During Winter Break, I couldn’t escape the national headline of the House Speaker vote. It was on the TV, in the news, on social media, and most importantly, (for me at least), in my beloved Planet Fitness treadmill stations. As someone who regrettably doesn’t know as much political logistics as I should, I had no clue anything regarding this vote. In fact, when I initially saw the count, I assumed Hakeem Jeffries was going to win because he held the majority of the House votes. What I didn’t (but should’ve) known, is that the Republicans, who held the ‘House majority’, were in a tight deadlock amidst their faction.
You see, in the current U.S. political atmosphere, there is a clear divide among the Republican Party. The majority of Republicans are more moderate, but there are quite a few radically-minded supporters (around 21 or so) that hold enough power to turn the House vote into a stalemate if they so choose – that’s exactly what happened with the fifteen speaker elections that ended up being the longest since the 1850s.
Republican Kevin McCarthy of California was always the favorite to get elected, but he knew he had a long road ahead of him when the first ballot saw a 212-203 split in favor of Jeffries, with 19 Republicans voting other candidates, and a handful voting present – more on that concept here. Don’t let that initial vote count fool you (like it did to me) – because the Republicans hold the House majority, they weren’t in any real danger of losing the speaker vote to the Democrats. No Republican would ever willingly vote Democrat, and vice versa. However, this DID mean that the radical Republicans, who were the ones responsible for those ‘Other’ and ‘Present’ votes, were able to hold out in order to bargain concessions with McCarthy. Clearly, you can see that this radical faction gained a lot in return, as every single one of those fifteen ballots was a grueling process that had some question the voting system as a whole.
However, like the title suggests, all of this has come to a conclusion, and now the 435 voting members of the House of Representatives are able to contribute to the mechanisms that hold our nation together – at least until the next vote in 2025. Let’s hope that one goes a little quicker than this one did! If any of you are interested in learning more about U.S. politics and how the various elections / terms work, like I was, I found this website to be extremely informational.
I think it’s super important to highlight areas in politics that we might not know as much about — in this case, your (and the entire USA’s, really) confusion and frustration over this vote. Knowledge is power, and far too often, citizens are left in the dark, whether due to our education or intentional secrecy “behind the curtain”. Educating yourself on this issue, and then writing a post about it, helps to knock down the barriers to politics and makes it far more accessible. My one suggestion is to break up your paragraphs a bit more to make it easier to read/more visually appealing.