Utah likely to get another Electoral Vote

[zorkpolitics]

The LA Times reports that the lame duck Congress is likely to grant DC a voting representative and, as part of the deal, give Utah an extra Congressman (Utah just missed an extra seat after the last census).  Although the motivation is to give DC a representative (obviously a Democrat) and balance that with likely Republican (Utah), it will add one Electoral Vote to Utah (but not DC), and eliminate the possibility of a 269:269 Electoral college tie.

This idea has been kicking around for several years and the Constitutionality of giving DC a vote in Congress is controversal.

See:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-dcvote22nov22,1,6204229.story?coll=la-headlines-politics

[zorkpolitics]

I tend to agree this seems to be unconstitutional, but Article 1, section 5 does state ‘each House shall be the judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members’ so one can rationalize that the House has the right to give the current DC delegate voting rights equivalent to other Members.