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Sunday, June 27, 2010

Ind. Law - "Secretary of state could be the key to who controls House"

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener of the Louisville Courier Journal has a story today about how "The winner of the secretary of state's race in November will determine who controls the Indiana House if the parties tie with 50 members each." More:

Twice in the past 25 years the House has been evenly split. The first time -- after the 1988 election -- the chamber elected co-speakers. One Democrat. One Republican. They alternated days in control.

The same was true in House committees. Each had two chairs -- one from each party -- and they alternated control of the meetings.

It worked, but not that well. So the General Assembly passed legislation to deal with future ties.

The law now says that if there is an equal number of Republican and Democratic members in the House, control will go to the party that won the governor's race or the secretary of state's race -- depending on the year.

And the law already has been used.

Voters split the Indiana House 50-50 again in the 1996 election. This time, Democrats took control because Democrat Frank O'Bannon won the governor's race.

So Democrats elected a speaker who appointed committee chairmen. They still had only 50 votes in the 100-member chamber, but they had more control over the agenda than did Republicans.

Currently, Democrats control the House 52-48. But if Republicans have the good election year that many political observers predict, it would not be hard to imagine another 50-50 split.

ILB: Some digging has produced this ILB entry from Nov. 7, 2004. quoting an erroneous report that "the House will change to an odd number of members when it redistricts following the 2000 census" to prevent the possibility of a 50-50 split, and then pointing out that that never happened.

Instead, IC 2-2.1-1-7.5 (the law referenced by Ms. Weidenbener), passed in 1995, remains in effect. It provides that, in the event of a 50-50 split:

(c) The speaker of the house of representatives and the principal clerk of the house of representatives shall be elected by the members of the house of representatives affiliated with the political party whose:
(1) candidate was elected governor at the previous general election; or
(2) candidate was elected secretary of state at the previous general election, if the governor was not elected at the previous general election.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 27, 2010 11:27 AM
Posted to Indiana Government | Indiana Law