the only reasons the speaker is a repub (aside from gerrymandering) is that during the 2017 elections...1 race resulted in a tie as a result of tens of voters being 'mistakenly' placed in the wrong district. of course...that particular precinct had an overwhelmingly black population who were likely to vote for the democrat.

a republican-majority panel of judges marked it up to something like an incidental error that that wasnt worthy of the court mandating a remedy (like letting those people vote in their real district or calling another election). and the tie was then broken by picking one of the candidates from a piece of paper out of a bowl. the repub was the one picked.