AHC wi first succession law applied- odd year Presidential elections

WI a vp AND A President both died or left office. The law up the the 1880s provided for a special eleciotn for a full term.

In some ways it is surprising it did not happen.

How huge are the likely butterflies?
 
Really? I thought the line of succession ran Prexy - Veep - President Pro Tem of the Senate - Speaker of the House in the 1800s, and then in the 1930s, out of a respect to Sam Rayburn (and a fear that all the PPTs were decrepit old fogeys) the #3 and #4 positions were swapped.

Will have to look this up. Having a special election would be an incredible novelty and seems uncharacteristic of the 19th Century republic.

Sidenote: I have heard of a special election being proffered as a reason in the West Wing universe as to why the presidential elections were being held in 1994, 1998, and 2002.
 
Really? I thought the line of succession ran Prexy - Veep - President Pro Tem of Senate - Speaker of the House in the 1800s, and then in the 1930s, out of a respect to Sam Rayburn (and a fear that all the PPTs were decrepit old fogeys) the #3 and #4 positions were swapped.

You're not quite right. From 1886 to 1947 the presidential successor was the Sec of State, followed by the other Cabinet officers in the order that their departments were created. Neither the PPT nor the Speaker were in the line of succession at al, until placed in it again by the 1947 Act.

Curiously, the two occasions when it came closest to happening, the explosion on the Princeton and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson - were both in regular election years and so would not have altered the sequence of elections. But had Atzerodt killed AJ as he was supposed to there would have been an election in Nov 1865, and subsequent ones would have been in odd-numbered years, unless the Constitution was amended, or the Act itself altered to postpone the election to 1866.
 
Thanks! Interesting to think about. I normally know trivia like that. What was the name of the law?
 
Thanks! Interesting to think about. I normally know trivia like that. What was the name of the law?


It's full title is "An act relative to the election of a President and Vice President of the United States, and declaring the officer who shall act as President in case of vacancies in the offices both of President and Vice President," but in ordinary conversation it is generally referred to a the "Presidential Succession Act, 1792", which is not strictly accurate, as only a few clauses of the Act relate to succession but is generally accepted given that the full title is so cumbersome.

See wiki article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Succession_Act

C Silva's Presidential Succession covers the various rule changes up to and including 1947, but was written before the passage of the 25th Amendment.
 
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