Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25626-20170620165203/@comment-21519-20170706003450

TR wrote:

Well that's interesting. I was really looking forward to having another '52 election for this project, but that is an intriguing way of handling things. Certainly never something that's actually happened in history, so it has that virtue.

I have a very foggy memory of reading somewhere, many years ago, that everyone had expected Tyler to call a special election to fill the unexpired term after Harrison died. So while a special presidential election would be unprecedented, it would not necessarily be inconceivable. If whoever wrote that wasn't full of shit, anyway, or I didn't just make it up altogether. (And yes, these are of course very different circumstances.)

TR wrote:

I have to wonder if HT is just tacitly admitting that the whole of the House was wiped out. The adjusting quorum rule would be irrelevant in that event, and thus getting Reps elected (ahem) would probably be the appropriate focus of the election. Otherwise, the only other "good argument" is that the surviving House is so small that it doesn't represent the American people fully, especially considering we started with 434 in the House and 96 in the Senate. But that's more of a "spirit of the Constitution" argument. A strict reading of the law shouldn't prevent even a tiny number of Representatives from participating in the count and making it legal.

At one point Truman describes the House as being "in even worse shape" than the Senate. If it had been whittled down to, say, fifty, its standing orders should allow it to do business with a quorum of 26 (not that HT seems aware of those standing orders), but as a practical political matter it would be pretty hard to take such a body seriously if it tried to be anything more than a caretaker.

And Truman also tells Eisenhower that governors are beginning to appoint replacements to fill those vacant spots (grr) so even if the House was extinct before, it isn't anymore.

Now whoever would be in charge of seating these appointees would have not just a right but an obligation to turn them away if they were unable to produce certificates of election, but obviously HT has trouble with that one. It's so frustrating: HT got it right in Chapter 1, I don't know why he had to goof in Chapter 14 or 15 or whatever it was (somewhere right around there).