Could Reagan have said “I’ve always believed as Minnesota goes, so goes the nation. I concede to Mondale.” ? What would have happened?
Could a winning candidate instruct his electors to vote for the other guy?
kind of wierd/stupid questions, but seeing how this years elections went, well…I guess anything could happen.
Well, you can’t force someone to be President. Even if the electors do vote for you, you could simply refuse to serve. The electors would have to vote for someone else. Likely another party member. They wouldn’t vote for the opposition.
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As of right now in December of 2000 the deal is this :
If you publically conceed the election to your opponent then it is over.
Gore skirted very close to the line on this. He did call George and in essence said “Congrats ! I give up.” At the same time he was listening to the hyped-up media : the fact that Florida belonged to Bush. When everyone realized how close it really was Gore called W back and un-conceded. . . if you will.
It’s a free country. You can tell your electors whatever you want, and they can follow or not follow your instructions as they see fit.
How, exactly? Is there some law that specifies this?
None whatsoever. It’s just that in every election prior to this one, the conceding candidate never retracted his concession*. I really think Gore would’ve suffered less had he not conceded. As it stands, it looks bad to start out congratulating your opponent on his hard-fought win, then saying “What? Never mind.”
~~Baloo
*If there’s an exception, I am not aware of it.
Baloney. A concession is meaningless. The President is he who gets the most votes in the electoral college. This is determined by the Constitution of the United States, not some gentlemanly rules of etiquette (“Oh, I give up, you win!”). This is not a football game. Until a Constitutional Amendment is passed and ratified that says: “If the guy who wins says he gives up then the guy with the second most votes wins” your scenario would not be true.
Consider this scenario: Lets say that Gore would have conceded early in November. Ok, fair enough. All Lawsuits still go forward, All absentee votes are thrown out in Seminole County and Gore gets the electors of Florida and a majority of electoral votes, which are cast. Gore still says, nah, I conceded, I won’t be president. Bush does not somehow magically become president. If he and Lieberman would refuse to be sworn in, it would be the same as them being sworn in and resigning. In this case, the Constitution does its magic and the rules of succession kick in. Dennis Hastert is our new President and Strom Thurmond our Vice President.
Also, the idea of somebody conceding and then still gettign elected is something I’ve tried to research to no avail. Early in this election debacle, a pundit mentioned a case in California where a Congressman “elect” actually flew to Washington DC and had to fly back to his state when the rest of the returns came in and the other candidate did better than expected in Rural areas. Can anybody cite a case like this?
LateComer said:[ul]Baloney. A concession is meaningless. The President is he who gets the most votes in the electoral college. This is determined by the Constitution of the United States, not some gentlemanly rules of etiquette (“Oh, I give up, you win!”). This is not a football game. Until a Constitutional Amendment is passed and ratified that says: “If the guy who wins says he gives up then the guy with the second most votes wins” your scenario would not be true.[/ul]Not baloney. A concession means something if the person who concedes chooses to stand by it. Of course it is not legally binding, neither do I recommend there there be a law enforcing a concession.
Conceding an election allows the non-victor an opportunity to put a good face on an otherwise distateful situation. It is not a requirement, legal or moral. On the scale of sins, retracting a concession ranks right up there with signalling a turn, then changing your mind and going a different way. There’s nothing earth-shatteringly wrong with it, but it does make you appear indecisive, to some degree.
As intelligent as the Vice President is, with as many intelligent advisors he has, I think he might have recognized the possibility that he might want to challenge the results of the election. Retracting his concession so soon after extending it was bad form, not a Federal offense. It would have put a better face on the subsequent challenge to election results if he had not extended the concession in the first place.
~~Baloo
IMO, I don’t think Gore should concede, even if (and probably when) Florida Republican electors are chosen. It’s just a nicety that losing candidates do when it’s obvious that they’ll lose.
So they’ll inaugurate Bush. But eventually, Florida will get around to doing a 100% count. If and possibly when they find that Gore actually won Florida, now that will be a Constitutional crisis.
> But eventually, Florida will get around to doing a 100% count.
We already did TWO full counts last month. Your guy lost. Get over it.
Let’s rephrase that:
A concession is legally meaningless. If this is to become a discussion about who should or shouldn’t concede, it should be moved to Great Debates or IMHO.
Forget all the recounts and lawsuits, if Gore would have conceded when Bush was ahead by 10,000 votes (as he did) and then won Florida after the night was over the concession would have been meaningless.
Gore could have conceded the night before the election if he had wished, but if he got the most votes he would have won anyway and the machinery of the Constitution would “kick in”. Gore made a political mistake by conceding the election before the counting was done. Bush made a political mistake by declaring himself the winner before the counting was done.
Yes, a concession is a way for the Loser to look good, but it is not legally binding in any way.
Perhaps a better example would have been Reagan as suggested in the OP. He could have conceded all he wanted and refused to take the oath of office and Mondale would not, under any stretch of the imagination, have been President.
We need some Lawyer types to chime in.
In this specific instance, I find it hard to find fault with Gore for his concession/retraction. Unless I’ve got my facts wrong, at the time of the concession it was “clear” that he’d lost Florida, and the whole election - according to pretty much all media sources.
Later that night, based on additional returns, The Media[sup]TM[/sup] took Florida away from Bush and stuck it back into the Undecided column. Based on this new information, I can hardly blame Gore for retracting the concession.
Personally, I think that there’s a curious societal pressure for the loser to concede quickly once the results become apparent - it seems to be thought more statesman-/sportsmanlike. As we saw this time, sometimes results aren’t “known” quite as soon as we think they are.