WASHINGTON — Consider the following scenario: Following a contentious midterm election, the House gathers on the first day of the new Congress to organize itself. With an unpopular Democrat in the White House, the party appears to have lost its House majority. But something’s amiss.
In one state, it looks like the Democrats lost five tight races, but there are reports that votes from entire towns were never counted. Despite the irregularities, though, the governor certified the results, which would have tipped control of the House to his party … except the House clerk, picked by the Democrats in the lame duck, refuses to recognize the five disputed representatives-elect. And that tips the balance in the House back to the Democrats. Chaos ensues.
This might sound like the plot of a bad political thriller or the fever dream of a conspiracy theorist, but it’s no hypothetical. It actually happened in 1839, when House Democrats rejected five of six Whig representatives-elect from New Jersey who showed up with election certificates issued by the governor, who was also a Whig. As a result, they retained partisan control of the House during the months it took to resolve the debacle.
