A friend just told me that if the Electoral College result in the 2000 election between Gore and Bush had ended in a tie (264-264), Strom Thurmond would have become President. Is this horrifying possibility true? If so, how? I read the Presidential Succession Act and still can’t figure it out.:wally
Not true. Assuming no electors were persuaded to change their votes in the Electoral College, the election would have then been decided by the House of Representatives. They would have chosen either Bush or Gore.
But who would have taken their place in the interim? Would Clinton continue to hold office? Or wouldn’t someone take his place?
I’m guessing this is what the OP was referring to.
They have from Jan 6 to Inauguration Day (Jan 20) to get it straightened out.
As others have noted, Strom Thurmond would NOT have been President if there’d been a tie in the electoral college. The House of Representatives would have chosen the new President.
Now, it IS true that, until recently, Strom Thurmond was 3rd in line to succeed the President. The senior Senator of the majority party is, traditionally, named Senate President pro tempore, and the Senate President pro tempore is fairly high in the chain of Presidential succession. Not so long ago, the succession order would have been:
- VP Dick Cheney
- House Speaker Dennis Hastert
- Strom Thurmond
But House Speaker Dennis Hastert always ranked above Strom in the order of succession.
Today, I believe the Senate President pro tempore is Ted Stevens of Alaska, who’s the senior Republican in the Senate (several Democrats have been in the Senate longer).
The Senate President Pro Tem used to be next in the line of succession for president for most of the 19th Century. Then the Secretary of State got moved up in the line.
But after World War II, Truman felt that the Cabinet shouldn’t be that high in the list and asked Congress to change the law. But he wanted his friend Alben Barkley, the Speaker of the House, moved up in line, so that is (a very abbreviated) version of presidential succession.
If Andrew Johnson had been convicted in his impeachment trial, the President Pro Tem, Ben Wade of Ohio, would have become president for the balance of Johnson’s term (less than a year). And the Ohio legislature had already chosen someone else to replace Wade in the Senate for his next term.
But the constitution is silent on what happens if the house deadlocks (there are only 50 votes, one for each state, and I imagine some state delegations are evenly divided so those states would presumably not vote). Also the house chooses from the top 3 candidates, although in this case there was no third candidate (that got any electoral votes), so I guess they would have had to choose among the only 2. I think that in 1824 the outgoing president (IIRC, James Monroe) continued in office until the house finally decided. I assume the precedent would have been followed in this case.
I have recently read that the framers of the constitution assumed that normally no one would get a majority and the president would be chosen by the house. The electoral college would then be functioning as a kind of nominating convention, with the delegates voting freely, not instructed. The possibility of having them actually choose the president was mainly there for George. Of course parties were not anticipated.
Thurmond is dead now, so I guess it’s moot.
Bob writes of Harry Truman: “But he wanted his friend Alben Barkley, the Speaker of the House, moved up in line, so that is (a very abbreviated) version of presidential succesion.”
Alben Barkley was never Speaker of the House. Sam Rayburn and Joseph W. Martin, Jr. each held the position of Speaker (at different times, of course) during the Truman administartion.
Barkley was a United States Senator, and from 1949 until 1953, he was Truman’s Vice-President.
BTW, where is BrianMelendez? He would have cleared this matter up by now.
Always keep in mind when discussing presidential succession that the Constitution forbids a person from holding more than one federal office at a time. So, no member of Congress would “automatically” become president — he or she would have to first resign from Congress.
D’OH! I knew Barkley wasn’t Speaker.
But I do know that Truman preferred the Speaker becoming president than the Senate President Pro Tem. Presumably because Truman had been in the Senate and knew what sort of people held that job.
Here is a nice summary of presidential succession with a brief paragraph about why Truman wanted the Speaker over the President Pro Tem
http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/a_succession.htm
If (a) Bush and Gore had tied; and (b) the House had also deadlcoked between them (which is conceivable, because an evenly divided state doesn’t vote at all, and a majority of 26 states would be required); and © the Senate had failed to elect a vice president from between Lieberman and Cheney (which is conceivable, because the Senate was deadlocked 50-50 at the time); then House Speaker Dennis Hastert would have become President on January 20, 2001. The president pro tempore of the Senate would have been next in line, until the House elected a new Speaker.
However, the president pro tempore of the Senate on that date was Robert Byrd. Thurmond didn’t re-assume the office until January 20, 2001, when Cheney was sworn in and assumed the Vice President’s tie-breaking prerogative. So, no Cheney, no Thurmond–and thus he wouldn’t even have been second in line.
And then there was Haig’s opinion on who was in control.
Cecil I think did a thing on what would have happened had both Reagan and Bush been shot and killed-the presidency would have gone to Tip O’Neill. (Which not to be nasty, and wish death on anyone, would have been really cool!)
Sadly, my day job has been taking more time than usual lately, so I am reduced to lurkdom, and that only occasionally. I apologize for resurrecting a three-day-old-thread (but I just couldn’t resist). And since Mr. Moto, astorian, jklann, and others have pretty fully answered the question, I am also reduced to a few minor quibbles:
Cecil did write a column on a closely related topic: What if the U.S. president and vice president-elect die before being sworn in? Oddly, Cecil writes that “the 20th Amendment says ‘Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President shall have qualified’ (one of the qualifications for office presumably being that you’re still breathing when you take the oath), but as far as I can tell Congress has never gotten around to so providing.” In fact, the Presidential Succession Act–whose history is faithfully covered in BobT’s link–covers both the topic of Cecil’s column (both elected candidates dying before new term begins) as well as the OP’s topic (failure of election before old term ends):
Literally true, but not an applicable precedent. President Monroe did hold office until the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams in 1825, but only because the House–after multiple ballots–got the job done before Monroe’s term ended. Adams succeeded Monroe as regularly scheduled on 4 March 1825 (the regular Inauguration Day before the 20th amendment changed it to 20 January). If the House had not resolved the election before Inauguration Day, though, then Monroe’s term would have expired and the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 would have come into play.
Which raises an interesting issue. Before the 20th amendment–the “lame duck” amendment–the general election occurred in November; the old Congress went out, and the new President took office, the following March; and the new Congress convened in the following December, 13 months after being elected. The President often but not always convened Congress (or, more often just the Senate, so that it could confirm his appointees) in special session but, absent a special session, the outgoing Congress–and with it the tenure of the Speaker and the president pro tem–expired in March, and there was neither a Speaker nor a president pro tem until the incoming Congress convened nine months later.
This situation could have caused a significant constitutional crisis during the Arthur administration. The Vice Presidency was vacant, Vice President Arthur having succeeded to the Presidency in 1881 after President Garfield’s assassination. The 47th Congress, and with it the tenure of the Speaker and the president pro tem, expired in March 1883. The 48th Congress did not convene until December, leaving a nine-month interval during which President Arthur served with no constitutional or statutory successor. The Presidential Succession Act of 1792, then in force, provided only for the president pro tem and the Speaker–in that order–as statutory successors. President Arthur dealt with the issue by secretly signing a proclamation convening Congress in special session, and sealing the proclamation to be opened only in case of his death or incapacity. As it turned out, the secret proclamation was never needed, but three years later Congress did enact a new Presidential Succession Act adding the cabinet officers to the line of succession (and removing the congressional presiding officers, who were added back in at President Truman’s recommendation in the 1947 Act, the one in force today).
So BobT is correct, at least in theory, that “the Senate President Pro Tem used to be next in the line of succession for president for most of the 19th Century.” But in practice, for about a third of the time that the 1792 Act was in force–and on every occasion when the outgoing President’s and the outgoing Congress’s terms expired–there was neither a Speaker nor a president pro tem. The 20th amendment resolved this issue by convening Congress two months after the election (instead of 13 months) and 17 days before Inauguration Day–so that, as UncleBill points out, they have a couple weeks “to get it straightened out.”
Point of order: In the event of a tie, couldn’t the President of the Senate, Al Gore, have cast the deciding vote? There’s no requirement for voting by state delegation for the Vice-President in the Senate, unlike the election of the President by the House.
As I wrote above, the House Speaker would not automatically become president on January 20. The Constitution requires that he would first need to resign from Congress, so that he would not be holding two federal offices simultaneously. I believe Hastert made it clear privately that he had not intention of losing his seat in Congress to serve as a figurehead U.S. President for only a few days.
No, the Vice President as President of the Senate cannot break a tie when the Senate is choosing a Vice President because no candidate won a majority in the Electoral College. The 12th amendment says that, when “the Senate shall choose the Vice-President,” “a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice.” Half the senators plus the Vice President is a majority for the purpose of passing laws, but it is still not “a majority of the whole number” of senators, which is necessary for choosing a Vice President.
[nitpick]The rule about resigning before succeeding to the Presidency is statutory, not constitutional. It appears in three places in the Presidential Succession Act:
(Emphasis added.)
There are a few particular constitutional restrictions on certain offices being incompatible–for example, “no person holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office” (art. I, § 6), and “no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector” (art. II, § 1)–but there is no general constitutional prohibition on simultaneously holding more than one federal office. For example, the Vice President could also head a Cabinet department; when the Republican party nominated Ronald Reagan in 1980, some news outlets reported a tentative deal with former President Ford in which Reagan would name Ford both as his running mate and, if elected, as Secretary of Defense. Likewise, the same individual could head two Cabinet departments.[/nitpick]