson on what “bipartisanship” might be and can’t be. The sleazy deal giving Utah an extra seat lays naked the real wheels that make our system spin. There is no practical or ethical justification for it. It is pork of the most blatant kind, an open bribe to GOP legislators. If there were the slightest taint of real bipartisanship in this country it never would have been contemplated, because the decision would have connected, however tenuously, with some vision of the national good.
I’m glad DC finally breaks out of the jail erected by an over-worshiped Constitution, but it also makes me wonder why they want to bother.
The sleazy deal giving Utah an extra seat lays naked the real wheels that make our system spin. There is no practical or ethical justification for it. It is pork of the most blatant kind, an open bribe to GOP legislators.
Um, whut?
This is how governments controlled by representative democracies function. By cutting deals to try to build a consensus. No one is going to give away something for nothing – if you want something for one group the group that is giving up something has to get something in return.
This is how it has always worked in the US – always. Look back at how states were admitted to the Union – if one group was going to get something out of it, their opposition would block it. The only way a new state would get admitted is if the balance of power was preserved enough to allow both sides to make equal gains.
The addition of a seat to Utah is nearly pointless because it would in all likelihood have gotten a new seat anyway in the next census (which is why it was chosen – a Republican state that is going to get a seat in the near future anyway). And in exchange for giving the Republicans something that they would have gotten eventually anyway, DC citizens get representation in Congress. That’s good work for a representative body.
I’m sorry that the legislative process doesn’t work like “Schoolhouse Rock”, but it doesn’t. The sooner folks realize that the actual legislative process is an ugly mess of conflicting self-interests, the better off we all are. Because that’s the only way you can see where the pressure points are to push to get changes made. There’s a reason that legislation is compared to sausage making, and it isn’t because they use a lot of sage when they’re writing laws.
Here’s another geeky fact picked up on by Al Giordano.
In last night’s speech, Obama indicated that the monies needed for universal health care would be written into the budget that he will be submitting soon. Per Senate rules, the budget can not be filibustered and would only require 50 votes in the Senate to pass. So that’s one battle averted. This caused many scowls from Republican Senators.
We have an ownership society and a service economy – it’s not that far-fetched…
Does someone have a good site that explains exactly what the bill does and what the ends up what?
Myself, I never understood why DC couldn’t get a representative and for purposes of the electoral college be counted in Presidential and Senate races as part of Maryland. Granted, it would pretty much guarantee that no Republican would ever again be elected to the Senate from Maryland, nor would any Republican ever get their electoral votes…
I hate to, um, point out the elephant in the room, but shouldn’t we be having a debate about finally getting rid of the Electoral College and, you know, instituting a democracy where the president is elected by the votes of the people instead of passing it through two potential hijackings of popular will, the EC itself and the House of Representatives? (We leave unconsidered for the moment the recent innovation of the Supreme Court appointing the president.)
Frankly, I’d be quite happy to never see the House of Representatives appoint a president, but I’d be even happier if just once in my lifetime, I got to cast a direct vote for the highest office in the land the way they do in actual democracies.
I think this is only the “elephant in the room” in the sense that it’s something that can’t be budged. It’s hardly something that everybody notices but nobody mentions; legions of words are written about it, every presidential election. I’ve probably read more newspaper pieces on the Electoral College than I have on any other equally specific subject. Every goddam presidential election, the papers are full of ’em. Pieces on how it works. Pieces on how and why it came to be. Pieces on “You may not realize this about presidential elections, but …” Pieces on why it should be got rid of. Pieces on why it shouldn’t be got rid of. Pieces on why it should be got rid of but won’t be. Pieces on why it won’t be got rid of and that’s a good thing.
Call the E.C. an anachronism; I’m with you. Call it anti-democratic; I’m with you there, too. But one thing you can’t call it is the elephant in the room.