In Perot Scenarios, House Could Pick Next President : Campaign: If no one gets a majority in a 3-way race, it could revive a Capitol Hill frenzy not seen in 167 years.

It’s iffy. But with Ross Perot red-hot in the polls, it’s increasingly conceivable and has become the talk of Capitol Hill.

For the first time since 1825, the House could be forced to elect the next President if no candidate wins enough states in November to gain a majority of electoral votes.

And, just as happened 167 years ago--when none of the four candidates won a majority of Electoral College votes--the House could become a raucous scene of lawmakers bargaining their presidential votes for Cabinet positions and other goodies.

The drama also could end the same way it did in 1825--in a national uproar, with the House sending to the White House someone who had been an also-ran in the popular and electoral voting.

“The possible scenarios are wild, exhilarating and frightening. Anything could happen,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia government professor.

In the most widely discussed scenario, a House Democratic majority elects the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Bill Clinton, even though Republican incumbent George Bush or independent challenger Perot finished ahead of Clinton on Election Day.

Would Democrats really do that?

“Are you kidding?” Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) exclaimed.

“Look,” he said, “we’re in a drought”--no Democratic President in 12 years. “When the oasis appears in the desert, you don’t think you go rush and stick your head in it and drink deeply? No doubt in my mind!”

Many House Republicans have the same expectation. “A Democratic House very likely would elect the Democratic nominee,” said the third-ranking GOP leader, Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands).

And, in a sign of growing Republican anxiety, Rep. Alex McMillan (R-N.C.) said he warns constituents who are “tempted by Perot’s crispness and self-madeness” that “a vote for Perot is a vote for Clinton.”

An added complication: The House that would make the decision would not be the one now in session, but the one convening in January--when its 435 seats are expected to be occupied by more than 100 new members. If it contains a majority of Republicans, they too could be expected to take a strict party line, regardless of the November vote totals.

The House’s unusual procedure for picking a President would further thicken the plot. Rather than each representative having a direct vote, each state delegation would cast a single ballot after polling its members. Thus, sparsely populated states such as Alaska, Vermont and Montana--each of which will have only a single House member in the ’93 Congress--would carry equal weight with California and its 52 representatives.

Democrats now have majorities in 31 of the House’s state delegations, Republicans in 10, and a Socialist in one--Vermont. Eight are evenly divided.

The decision would land in the House’s lap if a three-way split in November’s results denied any candidate the 270 Electoral College votes required for victory. The Electoral College system--in which each state’s vote total is equal to its number of House members and its two senators--was conceived by the Founding Fathers as a compromise between electing presidents by Congress or by direct popular vote.

But little more than a generation after the Constitution was written, the framers had reason to doubt their wisdom. In 1825, furious political bargaining--including a rumored secret deal that made House Speaker Henry Clay secretary of state--gave John Quincy Adams the presidency over Andrew Jackson, who had polled the most electoral and popular votes.

The resulting uproar led to a duel between Clay and Virginia Sen. John Randolph (no gunshots hit the mark). And four years later the country rebelled against the House’s back-door politicking, ousting Adams from office and electing the populist Jackson.

Many observers think if there were an “upset” in the House this time--if, for instance, Democrats persisted in picking Clinton regardless of where he finished in November--it could ignite a similar revolt and lead to replacing the Electoral College system with a direct election of the President.

In the current atmosphere, there are other fascinating scenarios besides the no-matter-what election of Clinton. With great rapidity, they are being spun by scholars, political consultants and lawmakers as opinion polls show Perot--who is not yet a declared candidate--running first in California, Texas, Florida and other states.

Simply by winning California and Texas, Perot could deprive Bush and Clinton of an electoral majority if the two major-party candidates split the remaining states.

In that case, said Thomas E. Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution, then this could happen when the election is thrown into the House: Democrats, terrified of eventual voter retribution if they pick a second- or third-place Clinton, grudgingly elect front-runner Bush. But the Democratic-controlled Senate, which gets to choose the vice president, dumps Dan Quayle in favor of Clinton’s running mate.

GOP consultant Eddie Mahe has a different scenario: Republicans capture the majority of House seats in November, but Democrats retain control of a majority of state delegations. As Mahe envisions it, the House winds up electing Perot because Democrats consider him “more Democratic” than Bush and because their own leader, Clinton, finished third at the polls.

In yet another script, advanced by UC Berkeley political science professor Austin Ranney, the candidates resolve an electoral deadlock by striking a deal in the Electoral College--perhaps agreeing that the popular vote winner deserves election. That keeps the matter out of the House, averting a possible constitutional crisis.

Just such a scenario could have occurred in 1968, Ranney said. Republican Richard M. Nixon and Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey each agreed to swing his electors to whomever got the most popular votes if third-party candidate George C. Wallace took enough states to force an electoral stalemate. Nixon ended up winning narrowly in November.

Under current law, any presidential election by the House would have to come between Jan. 6, when electoral ballots are counted in Congress, and Jan. 20, when the President is inaugurated. And under current House precedent, the balloting would take place behind closed doors.

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) has quietly asked the Library of Congress to prepare a nuts-and-bolts report on what the Constitution, statutes and House precedents say about procedures for such an election.

“The Speaker wants to be prepared, though it is his fondest wish that such an ordeal not come to pass,” a confidante said.

Rep. Dan Glickman (D-Kan.) has called on Foley and Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) to make more extensive preparations, including public hearings and possible changes in procedures.

“With the emergence of Ross Perot as a viable, well-financed third-party candidate, a number of troubling scenarios could become real possibilities,” Glickman wrote the leaders.

Several analysts doubt the election will ever reach the House. They predict Perot’s popularity will fade and that he will fare no better than independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson, who after much early attention in 1980 ended up carrying no states.

Others, however, expect Perot to demonstrate far more staying power than Anderson.

“Perot is much hotter and better funded than . . . Anderson,” said the University of Virginia’s Sabato. “He has much greater potential.”

William Schneider, political analyst for Cable News Network, agrees there is “a small but not trivial likelihood” that the election could be thrown into the House.

“It depends primarily on two things,” he said. “Will the economy improve enough to buoy Bush’s approval rating, and will Clinton be able to turn his negatives around? With a weak Bush and a weak Clinton, Perot’s appeal could be quite powerful. He might actually come in second nationwide and force a decision by the House.”

Schneider believes that House members would be under great pressure to elect whoever had received the most popular votes.

“You cannot contravene the will of the people in our system. If the House tried to elect a Clinton who came in second or third (in the popular vote), after Bush came in first, it would be impossible for him to govern.”

Schneider theorized that a House with a Democratic majority could elect Bush without a single Democrat having to suffer the political harm of casting a vote for him. Democrats, he said, simply could abstain and let Republicans cast all the votes in their state delegations.

Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) is among those watching developments keenly. As a candidate for President in 1948 under the banner of the Dixiecrat Party, he won 39 electoral votes and would have helped deny Democrat Harry S. Truman an electoral majority if California and Ohio had given 25,000 more popular votes to Republican Thomas E. Dewey.

When it looked on election night as if the contest might be forced into the Republican-controlled House, a powerful GOP figure sent word to Thurmond through a friend: “Don’t make any commitments. We’re going to work things out for you.”

As it happened, the Democrats regained control of the House in the ’48 elections, so Thurmond might not have been in a position to play kingmaker after all.

Still, recalling the incident, Thurmond said he has no doubts he was being asked to throw his support to Dewey in exchange for some favors.

“I think they would have given us a number of Cabinet positions. That’s what my friend was told by the secretary of the Senate,” Thurmond said.

And what does Thurmond think of that kind of electoral system?

“I think the whole matter needs to be studied.”