One big threat that looms over free and fair elections for president is that a tie in the Electoral College or a disputed race gets thrown to the House. That could be a real dispute or, far more likely, a manufactured dispute as part of stealing the presidency. Critically, in this situation, the House does not vote as a majority. It votes by state delegation and the assumption is that the GOP holds the majority of state delegations because of their advantage in low-population Republican states. That’s all true and it leads to lots of bad scenarios. But it’s worth focusing on because it’s not a total done deal. This 2023 piece from the Kyle Kondik at the Center for Politics at UVA goes through the different delegations and the possibilities in each one. A bit of luck and focus could close off this path to a stolen presidency.
In 2023, it was Republicans controlling 26 delegations, Democrats 22 and two split delegations. Right now it’s 30 to 17 with 3 split delegations. That’s pretty terrible, to put it mildly. But a lot of it is very near-run stuff. Democrats lost Virginia to a tie because Gerry Connolly died and his seat hasn’t been filled yet. There’s one swing district Republicans won in 2024 which pushed Colorado from Democratic control to a tie. Arizona was controlled by the Democrats after the 2020 election and Republicans control it now because they won two pretty marginal swing seats. All three could or will shift in any solid Democratic showing. Alaska was controlled by the one-person delegation of Mary Peltola. She could probably win that seat again. But she looks more likely to run for governor or senator and there’s a good chance she’s the only person who could put that House seat into contention.
Critically, you need an absolute majority of House delegations to seat a president through the House. That’s 26 delegations. So Democrats don’t need a majority or even a plurality. They just need to pull the Republicans down to 25 delegations or fewer. My point here isn’t to say this is easy. But the control of delegations isn’t quite as locked in as one might think. That number could shift pretty quickly if Democrats have a solid midterm. And once you get past the states which would fall into the Democrats’ hands in any solid 2018-type midterm, there are other seats that could be prioritized which could shift it further. There are even a few solidly Republican states that Democrats could never control but might be able to shift to a tie.
It’s close enough to possible that it’s worth looking at very closely and prioritizing some seats over others. Because in our system it’s one of the cleanest ways to steal a presidential election. So it would be foolish not to do everything possible to close that route.