History Behind Kamala Harris Tiebreaking Vote Record-World-Wire

The Senate advanced the nomination of Kalpana Kotagal to be a Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member. It was a relatively ordinary confirmation vote except for one thing: with her vote, Vice President Kamala Harris tied a 191-year-old record for casting the most tiebreaking votes in Congress.

The record had been held by South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun, who made his 31 tiebreaking votes in almost eight years as the vice president for both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson from 1825-1832. “The tiebreakers of Calhoun’s era were often related to the party division breakdown,” says Daniel Holt, assistant historian of the U.S. Senate Historical Office. “That’s a complicated picture in the 1820s and 1830s, as the two-party system was still developing and party affiliation was very fluid.”

On the other hand, Harris tied his record in just two and a half years—partly because of how bitterly entrenched and divisive the politics of the two-party system have become. Joel K. Goldstein, the scholar of the vice presidency, says Harris has a high number of tiebreaking votes “due to a combination of factors: a closely divided Senate, the polarization of our politics and the change in the filibuster rule so that it no longer takes 60 votes to bring an appointment to the floor. It only takes 50 but you need 51 to confirm an appointment.”

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