It wouldn’t be an American presidential election season without bored establishment media journalists, leftist conspiracy theory propagators or hair-trigger sensitive Democrat fearmongers concocting nearly-impossible scenarios about what might happen if the 2024 election vote results in an Electoral College tie in November.
Yes, such a happenstance is highly unlikely and improbable but hardly unworkable. Pollsters thrill themselves by throwing together possible combinations of states and parts of states (Maine and Nebraska allot Electoral Votes according to congressional districts) whereby both Republican Donald J. Trump and incumbent Democrat president senile Joe Biden – or whomever the Democrats eventually settle on for a nominee – both finish with 269 Electoral Votes, one short of the number constitutionally required to become the next president.
If this quirky consequence did happen, the election, as spelled out in the simple and plain language of the Constitution itself, would be settled one way or another by the House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a razor-thin advantage and would most likely go for Trump regardless of which states – or the popular vote margin – went on Election Day (or is it now Election season?).
Oh, the horrors! Some proclaim it would be the end of America itself were such a situation to occur. Others look to 1824 – the last election which resulted in a House-settled stalemate – to provide clues as to what may take place this year.
In a thoughtful though left-biased story titled, “A Trump-Biden Tie Would Be a Political Nightmare — But Maybe a Boon to Democracy”, Joshua Zeitz wrote at Politico recently:
“Republicans, who could well lose the popular vote again, having won it only once in the past 32-plus years, may try to engineer a Trump win in the House.
“In short, by playing the inside game, and using a vote in the House to decide the outcome, Republicans could perpetuate their power. A democratic system that is no longer responsive to the will of the majority could very well break. But it could also create unintended consequences.
“As in 1824, if the election is thrown to the House, 2024 could be a watershed year for American democracy. Long-stalled political reforms — from introducing Supreme Court term-limits to abolishing the Electoral College — could finally sail through atop a wave of populist democratic outrage. In 1824, Adams won the battle but lost the war. In 2024, Trump could find himself in a similar situation.”
What exactly did Zeitz mean by “the will of the majority”? Was he seriously advocating for the House to go along with whomever receives the most votes nationwide? The concept isn’t new – but that doesn’t make the notion of popular vote majority any more desirable.
Proponents of changing over the way presidents are elected to a straight one-on-one popular vote count predicated on a “One person, One Vote” foundation are even more off base in 2024 than they ever were in the beginning of the movement. It’s difficult to think of an American constitutional provision that has received more criticism and kvetching than has the Electoral College, which probably proves in the abstract how vital and necessary it’s been.
The problems with doing away with the Electoral College and substituting in the popular vote are too numerous to articulate, but if the highly questionable 2020 presidential election results didn’t reveal the movement’s biggest flaws, I’m not sure what catastrophic failure would do the trick. The largest issue being the most glaring – how to ensure an accurate count?
Election fraud has been around since the days of the Founding Fathers, but with 2020’s anomalies, the mysteries have never been more vexing – and arguably, unsolvable. Some states – probably – do a better job in ensuring that their ballots are counted properly and fraud is minimized by stringent rules and procedures to guarantee that each person only gets one vote.
Does anyone remember reading about 19th century New York City’s William Magear “Boss” Tweed and Tammany Hall in college history class? Make no mistake, there are a ton of contemporary “Boss Tweeds” in America today, Former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg being the most notorious for dumping hundreds of millions into influencing elections.
Translation: Buying votes. Same thing.
Besides, Election Day used to be just that – it was one day where everyone would go to their pre-determined precinct, wait patiently in line if necessary, show identification to prove that they were who they say they were, receive a paper ballot, etch their check marks – or punch their “chads” – and return the vote back to the duly appointed official to register.
Counting wasn’t always clean, either – look at the 1960 presidential election in Illinois – but citizens in most states could have some semblance of confidence that their voting mechanism was as foolproof as practicable. Absentee ballots were obtained under tight rules and counted under their own set of guidelines – and you could only get one if you could show that it wasn’t possible to make it to your precinct on Election Day. My brother once explained it to me what an “Absentee ballot” was, suggesting that it was “Mostly businessmen traveling or military service members overseas” who needed a little extra consideration and allowances to vote.
Fast forward to now – or at least to 2020 – when states were nudged by the federal government to alter their laws to account for the COVID pandemic and “social distancing” to “keep people safe and do your civic duty to protect your neighbor” and the onset of mail-in ballots, drop boxes, expansive use of “harvesting” and relaxed ballot rejection practices were the norm. Many, if not most states (I don’t know for sure) would accept ballots received – or cast – after Election Day.
The counts went on and on and on in the states where the result was in doubt. There were the images of election workers in Georgia hauling out boxes of ballots after the counting was shut down. There were reports of trucks full of ballots from New York City making their way into Pennsylvania. There were local elections people erecting barriers or barring Republican poll watchers from viewing what was going on in the counting rooms.
It was a mess, all of which led to Democrats (senile Joe Biden and cackling Kamala) declaring victory and establishment news outlets boasting of “clean elections” and legitimate vote counts and the absence of fraud, etc. Like yeah, sure, don’t believe what you’re seeing, folks! Expert after expert testified that voting machines could be compromised by people tapping into the network.
Sidney Powell said she was prepared to “Release the Kraken”. Then Fox News host Tucker Carlson tried to get to the bottom of it to separate fact from hyperbole. President Trump and Attorney General William Barr had a virtual public spat and then non-amicably parted ways. Friend dissed on friend. Foe exploited foe. The big government defenders didn’t even listen to the evidence of fraud.
Courts – including the Supreme Court – refused to touch the case, hesitating to take on a “political issue” that couldn’t easily be fixed without both sides being fully litigated, which would take months, if not years.
Then January 6 happened. Anyone want to go on about the potential problems of finding a presidential election winner based on popular vote counts? What about “Zuckerbucks” and leftist billionaires dumping hundreds of millions into helping bluer than blue jurisdictions drum up as many legitimate votes as they possibly could?
Further, some states have legislatures that follow their own laws and some states have legislatures that provide numerous “exceptions” for contingencies and government declaration of emergencies, etc. There is no uniform standard that fits, which is why the Founding Fathers made it so each state could determine its own elections practices.
Is there a single person in the United States – at least those who pay attention – who would feel good about the validity of the final total from coast to coast? What if one state rejects a high percentage of their ballots and the state next door – or California or New York or Illinois – doesn’t throw out hardly any at all? Some states have tight security restrictions against illegal aliens voting. Some don’t pay it any mind. How to resolve?
The Electoral College vote is the best and surest way to determine a presidential election, and each state has incentive to get it right so their residents’ votes count towards the outcome. If for nothing else, if they screw it up like several states did in 2020, they’ll have years’ worth of litigation exposing their security (or lack of it) and have to endure the wrath of politicians who were cheated out of their offices.
Will 2024’s election be decided in the House of Representatives? If so, would the Republicans take advantage of their political majorities and select Trump as the winner? Here’s thinking there would be a heck of a lot of horse trading by Democrats trying to pick off a few RINO Republicans to side with senile Joe Biden in return for… who knows what.
And the Democrat media propaganda machine would be on full tilt trying to influence public opinion – claiming the Constitution’s tie-breaking provision was illegitimate, outdated and the product of men who owned slaves and sought to fix the system to their benefit. Or something like that.
Regardless of the conjecture, here’s thinking if polling trends continue that Donald Trump will prevail in the Electoral College with similar margins that he enjoyed over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Republicans learned from 2020 and are preparing to dive right in and monitor the votes much more closely. From the beginning this time.
An Electoral College tie this year would indeed be semi-historic and much fun to watch, with the hilarity fading rapidly as one side or the other ends up a loser. Lincoln famously said “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” We just could find out what Honest Abe meant, once again.
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