Could Dick Cheney affect the outcome of the electoral vote count in 2008?

[BrainGlutton]

After all, as Aziz Huq of The Nation points out, there is historical precedent:

Discussed only in the convention’s closing days, the Office of the Vice President was initially dreamt up to solve a problem with presidential selection. Under the original Electoral College system, each elector had two votes and was constitutionally obliged to cast one of those for an out-of-state candidate. The Framers reckoned this was a way of counteracting the provincial inclination to vote for a home boy, a worry borne out in the 1796 election, which left Thomas Jefferson as Vice President despite a Federalist majority. But the Framers were puzzled as to how to stop electors from simply throwing away that second vote. Enter the Vice President. This secondary office solved the wasted vote problem. And rather neatly, it solved at the same time the presidential succession problem.

Concerned that the vice presidency could be a staging post for a coup, the Framers cast about for some other function for the office. Drawing on the 1777 New York Constitution’s design of a Lieutenant Governor’s office, they hit on a solution–the Vice President would also serve as a tie-breaking president pro tempore of the Senate. This, they concluded, would justify his salary. Wearing his Senate cap, the Vice President would also conduct the presidential electoral vote count.

All these neat fixes unraveled quickly with the 1800 election. This ended in the sitting Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, presiding over a deadlocked Electoral College with substantial voting irregularities–and then counting himself into the presidency. As Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman and co-author David Fontana tell the tale, Jefferson brazenly took it upon himself to adjudicate a “blatant” irregularity with Georgia’s votes. With a potential independent run by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg raising the possibility of all kinds of Electoral College deal-making in 2008, the prospect of Cheney at the lectern tallying ballots should cause some trepidation.

Of course Cheney won’t count himself into the presidency. But defenders of whatever he does can always say he’s following a precedent set by Jefferson himself.

[Telemark]

With a potential independent run by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg raising the possibility of all kinds of Electoral College deal-making in 2008, the prospect of Cheney at the lectern tallying ballots should cause some trepidation.

His whole premise is silly.

[Fear_Itself]

Only if it goes to SCOTUS and Anthony Kennedy sides with the Democrats, in which case Justice Cheney would cast his vote on the Supreme Court.

Samantha Bee explains it here (first clip, top left, titled “More Decisions '07”)

[BrainGlutton]

@Telemark

His whole premise is silly.

You don’t think Bloomberg could prevent either of the major-party candidates from getting an absolute majority of the electoral votes? If the election is close – and it will be – he only needs to take one state to do that.

[Telemark]

I’m guessing that IF Bloomberg runs he won’t get a single electoral vote, so no, I don’t think this could come into play.

[denquixote]

I thought that if neither candidate obtained the 270, a real posibility with Bloomberg running, then the president is elected by the House of representatives on a state by state basis. Since the Dems currently hold 26 states this should not be an issue for them, especially since if the president has not been offically elected by the time he is to take office then Nancy Pelosi will take over. It is a good time to be a Democrat I think.

Besides how can Cheney count the votes if he is in jail?

[DSYoungEsq]

@dennis gallagher

I thought that if neither candidate obtained the 270, a real posibility with Bloomberg running, then the president is elected by the House of representatives on a state by state basis. Since the Dems currently hold 26 states this should not be an issue for them, especially since if the president has not been offically elected by the time he is to take office then Nancy Pelosi will take over. It is a good time to be a Democrat I think.

Besides how can Cheney count the votes if he is in jail?

The concern would be that Cheney, sitting as the President of the Senate, in a dispute over the returns from a given state, could rule in favor of one or more Republican return, sufficient to turn a victory for the Democratic candidates into a victory for the Republican candidates.

There is a flaw in this reasoning: while the President could make an intitial ruling, his ruling would be subject to objection from the Congress, which would then rule on the disputed returns. This happened in 1876, resulting in Congress passing a law establishing a Commission to hear the dispute. Thus, the precedent (that’s not the only one, of course) is to have Congress concur in the resolution of the dispute. Given a Democratically controlled Congress, Cheney’s ruling would not be determinative.

Of course, like all such suppositions, the whole thing is likely quite silly to contemplate… :rolleyes:

[Freddy_the_Pig]

This is beyond preposterous. We have a detailed law, adopted in 1887, governing the counting of electoral votes, which reduces the vice president to a purely ceremonial role. The documentation associated with every electoral vote is published on the Internet weeks in advance of the count. Dick Cheney isn’t going to open anything that hasn’t been vetted, analyzed, argued over, lawyered over, podcast, published, and blogged from here to Katmandu. The potential Bloomberg candidacy is mind-numbingly irrelevant, since the electoral count proceeds in the same way whether there are two candidates or twenty.

Jeez, if people are worried about this, things are going too well in this country and there isn’t enough to worry about.

[Little_Nemo]

Of course Cheney won’t count himself into the presidency.

You say that now.