Welcome to the Monday, Dec. 21, Brew.

Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:

1. Five times since 1920, the winning presidential candidate’s party lost seats in U.S. House but kept its majority
2. Proponents file signatures for California ballot initiative to legalize sports betting 
3. Supreme Court issues ruling in water dispute between Texas, New Mexico

Five times since 1920, the winning presidential candidate’s party lost seats in U.S. House but kept its majority

The 1920 presidential election was the first presidential election following the ratification of the 19th amendment. Earlier this year, we wrote about the history of Women’s suffrage. Let’s take a closer look today at how the 100 years of elections have transpired—specifically, in comparing presidential and U.S. House results. 

In the last 100 hundred years, there have been five presidential elections where the following three things happened in the same election:

• the winning presidential candidate's party lost U.S. House seats
• the party that lost seats in the House maintained the majority it had going into the election, and
• the presidency switched parties.

This year’s election is one of those five instances. 

Four of the five cases all occurred since 1990:

• In 1992, Bill Clinton (D) defeated George H.W. Bush (R), and the Democratic Party lost nine net seats in the House. 
• In 2000, George W. Bush (R) succeeded Clinton, and the Republican Party lost two net seats in the House. 
• In 2016, Donald Trump (R) succeeded Barack Obama (D), and the Republican Party lost six net seats in the House.
• In 2020, Joe Biden (D) defeated Trump, and the Democratic Party lost at least 13 net seats in the House.

The greatest loss of seats in the House by a party that won the presidency happened in 1960. That year, John F. Kennedy (D) won the White House for Democrats, and the party lost 21 House seats. 

Ballotpedia examined the results of U.S. House elections in all 26 presidential election years since 1920, using data from the Office of the Clerk for the U.S. House. Gains and losses are calculated by taking the difference between the number of seats won in that election, and the number of seats won in the preceding presidential election year. These figures include only the number of seats held by the Republican and Democratic parties at the start of each Congress and do not include vacancies or seats held by third parties.

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Proponents file signatures for California ballot initiative to legalize sports betting

Elections never stop, so let’s jump straight into some 2022 talk—starting with California ballot measures.

The Coalition to Authorize Regulated Sports Wagering in California stated that they filed more than 1.4 million signatures for a ballot initiative to legalize sports betting at American Indian gaming casinos and licensed racetracks. The initiative would also legalize roulette and dice games, such as craps, at tribal casinos. Voters will decide the measure in November 2022 if at least 997,139 of the submitted signatures are verified.

The Coalition to Authorize Regulated Sports Wagering filed its combined citizen-initiated amendment and statute regarding sports gambling on November 4, 2019. In California, proponents of a combined initiated constitutional amendment and state statute must within 180 days submit signatures equal to 8% of the votes cast in the preceding gubernatorial election. The group was therefore required to submit signatures by July 20 but filed a lawsuit asking to extend the deadline due to restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic. Sacramento County Superior Court Judge James Arguelles extended the signature deadline, first to Oct. 12, and then to Dec. 14.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D)’s executive order regarding coronavirus-related election changes extended the deadline for counties to report the number of qualified signatures for ballot initiatives to March 9, 2021. Without the executive order, counties would have had eight days to conduct a raw count of signatures followed by 30 days to conduct a random sample of signature validity for ballot initiatives.

Before 2018, the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act prohibited states from authorizing sports betting. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 on May 14, 2018, that the federal government could not require states to prohibit sports betting. As of December, 24 states and Washington, D.C., had passed statewide laws legalizing sports betting. In 2020, two states—Maryland and South Dakota—approved ballot measures legalizing sports betting in certain locations.

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Supreme Court issues ruling in water dispute between Texas, New Mexico

Earlier this month, Texas asked the Supreme Court to consider its election-related lawsuit—Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al.—under its power of original jurisdiction, that is, as the first court to decide a case. A 1948 federal law grants the Supreme Court "original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States." Although SCOTUS declined to hear that case, they recently issued a ruling in Texas v. New Mexico, which concerned an interstate water dispute.

In a 7-1 opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court denied Texas' motion to review the annual report of a Supreme Court-appointed river master and held that the river master correctly determined a water delivery credit allocated to New Mexico. Justice Samuel Alito concurred in part and dissented in part. In his opinion, Alito wrote that he would have vacated the case and remanded it to the river master with instructions to redo his analysis. Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not take part in the case since she was not a member of the court when arguments were held on Oct. 5.

Federal rules of procedure authorize courts, including the Supreme Court, to appoint a special master to collect evidence and make determinations if both parties consent or if a case's circumstances would be handled more timely and efficiently by a master than the court itself.

The two states had entered an interstate compact in 1948 about the use of the Pecos River, which flows south from New Mexico to Texas and joins the Rio Grande. In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court appointed a river master to issue an annual report summarizing New Mexico's compliance with its compact obligations. In this case, Texas challenged retroactive changes the river master made to his 2014-2015 annual report.

Original jurisdiction cases before the Supreme Court are rare. According to the Federal Judicial Center, “The Supreme Court's original docket has always been a minute portion of its overall caseload. Between 1789 and 1959, the Court issued written opinions in only 123 original cases. Since 1960, the Court has received fewer than 140 motions for leave to file original cases, nearly half of which were denied a hearing. The majority of cases filed have been in disputes between two or more states.” According to a database search on FindLaw, there were 24,344 Supreme Court dockets from 1789 to 1959, meaning that original jurisdiction cases represented less than one percent of the Court's caseload during that time.

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