A fascinating - and long overdue - development today:
The District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act overcame a major hurdle Tuesday, passing a Senate cloture vote by 62-34. ...
The bill would give the Democratic-heavy District a voting Representative in the House and Republican-leaning Utah an extra seat that it just barely missed adding in the 2000 census. ...
If the House and Senate versions pass each chamber as is, the bill would have to go to conference in order to iron out some differences - mainly, the fact that the Senate bill gives Utah a new district seat, while the House gives the state an at-large seat.
In practical terms, if this bill passes and survives constitutional scrutiny, DC will undoubtedly elect a Democrat. As for the Utah "sweetener" (necessary to ensure Republican votes), the question is whether the state legislature would use the opportunity to screw Jim Matheson out of his seat. The House solution neatly avoids this problem and would be my preferred outcome. Note that while no state with more than one representative utilizes at-large districts, there's nothing forbidding it, and many states have done so in the past.
In any event, an at-large seat would probably only be temporary, as Utah is almost assured of gaining a new seat after the 2010 census. The enlargement of the House to 437 seats, however, would be permanent. And, bizarrely enough, this would mean the likely end of potential ties in the electoral college:
he Constitution says that each state gets the same number of electoral votes as it has seats in Congress (in both the House and the Senate). So, you'd think that two more members of Congress would mean two more electoral votes, increasing the Electoral College from 538 members to 540.
However, the 23th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which granted the District voting rights in presidential elections, stipulates that the District only gets as many electoral votes as the state with the fewest. Even if this legislation is enacted (and upheld by the courts), Washington, D.C. will still only have three electoral votes.
As a result, the Electoral College will only increase by one vote, not two. That means that the Electoral College's members would add up to 539, which, tragically, is an odd number. When you have an odd number of voters, it's always tricky to end up with a tie vote. Unless a third-party candidate took some electoral votes, one candidate would have a majority.
Incidentally, Election Data Services' latest study (PDF, p. 14) variously shows CA, NC, OR, and WA in the 436th and 437th slots, meaning one of those states would likely pick up an extra seat (or in the case of California, not lose a seat) in 2012.
UPDATE: A CRS report (PDF) suggests that Congress might have outlawed at-large districts - but because Congress has the power to set such rules (under the Constitution), it can do as it pleases vis-a-vis Utah. The same report also says that such a district would not violate one person, one vote jurisprudence.
http://www.swingstateproject.com
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