"Fix Plan B"

Roll Call offers this editorial, which begins:

Amid all the debate over the numerous shortcomings in the nation’s electoral system — the flawed voting machines, the continuing influence of big money, the allegations of voter fraud — too little attention has been spent on a looming constitutional problem: the “contingent election.”

Under the Constitution, a presidential election in which no candidate receives a majority of the Electoral College vote is thrown into the House of Representatives. There, each of the newly elected state delegations casts a single vote for president, with a 26-state majority required to win. At the same time, a majority of the Senate chooses the vice president.

Even without getting into the system’s more bizarre permutations — delays that could force the Speaker or the President Pro Tem to be named acting president, or a partisan walkout that deprives the majority of a quorum to act — the current design is rife with problems that could become reality this year.

Posted by Rick Hasen at October 19, 2004 07:31 AM