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across the nation as proof of what might be expected if the Democrats won; but the solemn fact is that the election would have been conducted in the city of Washington, predominantly a Negro city, and when these citizens saw that all public pressures were being applied on the sideof Nixon, a man who had ignored them in the campaign and against whom they had voted heavily (139,556 to 31,012), there would have been a great temptation to launch rallies and riots of their own, to offset what they saw happening on television. This tenseness would have been increased by the fact that whereas the Twenty-third Amendment awarded the District of Columbia three votes in the Electoral College, those votes would have been lost when the election went to the House, since the District of Columbia has no representation there. The vote would have been held in Washington, but with Washington itself excluded. Finally, the analogies that one would naturally draw between 1801 and 1969 would in one vital area not apply. Then it required days and even weeks for news of what was transpiring in Washington to reach the hinterlands; even Burr, staying in New York, was not informed until two days later at the best as to what the vote had been in crucial tests. Time and distance softened the impact; when unpleasant news did reach a distant city, what could the citizens do about it, since the fact was now history accepted by the capital? In 1969 the sharing of news is instantaneous, and if the seven days of suspense that characterized the 1801 election were to have been repeated in 1969, the anxiety would not only have been much more intense; it would also have embraced the whole nation. Because the frustration would have been instantaneous, those frustrated would have felt that they could do something about it, and I am apprehensive when I contemplate what form that action might have taken.
    How would the 1969 House election have gone? The balanceof power as shown in the composition of state delegations gives no cause for thinking that it would have gone easily. Theodore G. Venetoulis, in his analysis of the House election system, * has a grimly amusing chapter containing nineteen pages of speculation on “1968—The Year No President Was Elected.” He carries his imaginary election through twenty-three deadlocked ballots, and as the capital prepares for the twenty-fourth, a snow begins to fall, as it had in a similar situation in 1801. Reading his account after the Nixon-Humphrey election, one realizes that he has not relied on fantasy. It all could have happened.
    Looking at the problem of House election, Venetoulis concludes: “It is inevitable that any Presidential election thrust into the Congress is going to touch off a horrendous struggle that will strain the political ethics of our society. The Presidency of the United States must not be the product of insolent intrigue, malapportioned gimmickry, or crude coalitions fashioned out of despair, exhaustion, or blackmail.”
    James Madison, even though he had helped draft the Constitution, had no illusions about the error of having inconclusive elections thrown into the House. In 1823 he had unequivocal thoughts on the mistake he and his colleagues had made: “The present rule of voting for President by the House of Representatives is so great a departure from the republican principle of numerical equality, and even from the Federal rule, which qualifies the numerical by a State equality, and is so pregnant also with a mischievous tendency in practice, that an amendment to the Constitution on thispoint is justly called for by all its considerate and best friends.”
    If an amendment was needed in 1823—two years before the Jackson-Adams deadlock—how much more is one needed today. Fortunately, as we shall see, there are two quite simple escapes from this error, and each is easily attainable by amendment. First, when the electoral vote is inconclusive, a run-off election could be held immediately