Word: bayh
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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John Mitchell's Justice Department has been considered a sanctuary for Republicans who got their jobs after failing to win political elections. This was true of Assistant Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, loser in a 1968 Senate race against Indiana's Birch Bayh. But Ruckelshaus proved to be a winner in the department, where he soon became one of its ablest young (38) voices of moderation. Last spring he persuaded Mitchell to permit a massive antiwar rally near the White House; he even got his boss to make speeches extolling peaceful protest. Now President Nixon has nominated Ruckelshaus...
...four crucial statehouse elections-those in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. All are populous states with large blocks of electoral votes, and if the Democrats could capture them, they would have a fresh and formidable base upon which to build for 1972. Democratic hopefuls such as Muskie, McGovern and Bayh would have somewhere to go for funds and for national attention; from these four key states, the shattered Democrats might begin a modest renaissance. If New York could be miraculously snatched away from Nelson Rockefeller, the equation would be infinitely strengthened...
...Bayh was quick to point out that the measure itself was never allowed to come to a floor vote. The effect was the same: the survival of the electoral vote system is assured through 1972 and perhaps beyond...
...Bayh insists that runoffs would be a rarity. He points out that only one President failed to carry at least 40% of the popular vote (Abraham Lincoln won in 1860 with 39.79%). A greater danger, Bayh maintains, is that a third-party candidate like George Wallace could win enough electoral votes to deny either major-party candidate the required majority of 270 electoral votes. Then Wallace could make a deal to turn over his electors to whichever front runner made the most concessions. That, or the choice of a President, would be left to the House of Representatives, where...
Several Senators weighed in with variations aimed at making Bayh's proposal more palatable. North Carolina's Sam Ervin was willing to drop electors but not electoral votes. The Ervin plan would eliminate the danger inherent in human electors: that their votes can be bartered in a three-way race in which no candidate wins a majority...