Word: could
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Small wonder rumors surfaced that Gephardt would give up the minority leader's thankless job. Maybe he could better push his pet issues as a backbencher. Maybe, if Bush won, he could start spending lots of time in Iowa, where he won the presidential caucuses in 1988, in preparation for another White House bid in 2004. But the day after the election, Gephardt confirmed he would seek the leader's post again and, after months of being a bulldog, started acting like a leader. He telephoned Speaker Dennis Hastert, with whom he had scarcely talked since the two fought early...
...electors dwell in deserved obscurity, they still have to gather, usually in their state's capital, a month or so after Election Day and actually cast votes. They have carried out that task with admirably robotic precision: only nine have ever failed to vote as they pledged. But they could make mischief in circumstances such as the ones we face today, in which the winner of the popular vote may narrowly lose the electoral vote...
...Presidents who have won less than 50% of the vote--John Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968, Bill Clinton in 1992--have started out under pressure to conciliate rather than undertake bold partisan ambitions. Bush, as a President tainted by his lack of a popular-vote margin, could be even more inhibited...
...lieu of a constitutional amendment, congressional legislation may be able to do the job. Article II of the Constitution says that "Congress may determine the time of choosing the Electors and the day on which they shall give their votes." Proponents of reform say that Congress could pass a law requiring that electors be chosen on Election Day and also give their votes on Election Day. That would leave the states with no avenue but to consider each individual voter to be a fraction of an elector...
These complications could push the choice back to a constitutional amendment to elect Presidents by popular vote alone. But by majority--or would a plurality be enough...