eli5: How exactly does the House of Representatives choose a Speaker and what happens if the majority isn’t unified in their choice?
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The Speaker of the US House of Representatives is chosen by a majority of the members of the House.
If one party makes up a majority of the House, and is unified with who they want to lead it, that means a simple vote where that one party provides a majority of the votes of the House, and nobody else can win because any other candidate would have to be in a minority.
If no one party is able to do that (eg because there are more than two parties represented and no single party has a majority, or because a party which nominally holds a majority is fractured about who they want to see in charge), then they need to keep voting until the House at large can find a candidate supported by the majority of the House. This could involve a compromise where members of multiple different parties vote together for a candidate they can both live with.
Ultimately, if they cannot find anyone capable of commanding majority support, they could change the rules to allow a Speaker to be chosen by plurality (where the person with the most votes gets to win, even if they don’t have a majority of all the votes).
They do a roll call vote. Each party chooses a nominee, and then every member of the house casts a vote. Because there’s basically always just two parties in the House, the party with the most seats gets their nominee as speaker. If no one wins a majority, they vote again. In 1923 they had to vote 9 times.
The clerk of the house asks for nominees. Generally the parties nominate their leaders and in rare cases a small group might nominate an additional choice.
Every member gets to vote for one nominee though they can also not vote or vote present. The clerk then adds up the vote for each nominee. The speaker is whoever can get a majority of the members present and voting. If no one can secure that, then the vote fails and a new vote will be taken.
Side note, while most elections are quick and done in a single vote or 2, the record for a speaker election is about 2 months and 133 votes in 1855.
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