What about Superintendent noms? Sometimes a district might have an amazing bunch of candidates...where everyone is awesome (845Something calls them "water walkers"). Suppose someone has a very high WCS, but no nom (and tried for all). They can be considered for a sup nom, I believe. Many athletes get those...esp football players who are recruited after the nom process is over.
Yes, it appears that strong candidates without noms could be pulled from Supe & the "Additional Appointment" noms listed in section e of the code.
But my observation is that the congressional rep can then shift to competitive process and get more in. I saw one year where one senator sent 9 kids to USMA, with only one charged to their allocation. What I know of them they were waterwalkers and most likely technically came from the NWL, but I know some were very early LOA's.
But if you look at the class composition by nom source (2016 was in a recent Board of Visitors report), you can see how USMA uses the "Additional Appointment" bucket.
Over half went to recruited athletes, and almost half were prep. There is also a higher than average mix of URM, though there is probably overlap in all the reported figures. Likewise, approximately 80% of the AA bucket had WCS < 6000, and probably would not have been competitive in the mainstream nom process.
Over half the Supe noms also went to Athletes, but not as many to URM, at least for 2016.
If you read the code, most of it delineates specific sources must not have less than X noms. Clearly intended to force representation across the various states and key groups(Enlisted, ROTC, etc).
But beyond that my read is that USMA largely has flexibility to pick who they want once the NWL and a few other buckets are met, up to the target size. And to be able to nominate them if they did not otherwise have a nom.
As I read the code it occurs to me that it's evolved to be about as fair of a system as we could construct. The only way I see that could make it fairer would be to remove principle noms, forcing them all to be competitive as measured by USMA.
What's not clear to me is if the AA bucket can be used for slots in districts/sources which did not fully use theirs. Unused congressional, Prior enlisted, etc. It appears they can, but I've not followed the code caveats & dependencies in a while.