WI: President-Elect dies before Congress counts the electoral votes, who wins?

This is a constitutional what-if that I'm not really clear about the (historical) answer to - what happens if the winning candidate dies after all the states have cast their electoral votes (so there isn't the common scenario of a deluge of faithless electors) but before Congress counts and certifies the electoral votes? The 20th Amendment and surrounding legislation suggests that they would still be considered 'President-elect' (i.e. the whole thing would still go to the VP in the end) - but before 1933 I'm unclear on what would happen.


To give a hypothetical example - let's say Calvin Coolidge dies suddenly of coronary thrombosis exactly eight years before he did IOTL, so in January 1925, after the states have voted (overwhelmingly) for him but a month before Congress meets.

On February 11th Congress gets together and Democrats (reasonably) object to the electoral votes being cast for Coolidge for President, on the grounds that he is, well, dead. 'President-elect' isn't even a phrase in the Constitution yet - and the clear precedent from 1872 (when Greeley died) is to count electoral votes for a dead person as invalid (but still part of the overall total).

I'm sure the Republican Congress wouldn't want to invalidate the votes cast for Coolidge, but they really don't seem to have a choice - Coolidge can't have electoral votes cast for him as a dead guy, and there's nothing in the Constitution (pre 20th Amendment) to let them bump up Dawes or any other Republican to take his place.

Assuming Coolidge's votes are still counted in the overall total - the election actually goes to the House, as a choice between John Davis and Robert La Follette, who are the top (valid) candidates with electoral votes. We could get Davis/Dawes or (vaguely plausible) La Follette/Dawes inaugurated.


So is this really how the whole thing would play out? I'm just unsure if there's some procedural or legal dodge the Republicans can use or if (pre-1933 and maybe even post-1933) the winning party is actually just shit-out-of luck if their presidential candidate dies at the wrong time?
 
This is a constitutional what-if that I'm not really clear about the (historical) answer to - what happens if the winning candidate dies after all the states have cast their electoral votes (so there isn't the common scenario of a deluge of faithless electors) but before Congress counts and certifies the electoral votes? The 20th Amendment and surrounding legislation suggests that they would still be considered 'President-elect' (i.e. the whole thing would still go to the VP in the end) - but before 1933 I'm unclear on what would happen.


To give a hypothetical example - let's say Calvin Coolidge dies suddenly of coronary thrombosis exactly eight years before he did IOTL, so in January 1925, after the states have voted (overwhelmingly) for him but a month before Congress meets.

On February 11th Congress gets together and Democrats (reasonably) object to the electoral votes being cast for Coolidge for President, on the grounds that he is, well, dead. 'President-elect' isn't even a phrase in the Constitution yet - and the clear precedent from 1872 (when Greeley died) is to count electoral votes for a dead person as invalid (but still part of the overall total).

I'm sure the Republican Congress wouldn't want to invalidate the votes cast for Coolidge, but they really don't seem to have a choice - Coolidge can't have electoral votes cast for him as a dead guy, and there's nothing in the Constitution (pre 20th Amendment) to let them bump up Dawes or any other Republican to take his place.

The votes for Greeley were cast after his death - and when he was known to be dead. So they were, quite reasonably, treated as abstentions.

OTOH, the Coolidge votes were cast for him while he was still alive, so were perfectly valid. In all likelihood Congress (specifically the President of the Senate) would declare that Coolidge had been duly elected, but that due to his unfortunate death, Vice-President-elect Dawes would take office on March 4. I have little doubt that the interim President, Charles Evans Hughes, would make every effort to ensure that this was done, and done smoothly.
 
If the individual dies between the election and the inauguration the ticket (President & Vice President) has been duly elected and the Vice President will step forward to assume the office of President. The difficulty would come if the presidential candidate dies BEFORE the election - especially if this happens so close to the election that a replacement can't be named and new ballots can't be printed distributed. In that case you could delay the election just a little, or vote and the VP is the candidate.
 
If the individual dies between the election and the inauguration the ticket (President & Vice President) has been duly elected and the Vice President will step forward to assume the office of President. The difficulty would come if the presidential candidate dies BEFORE the election - especially if this happens so close to the election that a replacement can't be named and new ballots can't be printed distributed. In that case you could delay the election just a little, or vote and the VP is the candidate.


If there was time to put through a law postponing the election, would there not also be time for the National Committee of the Party concerned to name another candidate?

Most probably they would simply "promote" the running-mate and then choose someone else to be his VP. But if the running-mate were considered a lightweight (like Agnew in 1968) they might have to turn elsewhere.
 
As far as I know there is no provision in US law to cover the scenario of the candidate dying so close to an election. In cases where you have someone running unopposed and they die close to the election, the localities have special elections to fill the vacancy but this is usually very local and relatively small positions. Where this happens for Representatives or Senators the Governor/State Legislature has appointed a temporary fill, and scheduled an election (the temporary can run to be permanent of course).

The problem is that if the death of the presidential candidate is close enough to the election, even if a new candidate is appointed by the party (and how a party would manage that especially when there was a messy primary season like recently is a question), you then have to reprint literally hundreds of millions of ballots which are different for every town in the USA as you have the presidential candidates on the same ballot as local offices. Except for the few areas where votes are directly inputted on a computer screen, this means ballots (no matter how they are tabulated) need to be printed, checked and distributed. This is time consuming and ALL of them have to be in place on election day, you can't have some places voting on different days.
 
As far as I know there is no provision in US law to cover the scenario of the candidate dying so close to an election. In cases where you have someone running unopposed and they die close to the election, the localities have special elections to fill the vacancy but this is usually very local and relatively small positions. Where this happens for Representatives or Senators the Governor/State Legislature has appointed a temporary fill, and scheduled an election (the temporary can run to be permanent of course).

The problem is that if the death of the presidential candidate is close enough to the election, even if a new candidate is appointed by the party (and how a party would manage that especially when there was a messy primary season like recently is a question), you then have to reprint literally hundreds of millions of ballots which are different for every town in the USA as you have the presidential candidates on the same ballot as local offices. Except for the few areas where votes are directly inputted on a computer screen, this means ballots (no matter how they are tabulated) need to be printed, checked and distributed. This is time consuming and ALL of them have to be in place on election day, you can't have some places voting on different days.


It's not quite as bad as that. Iirc, both the major parties have rules allowing their National Committee to nominate another candidate, if there is insufficient time for the nominating convention to reassemble.

It would not be necessary to print new ballots, since the people don't actually vote for the candidate, but for a slate of Presidential Electors pledged to vote for him. So a vote for the deceased candidate would have exactly the same effect as a vote for his replacement. The same slate of electors would still be chosen, and in due course would presumably vote for whoever their NC had nominated.[1]

The really sticky thing would be if a candidate died in mid-December, just as the Electoral College was due to meet. If there was insufficient time for the NC to choose a candidate, and communicate their choice to the Electors, you could get a situation where the dead man's electors scattered between several persons. If it was the winner who had died, this could result in no one having a majority, and obliging the House of Representatives to choose between the three with the largest number of electoral votes. If the deceased winner had been a Democrat and the HoR was Republican, or vice versa, this could set the biggest cat among the pigeons since 1876.

[1] This actually happened in 1912, though the deceased was only a Vice-President, not a POTUS. Taft's VP, James S Sherman, died in October, a couple of weeks before polling day, and there was no time to amend the ballot forms. The Republican National Committee named Nicholas Murray Butler to run in Sherman's place, and the Taft Electors (all eight of them <g>) duly voted for him in January. As the ticket had run a distant third, this didn't matter a hoot.
 
While people do vote for electors, those names aren't on the ballot. While a party may have nominated John Jones to replace Bill Smith who died, if Jones' name is not on the ballot this will cause a lot of confusion and the lawyers will come out of the woodwork like cockroaches. Furthermore in most states electors are not actually elected, the party that wins gets to appoint them - usually before the election but not always.
 
Agnew:p But for real they would vote the deceased president elect in and when he is elected the VP takes control as of the 25th Amendment.
 
Follow up question - if the VP candidate dies before votes are certified by Congress (and again, this is pre 20th or 25th amendments) - does it seem like Congress would just certify no one for the Vice Presidency? (And is that presumably what would happen if the Veep got bumped to the top of the ticket in similar manner?)
 
Follow up question - if the VP candidate dies before votes are certified by Congress (and again, this is pre 20th or 25th amendments) - does it seem like Congress would just certify no one for the Vice Presidency?
If this is after the votes were cast... yes. It's too late for the party committee to name a replacement.

And is that presumably what would happen if the Veep got bumped to the top of the ticket in similar manner?

If the President-elect dies before the electoral votes are cast, the party committee would move the VP to the P slot, and name a replacement VP; the electors would vote for them. If the P-e dies after the EV are cast, but before the counts are certified by Congress, it's too late to name a replacement. Congress just certifies the counts, and the VP succeeds as President when inaugurated. The same after certification.
 
While people do vote for electors, those names aren't on the ballot. While a party may have nominated John Jones to replace Bill Smith who died, if Jones' name is not on the ballot this will cause a lot of confusion and the lawyers will come out of the woodwork like cockroaches. Furthermore in most states electors are not actually elected, the party that wins gets to appoint them - usually before the election but not always.


This of course would be a very powerful argument for "promoting" the Vice-Presidential running-mate rather than looking for anyone else.

However vague they might be about the Constitutional niceties, virtually all Americans, bar perhaps a few recent immigrants, would be perfectly familiar with the fact that if anything happens to the President, the Vice-President succeeds. By 1933 this had happened half a dozen times. If this situation arose just before the election rather than after, that would be seen as a mite unusual, but still the "natural" result. No doubt any party workers at the polling stations would be busy reassuring their people "Just go ahead and vote for him. His Vice Pres will take over, same as if it happened after the election", an oversimplification which would no doubt make a constitutional lawyer wince, but would serve its purpose.

Incidentally, a browse through Newspapers.com [1] shows an occasion when this might have actually happened. In 1912, Woodrow Wilson was involved in a car accident and banged his head on a roof rib, suffering a three inch scalp wound. This happened on November 3, just four days before the election. In the event, he had some stitches put in and just carried on, but WI the blow had been harder and triggered, say, a fatal brain haemmorhage? Thomas R Marshall might have found himself suddenly raised to the top of the ticket - and almost certainly to the White House.



[1] https://www.newspapers.com/image/33355266/?terms=wilson+accident+november-
 
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