Exercise 2: The Real Quorum Math Behind the Enabling Act Vote — Possible Solution
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Working through the actual numbers step by step shows exactly how a
procedural exclusion changed the outcome of a supermajority vote
without changing a single person's actual position on the bill.

THE STARTING POINT: THE FULL REICHSTAG
The Reichstag had 647 total seats. To pass a constitutional amendment
like the Enabling Act, the Constitution required a genuine two-thirds
supermajority - meaning at least two-thirds of the members actually
present and voting needed to approve it, with a quorum requirement
setting the minimum number of members who needed to be present at all
for the vote to count as valid in the first place.

WHAT THE QUORUM WOULD HAVE BEEN WITH EVERYONE COUNTED
If the full Reichstag membership were counted for quorum purposes, the
real threshold worked out to 432 members needing to be present. This
is the number the chamber's own rules would normally have required
before any vote on a constitutional amendment could even proceed.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED
Reichstag President Hermann Göring excluded the 81 KPD deputies who had
been arrested or otherwise prevented from attending, on the reasoning
that they were simply unavailable. Removing 81 seats from the base used
to calculate the quorum brought the real required quorum down from 432
to 378 members - a significantly lower bar to clear.

WHY THIS MATTERED FOR THE ACTUAL VOTE
This exclusion didn't change how any individual deputy would have
voted - it changed the denominator the two-thirds threshold was being
measured against. With 81 reliably anti-Nazi votes removed from the
count entirely rather than simply losing on the floor, the remaining
chamber needed a smaller absolute number of "yes" votes to reach the
same two-thirds proportion. The real final vote, 444 in favor to 94
against, cleared the lowered 378-member quorum and the resulting
two-thirds threshold comfortably - a result that would have been
mathematically much harder to reach, and might well have failed
outright, if all 81 KPD seats had still been counted as present and
voting no.

ANSWER: Before the exclusion, the Reichstag's own quorum rules would
have required 432 members present for a valid constitutional vote.
By excluding the 81 arrested or absent KPD deputies from that count,
Göring lowered the required quorum to 378 members - meaning the
two-thirds threshold that determined whether the Enabling Act passed
was now being measured against a smaller base that had already had 81
reliably opposing votes removed from it entirely, rather than counted
and defeated on the floor. This procedural change made passing the
two-thirds threshold significantly easier without persuading or
changing a single deputy's actual vote.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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It walks through the quorum calculation as an actual math problem -
the starting requirement, the specific number excluded, and the
resulting lowered threshold - showing precisely how a procedural
exclusion altered the vote's own required denominator rather than just
restating that the exclusion "helped" the Nazis in general terms.