With the current projections for a close election between George W. Bush and John Kerry on November 2, there are a large number of reasonable scenarios that result in no electoral majority (i.e. a tie). In the event of no electoral majority, the U.S. Constitution declares in Amendment XII that
“if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote”.
The Vice President is chosen by the Senate “if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President;”
Below are fourteen maps, each with a 269-269 tie in the electoral college. These are permutations on changes to 12 states (OR, NV, AZ, NM, MN, WI, IA, OH, PA, WV, NH) and ME Congressional District 2. I’m certain that additional permutations are possible (for example, no scenarios below are shown with Kerry winning Missouri).
As a note, Congress could easily eliminate no electoral majority scenarios in future elections (due to a tie) by changing the size of the House of Representatives to an even number (edited due to error pointed out by Dennis).
Tonight, I participated in an internet radio interview with Collective Interest Radio on the official student radio of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC Radio). It was a fun conversation covering many topics from how the site was started to those of you participating in the many site interactive features to even some of my own political views (a rarity, indeed).
The old MIT counter on the home page just rolled past the 1,000,000 mark yesterday! The counter was first placed on the web site in January of 1999. Great to see so much interest in the topic and the site.
Yesterday saw the debut of the new mock election. A signficant improvment over the one that I hosted in 2000, the mock election tracks results via data, maps, and statistics in all US States as well as Canadian Provinces, European and other countries. Either the free or paid levels of site membership is required in order to participate in the mock election.
I have put a lot of work into trying to solve several shortcomings with the popular User Prediction feature. The problems have been the following:
Lack of the ability to predict individual Congressional Districts in Nebraska and (especially) Maine.
User annoyance for Members of managing multiple logins and passwords
The presence of some degree of spamming by some users
Due to ip limitations to control spamming, the inability of some legitimate users to create predictions
I have attempted to address all of these issues with today’s upgrade. The User Prediction section now has the ability to call and change results for individual congressional districts in those states that choose electors by congressional district (Maine and Nebraska). The compiled median results also support these individual electoral votes.
Members no longer have to choose username and password (essentially the ability to skip step 1). Once members have logged into the site, the software automatically recognizes their prediction. For those many site visitors and predictors, I have created a new Free version of site membership. This “User” level of membership allows for creating and updating user predictions, posting comments to polls, and participating in the soon-to-be-launched mock election. The one hassle, however (and I apologize in advance), is the need to register. This process also includes a email-verification step in an attempt to limit spamming.
Current predictions can be completely upgraded to the new format (all versions) – individual congressional districts are called for the same candidate as the currently-chosen statewide winner. The process is:
1. If you have not signed up, please do so here.
2. Then, upgrade your user prediction here
I have modified the deluxe edition of the Electoral College Calculator to include the complexity of choosing Presidential Electors by Congressional District for the States of Maine and Nebraska. So far to date, the voters of these states have always awarded all Presidential Electors to one candidate. However, the possibility exists (particularly in Maine CD2) for a split result. The calculatore now supports this possibility.
There is an interesting article in the New York Times (May 5, 2004) by Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, titled 2-for-1 Voting that proposes cross-endorsement of Presidential Electors between Nader and Gore.
As quoted from the Article:
“electors will be named by each state’s political parties. But Ralph Nader is running as an independent. When he petitions to get on the ballot in each state, he must name his own slate of electors. While he is free to nominate a distinctive slate of names, he can also propose the very same names that appear on the Kerry slate.
If he does, he will provide voters with a new degree of freedom. On Election Day, they will see a line on the ballot designating Ralph Nader’s electors. But if voters choose the Nader line, they won’t be wasting their ballot on a candidate with little chance of winning. Since Mr. Nader’s slate would be the same as Mr. Kerry’s, his voters would be providing additional support for the electors selected by the Democrats. If the Nader-Kerry total is a majority in any state, the victorious electors would be free to vote for Mr. Kerry.”
Given the lack of Instant-runoff voting (IRV) for Presidential Electors, this is a possible alternative to the “wasted vote” problem. Currently, the process of fusion is practiced regularly in New York as well as occasionally in several other states. Fusion is the process of combining votes from several party lines into a single total. In New York, for example, 2000 featured Bush on the Republican and Conservative ballot lines while Gore was on the Democratic, Liberal, and Working Families ballot lines (Buchanan was also listed under two parties – Right to Life and Buchanan Reform). The choosing of Presidential Electors is based on the fusion (or combining) of the votes for each ballot line of the candidates. However, this is generally practiced for only the same candidate. The legal possibility of different candidates cross-endorsing the same set of electors and allowing fusion is likely an issue to be determined by individual state laws.
As an historical note, cross-endorsement was actually somewhat common in the late 19th century. For example, in 1892, a set of electors in North Dakota were cross-endorsed by both the Populist and Democratic parties. In a very interesting result, two of these fusion electors and one Republican Elector received the highest number of total votes, creating the only occasion of a state casting electoral votes for three different parties (one Democratic, one Republican, and one Populist).
I’m interested in hearing any legal analysis of this possibility – especially in “battleground” states.
For those of you keeping track, I have made several small corrections to the “official” 2000 election data recently in South Carolina, North Dakota, and New York. In SC, the votes from Richland County, Ward 13 were omitted from the statewide results – adding 489 votes for Bush, 478 votes for Gore, 79 votes for Nader, 12 for Browne, 1 for Buchanan and 1 for Hagelin (a gain of 11 votes for Bush). In New York, the State Board of Elections seems to have a problem transcribing the figures from the county canvasses. There are four counties (Cattaraugus, Columbia, Livingston, and Wyoming) in which vote figures were given to the incorrect candidates (typically between minor parties, but also between a minor party and Gore under the Working Families party – where fusion merges these figures with the Democratic and Liberal party votes). There were also errors in Albany County. The net is that Gore gains 210 votes and Bush remains the same. A few changes to figures for Nader, Buchanan, and Hagelin in North Dakota rounds out the changes to 2000.
Election results for the Democratic Primary race have been updated for CA, FL, MD, NY, and TX. Official county-level data and maps have been posted to the site. I am still working on the congressional district results for MD, CA, FL, and NY (the TX SOS did not have Congressional District results on its website). Illinois releases their official canvass later this week. Wisconsin is still figuring out how to write a complete pdf file of their results (they seem to be having some “technical difficulties”).
Well, I was a bit optimistic in my attempt to compile the official results from the Super Tuesday states this weekend. Turns out that most states have not posted official results yet. California doesn’t release their canvass until April 10. I do have updated data for Georgia. New York and Rhode Island have results posted, but no indication whether or not they are official. The Utah primary results (from Feb 24) are not on-line yet. Although Wisconsin has posted official results, they omitted the vote totals from Lafayette County. I’m going to give the agencies a couple of additional weeks before I update the primary results on the site.
