by Jodi L. Miller
If you happened to see the 2023 Speaker of the House election process—whether through snippets on the evening news, or maybe you watched the coverage on CSPAN—take heart, because this wasn’t the longest battle to see who would lead the U.S. House of Representatives.
Since 1789, when the Speaker of the House position was created, the House has elected 128 Speakers. Of those elections, 15 have required multiple-ballots—12 of those elections occurred before the Civil War. The latest multiple-ballot Speaker of the House election was held in January 2023.
What does the Speaker do?
The position of Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is an important and prestigious job which has grown from a purely parliamentarian role to one that wields more power. Whoever attains this position presides over the U.S. House of Representatives and, according to the U.S. presidential line of succession, is second in line to the Presidency, after the Vice President. The Speaker’s duties include negotiating with the President and the U.S. Senate, controlling the order of business on the House floor, overseeing non-elected staff in the House, such as the inspector general, the sergeant-at-arms, the clerk and the House chaplain, as well as providing leadership in their own party, dispensing assignments to conference and select committees.
“The earliest parties formed in part around electing the Speaker,” Eric Schickler, a political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Washington Post. “In the second and third Congresses, there were more Jeffersonians elected, but the Federalists were organized and elected their choice of speaker. That started this practice of parties getting together and trying to settle on one candidate at the start.”
The Speaker position is only mentioned once in the U.S. Constitution. Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution says: “The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers;…” The lack of specifics in the Constitution has been interpreted to mean that whoever holds this position does not necessarily need to be a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
According to Patrick Fisher, a political science professor at Seton Hall University who teaches courses on Congress, the Presidency and U.S. Elections, the concept of the Speaker of the House is based on the role of Speaker in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons.
“In the United Kingdom, the Speaker has long been seen to be a neutral referee of the rules and not a partisan position,” Professor Fisher says. “So, the fact that the Speaker can be a non-member of the House actually originates with the United Kingdom position and you can argue that the partisan position the office has become is against what the Framers had in mind.”
So far, in the history of the House of Representatives, a non-House member has never been elected to Speaker of the House.
Not an easy election
So, how is a Speaker of the House elected? Essentially, every two years, in January, the incoming members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who were elected the previous November, hold an election for the position of Speaker. There are normally 435 voting members in the House; however, for the 2023 vote there were only 434 due to a vacancy in Virginia where the representative-elect died after the election. To be elected Speaker, a candidate needs the vote of the majority—so 218 votes. A candidate is usually elected from whichever party has the most elected representatives and also has control of the House.
After the November 2022 midterms, the House of Representatives was split with 222 Republicans and 212 Democrats. In January 2023, Kevin McCarthy, a representative from California, was elected Speaker of the House on the 15th ballot after five days of voting. During that time, according to House rules, no other business can be conducted, including passing legislation, appointing members to committees, holding hearings, or even swearing in the newly elected House members. Because they are not sworn in, the representatives-elect cannot set up services for their constituents and are barred from accessing their security clearances. In addition, government officials in the District of Columbia were at a standstill. The District of Columbia Home Rule Act stipulates that any laws passed by the district are subject to congressional review, with hand-delivered physical copies brought to the Senate’s president pro tempore and the Speaker of the House. Since there was no Speaker of the House for five days, the congressional review period for any proposed law could not start.
On all 15 ballots, the 212 Democrats voted for Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, while the vote for Representative McCarthy, who could only afford to lose four of his caucus’ votes, came in as many as 17 votes shy of what he needed. Twenty members of his own party were blocking McCarthy’s path to the Speakership. He would eventually get to 216 votes, winning on the 15th ballot, but not before giving up a number of concessions (more on that later) to his detractors.
So, how did Speaker McCarthy win with only 216 votes when 218 is a majority? When asked via roll call how they would like to vote, each member-elect has three choices—they can vote for a particular candidate that has been nominated on the floor of the House, they can abstain, or they can vote “present.” Voting present registers the representative’s attendance but lowers the threshold needed to win.
“By common practice House votes are tallied by majority of votes cast, not a majority of the members of the House,” Professor Fisher says. “This is not in the Constitution; however, and the House could change this by altering its rules. Again, this is a tradition that has its origins with the United Kingdom’s House of Commons.”
It’s happened before
It has been 100 years since there was a dispute over who would become Speaker of the House. In 1923, it took nine ballots to re-elect Speaker Frederick Gillett, a Republican from Massachusetts. Like McCarthy, Gillett’s Republican party had a slim majority—just seven after the 1922 midterms—so he could not afford to lose many votes. Gillett had already been elected Speaker of the House after the 1918 midterms. This time around, however, there were 17 members of his own party—so called “radical progressives”—who refused to vote for Gillett without concessions. With the help of other Republican Party leaders, Gillett was able to convince enough members of this faction that there would be procedural reforms in the House, and he was elected on the ninth ballot.
By far the longest battle to elect a Speaker of the House occurred in 1856 when it took two months and 133 ballots to elect Nathaniel Prentice Banks of Massachusetts as the 21st Speaker of the House. A combination of conflicts over slavery and election timing in the 19th Century, which varied by state then, contributed to the extended process. In addition, there were more political parties at the time, so reaching a majority was harder.
According to reporting from The Washington Post, it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened the Kansas territory to slavery, that caused the 1856 controversy in the 34th Congress.
“The law provoked a swift and powerful backlash in the North—destroying what was left of the Northern Whig Party and profoundly destabilizing the Democrats in many places,” The Post reported. “Seizing on the disarray, antislavery Free Soilers and anti-Catholic nativists in the Know Nothing or American Party vied to build a new party that might emerge as the proslavery Democrat’s primary challenger. Many of the Free Soilers vigorously advocated for a new coalition first called the anti-Nebraska movement, before soon becoming known as the Republican Party.”
After dragging on for two months, the House agreed to change the rules and elect a Speaker of the House by a plurality instead of a majority. So, how could the members vote on that motion when they aren’t allowed to conduct any business until the Speaker is elected?
As Professor Fisher explains, “It is possible for a motion to be made to change the rules for electing a Speaker before a Speaker is elected if a majority of those voting vote in favor of changing the rules,” he says. “So, if a majority agrees to change the rules the rules can be changed.”
What about those concessions?
Speaker McCarthy made several concessions to obtain the speakership, which were criticized by members on both sides of the aisle. Many in his own party believe that Speaker McCarthy’s concessions weaken the Speaker’s role, as well as the Republican Party’s ability to govern in the House.
Here are just a few of the concessions that Speaker McCarthy agreed to: the House will hold votes on key conservative bills, including a balanced budget amendment, congressional term limits, and border security; efforts to raise the nation’s debt ceiling must be paired with spending cuts; more Freedom Caucus (a extremely conservative portion of the Republican Party) representation on committees, including the influential House Rules Committee, which controls what bills come to the House floor for a vote; 72 hours to review bills before they come to the floor; and the ability to offer more amendments on the House floor.
According to Professor Fisher, the concessions made by Speaker McCarthy are not binding to any future Speaker of the House.
“These are part of the rules package that is voted on after the Speaker is elected,” Professor Fisher says. “A Democratic Speaker would definitely have different rules and a Republican Speaker with a larger majority almost certainly would have a different rules package as well.”
One of the biggest and most surprising concessions that Speaker McCarthy made is lowering the threshold to start the process of removing the Speaker of the House—known as a “motion to vacate the chair”—to just one member. That means that any one member of the House can vote to oust Speaker McCarthy from his post, which would trigger a process, beginning with a House vote, toward his removal.
“A majority vote would kick McCarthy out of the Speakership and a new vote for Speaker would then have to take place,” according to Professor Fisher. “It is similar to the vote of no confidence in the United Kingdom, but by tradition in the UK and European democracies if a vote of no confidence passes it leads to the government falling and new elections being held. Early elections cannot take place [in the U.S.] according to the U.S. Constitution.”
Discussion Questions
- How do you think the concessions that Speaker McCarthy made to obtain the Speakership will affect his party’s ability to govern? Do you agree or disagree that the position has been weakened? Explain your answer.
- What do you think about the fact that business in the House and legislation in the District of Columbia comes to a standstill until a Speaker is elected? How do you think that affects people who need the support of government?
- What measures would you take to streamline the process of electing the Speaker of House? Would you favor a plurality vs. majority vote? Explain your answer.
Glossary Words
abstain—formally decline to vote either for or against.
caucus—a conference of members of a legislative body who belong to a particular party or faction.
constituents—voters who elect a person to represent them.
parliamentarian—someone who is expert on rules and procedures used by a group that makes laws.
partisan—someone who supports a particular political party or cause with great devotion.
plurality—having a greater number (as in votes), but not a majority.
pro tempore—lasting only for the time being.