2024 US House Races Megapost!

politics @lemmy.world – 80 points – 2 weeks ago

I'm not even going to TRY to list out all 435 House Races, but let's keep the discussion on that here.

Google election results is showing:

218 R / 208 D with 218 needed for majority. We likely won't know the full result for several days.

9 races left to call.

CA 9 - Leaning Democratic
CA 21 - Leaning Democratic
ME 2 - Leaning Democratic
OH 9 - Leaning Democratic
OR 5 - Leaning Democratic - Called by local media.

AK 1 - Leaning Republican
CA 13 - Leaning Republican
CA 45 - Leaning Republican
IA 1 - Leaning Republican

Looks like it's going to end up 222 R to 213 D.

Particularly notable will be any flips from D to R or R to D.

Currently, the makeup of the House is:

https://pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/party-breakdown

220 Republicans
212 Democrats
3 Vacancies

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) resigned effective 04/25/2024.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) died 07/19/2024.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) died 08/21/2024.

If the Republicans lose just 5 seats, control will flip from them, back to the Democrats with a majority of 217 to 215. Not even counting the three vacancies.

You are viewing a single comment

View all comments Show the parent comment

Agreed, but does it require every state to agree? If enough constitutional amendments could be passed and ratified by a two thirds majority on all levels, then the Constitution could simply be amended to implement those changes (and the authors behind the paper for this proposal expect that this is exactly what will happen once the plan is executed successfully - rather than Dems abusing their power or DC enacting minority rule over the entire country, they'll cooperate to design a better, fairer, and reformed system)

does it require every state to agree?

Yes. It's baked into Article V which is about amendments. The last line is the relevant line.

Article. V.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

I'm not a constitutional scholar, but presumably an amendment cannot self-reference the article that amendments are derived from. Otherwise, we could just amend Article V to remove the last line of text and then amend the Senate as much as we wanted with another.

I could be wrong. Maybe the Founders were hoping that the future generations would notice this, but enough slave owners at the time wouldn't and sign it.

Hmm.. I understand the that last line to mean that every State should have the same number of Senators in the Senate.

But from https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/56523/can-the-us-senate-be-abolished-without-unanimous-consent-of-the-states it sounds like a workaround is simply to set that equal number to zero. Meanwhile there's no prohibition on adding a new, third House to Congress - so maybe we reply the Senate with the House of of State Peers or something.

Alas, it looks like we're screwed now.