A DEADLOCKED ELECTION? SOLUTION PRESCRIBED BY THE FOUNDING FATHERS

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31828, 5 November 1968, Page 16

A DEADLOCKED ELECTION? SOLUTION PRESCRIBED BY THE FOUNDING FATHERS

(Reprinted from “Newsweek' 1 by arrangement)

No date on the official calendar is a time of greater ceremony and celebration than Inauguration Day in Washington, D.C. But January 20, 1969 just might be a day of a different sort. The elaborately constructed. $U5289,439 Inaugural stage under the Capitol dome could go empty and unused. There could be no top hats and no reviewing stand before the White House, no bands and no parade on Pennsylvania Avenue. In fact, there could well be no President—only an Acting President. His name? Most likely, Edmund Sixtus Muskie, as the new Vice-President of the United States.

This prospect while still remote—is far from political fantasy. It proceeds from the unfanciful chance that the three major candidates could all fall short of the requisite electoral-vote majority and that for the first time in 144 years, the making, of a President would fall to the House of Representatives. The source of the potential hang-up is as old as the Republic and springs from the determination of the founding fathers to insulate the Presidency from an excess of popular passions. In the drafting of toe Constitution, no problem more confounded them, no solution less satisfied them. First they decreed that electors from each state should, in fact name the new President. Then they grappled unharmoniously with the question of what to do in case none of the candidates received a majority of toe vote in the Electoral College. Compromise Their compromise solution: to leave it to the House of Representatives to pick by majority vote among the five (now three) top electoral-vote getters, with each state delegation allotted one vote. This has been resorted to only twice in United States history: in 1801, when toe House faced with an electoral-vote tie, picked Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr, and in 1825, when it chose John Quincy Adams as President (over Andrew Jackson and William Crawford). In 1877 the problem of naming a President passed to a special Congres-sional-Suprem" Court commission after the race between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden resulted in numerous disputed electoral votes. Now, the vigorous third-party candidacy of George Wallace, coinciding with a potentially close battle between toe two major parties, poses the real possibility of a twentieth-century electoral deadlock.

Make-up Of Congress

With the selection of the next American President possibly falling to the new House, both political observers and Presidential participants have understandably begun to concentrate an unusual degree of attention on the make-up of the ninetyfirst Congress. The latest readings are that neither Richard Nixon nor Hubert Humphrey could count on commanding a majority vote of 26 State delegations in the new House. By these estimates, Nixon could expect 20 State votes, Humphrey 19, and Wallace three,

with eight State delegations evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.

In selecting 49 target districts for campaign concentration, the Republican Congressional Committee, under direct orders from the Minority Leader, Mr Gerald Ford, has tried to pick out races that would either swing State delegations to the Republican Party column or neutralise them.

On top of the direct assistance that he is giving to potentially key swing contests, Richard Nixon has been trying to exploit the prospect that he will be the leader in over-all popular vote. Should the House have to decide, Nixon has called for each State delegation to follow the verdict of toe popular vote. Senate’s Easier Task At the same time, Humphrey has begun to argue that he could effectively govern even if he failed to come first in popular vote, yet was eventually chosen President by the ninety-first Congress. To increase his chances in the House, H.H.H. has even dispatched his one-time New York campaign co-ordinator, Mr Eugene Foley, to Alaska to help campaign for the State’s lone House seat—which would count just as much as New York’s 41-man delegation in a House Presidential run-off.

If the job of picking a President might well be a long and diffcult one, the selection of a Vice-President would probably be swift and easy. Under the Constitution, this is the Senate’s task. Voting is done on a straight majority basis between the top two candidates. Because a handy Democratic majority is expected in the next Senate, Edmund Muskie would almost certainly be picked on the first ballot (provided, of course, that the Democratic ticket tops Wallace’s party in the Electoral College). Then, if the House hopelessly deadlocked and failed to find a majority for anyone before January 20, the country would have no President at all. Under the Constitution, Muskie would thus become Acting President as well as Vice-President. He would remain the nation’s Chief Executive until the House resolved its impasse. Political Pawns All such contingencies assume, of course, not only that an electoral majority will fail to materialise on Election Day but that none will develop before Electoral College ballots are cast on December

16. There is nothing in the Constitution to prevent electors in the Electoral College from voting for whomever they like, and that 40-day interim would inevitably develop into a period of intense Presidential politicking. Indeed, Wallace has repeatedly indicated that he would not hesitate to use his electors (who have mostly been sworn to him under notarised oath) as political pawns should they hold the margin needed for a Nixon or Humphrey majority. Both Nixon and Humphrey have just as insistently declared they would refuse to bargain with Wallace for electoral votes. Perhaps not, but the lure of the Presidency is powerful, and already some Nixon backers are said to have approached some Wallace electors in the South to persuade them to vote Republican if a deadlock threatens. Frustration And Fury In the home-stretch of Campaign 1968, Republican Richard Nixon still appears to have enough of an edge over his, challengers to forestall this post-election Constitutional can of worms. But if Nixon slips in the final days, the political prospects are dark and ugly.

A deal for the Presidency negotiated in the Electoral College would surely trigger a cry of outrage that would be surpassed only by the nation-wide frustration and fury at a prolonged House stalemate. A senior official of the House contemplating this suddenly very real possibility recently grimaced and said: “I hope to God I never see the day.”