Michael McConnell, an influential conservative legal scholar at Stanford and a former federal appeals court judge who was appointed by George W. Bush, is not persuaded by Tribe’s argument. The provision giving the vice president a vote, he told me, “applies whenever the Senate is equally divided. If Section 3 did not apply to the advice and consent function, then the vice president would not only not be able to vote, but would not preside, which is contrary to historical practice.”