Kevin Kosar oped in The Hill:

One thing I worry about is a contingent presidential election. That situation arises when no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes (270 of 538). Should this situation arise, Congress gets to pick the next president and vice president.

Yes, you read correctly, the 535 folks whom 80 percent of Americans dislike make these momentous decisions. Yes, these are the same folks who nearly shut down the government, who refuse to fix the broken immigration system and who have run up more than $33 trillion in debt. And who can forget Jan. 6, 2021, when some legislators refused to recognize states’ electoral slates and sparked a riot?

What could go wrong?

My smart readers might now rub their chins and reply, “Well, how likely is that scenario?” Some of them might even point out that there has not been a contingent election since 1824, when John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay split the votes.

True, but the odds of it occurring are growing. Landslide victories (think Ronald Reagan vs. Walter Mondale in 1984 or Richard Nixon vs McGovern in 1972) are growing rarer. Four of the past six presidential elections have been very close. In 2020, had 44,000 voters in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin picked Trump instead of Biden we would have had a tied election (269 to 269).

Come the 2024 election, the chances of a contingent election may go higher still, according to a recent report from United to Protect Democracy. The reason is that No Labels, an organization that says its mission is devoted to bipartisan problem-solving, is threatening to run a third-party ticket. …