Hi Robert, *OT - Election Possibilities*
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ELECTORAL COLLEGE: Florida electors times 2 equals double trouble
The dueling sets, one Republican, the other Democratic, could tumble into a legal labyrinth. ELECTION 2000: PRESIDENTIAL RACE
Mark Sherman - Staff
Saturday, December 9, 2000
Washington --- If Al Gore wins the Florida recount, competing sets of presidential electors will likely send their votes to Washington, touching off a cavalcade of bewildering possibilities.
One set of electors, likely to be chosen next week by the Republican-led Florida Legislature, will meet Dec. 18 to cast 25 votes for George W. Bush. Assuming Gore overtakes Bush, another set will meet the same day to cast 25 votes for Gore.
What happens then?
''Here's where it gets hard,'' said L. Kinvin Wroth, dean of the Vermont Law School.
An 1887 law, passed in response to the controversy that followed the contested 1876 election, was intended to deal with just such a situation.
The law has never been tested, so no one knows for sure what will happen.
But legal scholars laid out several scenarios Friday after the Florida Supreme Court ruling ordering immediate manual recounts of presidential ballots.
The first key date is Dec. 12. Federal law gives preference to electors chosen by six days before the votes are cast. So if the Legislature names electors by Tuesday and the recount extends beyond that date, the law would seem to favor the legislature's slate, Wroth said.
But if both slates are in place by that date, ''this is where the statute gets pretty murky,'' Wroth said.
One thing is certain: The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate will meet in joint session by Jan. 6 to count the electoral votes. The presiding officer will be the president of the Senate --- Vice President Gore.
The counting usually is a matter of ceremony, but it won't be next month.
If one member of the House and one member of the Senate object in writing to the validity of any electors, the House and Senate must end the joint session and meet separately.
Both houses of Congress would have to agree which slate of electors is legitimate. The problem here is that the House will be under Republican control, but the Senate will be evenly split. And if the presiding officer is allowed to break a tie on this question (the subject is debatable), then Gore could decide the matter in his own favor.
The 1887 statute provides for even more possibilities. If the House and Senate still disagreed, the law says the electors who have been certified by a state's governor are the ones whose votes count.
Florida's governor, of course, is Jeb Bush, George Bush's brother.
And he already has certified a slate of electors --- the same Republican slate the Legislature is expected to confirm on Tuesday.
But Robert Bennett, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law, said that he could envision a court ordering Bush to certify a second slate.
''But what if he refused and the attorney general of Florida decided that Bush's refusal was lawless?'' said Bennett. ''(The attorney general) says, 'I'm going to send in this list of electors,' and he informs the president of the Senate.''
At some point, Bennett said, both houses of Congress would have to agree on which votes to count.
The situation could grow more chaotic still.
Someone might propose that the inability to settle on a slate of electors from Florida means that Florida has no electoral votes. The 12th Amendment says that the winner has to get a majority of the electors appointed. So Gore might claim the presidency because he has a majority of the electoral votes, if Florida's are excluded.
But again, both houses of Congress would have to agree.
Bennett speculated that Gore, as the presiding officer of the joint session, could make a ruling favorable to himself. The houses of Congress might vote to overturn that ruling. If they did, and the voting was on party lines, then the House would vote to overturn, but the Senate would not.
And Gore would win. Or would he?
At this point, the House may decide to convene to select the president, as it is empowered to do under the Constitution when the Electoral College fails to produce a winner.
So then Bush would win, because Republicans control 28 of the 50 state delegations and each state gets one vote.
Is any one path more likely? There is no way to tell. Who would have imagined the twists and turns of the past month?
So it looks like to me that this whole mess could go on all winter long.
Keith |
