Some of you may remember our fellow Doper RandMcnally who is away at USAF tech school. Today we were chatting and an interesting scenario came up that perplexed us both. Hopefully you can help us discover the answer!
Oh, I’m going to apologize ahead of time for the poorly worded question. It’s hard to get it out, ya know?
If a newly elected president dies before his inauguration, does the candidate who lost the election become President? Or would the VP-elect be sworn is as president?
What if the same thing happens with a reelected incumbent? Would the incumbent VP take over?
At any given moment there is one President and one Vice-President (and one person holding each of the other offices in the prescribed line of succession). If the President keeled over between the election and the inauguration, the sitting VP would become President for the remainder of the term, however short it might be, and the inauguration of the newly elected President would go on as scheduled. If for some reason there was no VP the job would go to the Speaker of the House and on down the line.
I guess, theoretically, if the VP became President, he could appoint the President-elect to be his Vice President, as provided by the Constitution, and then he could resign to allow the President-elect to take office early. But the guy who lost the election doesn’t get to sneak in by the back door.
It looks like I misunderstood the original question. But it still seems pretty clear that the line of succession would apply, and since the Congress is seated before Jan. 20, there would be a newly elected Speaker of the House in office before the sitting President’s term ended. If there were neither a President-elect nor a Vice President-elect on Jan. 20, the Speaker of the House would become President.
But Cecil’s column makes the intriguing point that if the two winning candidates both check out before the electoral college certifies the election results, the electors could theoretically turn around and vote for anybody, handing the White House to somebody who was never even a candidate. That’s a little scary.
Indeed, we got through the term of an unelected president with no major problems (well, at least none that weren’t related to the chaotic situation in the 1970s anyway).
The Republic did not crumble, and the Constitution was preserved.
If Mr. Bush were to keel over and die right now, Mr. Cheney would assume the Presidency as Vice President – on the basis that he was elected to that position in 2000. The fact that he was re-elected in 2004 does not make a difference to this scenario – we’re eight days away from what happened in 2004 making a difference. Under the workings of the 25th Amendment, Mr. Bush, the man who was elected in 2004, “not qualifying” (because he’s dead, in this hypothetical scenario), Mr. Cheney would be inaugurated on 01/20/05 as the qualifying Vice-President-elect and hence the man eligible to succeed as President, there being no qualifying President-elect. (The fact that he would already have succeeded as President from being the incumbent VP on the death of a President does not affect his being VP-elect from the 2004 election.)
Mr. Cheney would no doubt nominate someone, subject to Senate confirmation, to become his VP. And if something then happened to prevent Mr. Cheney from serving out the full 2005-2009 term, that person would then become President, again under the 25th Amendment’s provisions, just as Mr. Ford did.
Don’t forget we had a totally unelected vice president (Rockefeller) during the Ford administration. If anything had happened to Ford (and he was the target of two assasination attempts) we would have ended up with a president who wasn’t even *appointed * by anyone who had been elected.
A totally unelected President may be a scary idea, but I think the current system is better than grinding the government to a halt to hold a special election at a time when, presumably, the nation is in shock, having just lost both a president and vice president.
Actually, as I see it neither the first response nor this one really get at the heart of the matter. The first response dealt with a president dying, and really so did the second.
What would happen if the president-elect died before the inauguration who wasn’t already the incumbent president? Say Kerry had won and he died before his inauguration. What happens then?
I think the presumption is, in that situation, Edwards, as VP-elect, would get bumped up to president-elect even though Kerry had not been inaugurated… being there to replace Kerry if he dies is part of what Kerry chose him for, and part of what the electors (and proximately the American people) have elected.
I would imagine it likely that Edwards would not be able to select a VP-elect before the inauguration, but that there would be no-one swearing in as Veep on inauguration day, and then Edwards nominates someone for senate confirmation as VP after he’s sworn in.
Practically, I think a VP-elect who is getting kicked up to the top slot could designate a new VP, but no action could be taken until Jan. 20 since that person has no authority to make the appointment. But I would think that the people would want to have an idea who was getting the job as soon as possible.
Well, no, I don’t think he would “bumped up” to president-elect. He would be sworn in as Vice-President on Inauguration Day, whereupon he could immediately be sworn in as President after that, the office of the President having become vacant after the previous President’s term expired, and there being no valid President-Elect.
Edwards would have no power to nominate a replacement VP before he himself was sworn in as President.
I’m afraid I have to disagree. Section 3 of the 20th Amendment provides: “If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term o fthe President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President.” Under this Amendment, the VP-elect (Edwards in our hypothetical) would be directly sworn in as President.
This is true, though it could happen pretty darn quickly. My understanding of what happens during a transition of administration is that the President-elect will name his choices for the principal cabinet offices well before the inauguration, subject, of course, to Senate confirmation. Shortly after Congress convenes on January 3, the Senate will hold hearings on the prospective nominees (sort of like the recent hearings on Gonzalez for Attorney General). Assuming that there is no objection in the Senate to a particular nominee, the Senate will be prepared to confirm the nominee immediately after the inauguration.
What I’ve seen happen is that after the President and Vice President are sworn in on the Capitol steps (and gives their speeches, etc.), the President goes back into the Capitol and briefly stops to sign the nominations of his principal cabinet officers. Then the Senate goes into session and approves the nominees, so they can be sworn in immediately. Of course, if there is objection to a particular nominee that person will not get in immediately, but under this procedure the uncontroversial choices will be able to function right after the new President was sworn in.
Now, under the 25th Amendment, approval of a Vice President requires confirmation of both houses of Congress, not just the Senate, but if our hypothetical President-elect Kerry were to die before inauguration, and VP-elect Edwards were to designate a broadly acceptable Vice Presidental nominee (an elder statesman like George Mitchell, perhaps), the new VP could possibly be sworn very promptly after the President.
That’s a fair point. The difference is that both President Ford, when appointed to be vice president, and his subsequently appointed vice president Nelson Rockefeller were subject to approval by both houses of Congress, whose members have independent stature and would ultimately have had to answer to the voters if they had done something really stupid. But who even knows who the electors are, or how they could be influenced? If they could vote for anybody they wanted, is it out of the question that a Bill Gates or Donald Trump, or even a foreign government, could literally buy their votes? *That’s * what’s scary.
There’s a novel called The People’s Choice by Jeff Greenfield that deals with what happens when the President-elect dies after the general election but before the electors have cast their ballots. The electors go from being a procedural footnote to realizing that a few hundred of them can tip the election.
It’s a pretty good book. The events leading up to the President-elect’s death are hysterical.
I asked my history prof. today and I was told that things would still follow the chain of command.
The real issue is whether or not the President is actually President before being sworn in. According to the Prof. it is quite debated (of course), but it’s generally agreed that he is in fact President before being sworn in.
So, we could assume the situation that Kerry won this last election, but died tomorrow. Then Edwards would become President. If Edwards also died (who knows, maybe there was a plane crash), the chain of command would still follow.
Which is pretty much what you guys have been saying
