The
season five finale of HBO’s Emmy-award winning comedy VEEP sure seemed like a Hollywood fantasy.
Through a series of wacky situations, hilarious gaffes and complicated procedures, an obscure
Vice-Presidential candidate was elected by the incumbent Vice-President to be the President
of United States.
Seems far-fetched, right?
Well, no, not at all.
Sure, a lot of details were added for dramatic effect and comedy’s sake, but in terms of
how congressional procedures and rules would play out if presented with such a scenario,
the show was quite accurate.
There is, in fact, an actual chance that one of the Vice-Presidential candidates in a given
election will be elected POTUS.
Not only that, it is also possible that the Speaker of House could become the President
of the United States instead.
Here’s how.
Of the 538 electoral votes up for grabs, a candidate must get (or exceed) 270 electoral
votes in order to get the presidency.
So, if split in half between two candidates, that’s 269 per and one vote short of the
magic number.
Of course, it doesn’t necessarily work this way.
There could be a third party candidate or even a fourth candidate that could siphon
votes from the two main ones.
In the 1824 election, this is exactly what happened.
Andrew Jackson won the popular vote (the first time it had ever been counted- initially certain
states didn’t even select their electors based on their populace’ votes) but was
only able to get 99 electoral votes – which was 32 short of the majority (there were 131
electoral votes up for grabs at that time).
However, there were four candidates running for president (oddly, all of them considered
themselves from the same political party – the Democratic-Republicans) that received electoral
votes that year: John Quincy Adams got 85, William Crawford got 41 and Henry Clay had
37.
There have been other elections where third-party candidates have received electoral votes (for
example, 1860, 1912 and 1968), but 1824 is the only one to date that an electoral tie
was produced due to third and fourth candidates.
Now, if no candidate gets an electoral majority – be it with a 269 vote tie or other candidates
taking votes – the election gets sent to the House of Representatives, where each state
delegation gets one vote.
So, no matter if it’s California with their 53 representatives or Rhode Island with their
2 representatives, it is one vote per state.
With 50 states, it is possible that the House of Representatives could also tie in their
voting, assuming there are no abstentions (or “faithless electors”) and the House
isn’t heavily weighted towards one party or the other.
In addition, in accordance with the 12th amendment, only the top three vote-getters are considered
in the House.
And, to make matters a bit more confusing, it wouldn’t be the House that was in office
when the presidential election first started in November, but the one that had been elected.
Because the vote would not officially happen until January when the new House is sworn
in, the dynamics of the House could change – meaning there could be a swing in which
party controls it.
When the 1824 election got sent to the House, shadiness ensued.
Since Henry Clay finished in fourth place in the electoral vote race, he was disqualified
from the House vote.
However, that didn’t stop him from having a significant influence.
Officially, Clay made it known that he agreed with Adams’ nationalist agenda and hated
Jackson.
So, he told his supporters in the House to throw their weight behind electing Adams President.
When the vote came down in February 1825, Adams won the majority of the states with
13, while Jackson got 7 and Crawford got 4.
This shocked Jackson and his supporters, considering he had won the popular vote and the electoral
college.
To make matters even more hard to stomach for Jackson, Adams quickly named Clay his
Secretary of State, fanning the flames of conspiracy that this was a corrupt bargain.
Livid, Jackson responded with harsh words,
[T]he Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver
. . . Was there ever witnessed such a bare faced corruption in any country before?
However, as previously stated, it is possible for the House’s voting to end in the tie.
If that is the case, then the Vice-President would become President of the United States.
But there’s a rub: It wouldn’t be the incumbent VP, but the one that the Senate
has elected.
In the 1800 election, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied in the electoral college for
the presidency (at the time the second-place vote getter would be Vice President- there
was not a separate vote for that office), even though the intention when campaigning
was for Jefferson to be president and Burr to be his VP.
A series of votes and threats of militia marching on the capital resulted in Jefferson ultimately
getting elected president and Burr his VP.
As a result of this mess, four years later, the 12th amendment was passed and called for
separate voting designation for each position.
It also gave the Senate the power to elect the Vice-President in a separate election,
which means that if the House does end up electing a president, the Senate can elect
a vice-president that’s from a different party.
But, if the House is deadlocked in its selection of President, the Senate’s choice for VP
would become President (of course, this is highly contingent of what party controls the
Senate after the election).
So, what happens if the Senate is also unable to come to a majority vote?
Well, in theory, the incumbent VP is supposed to have the tie-breaking event due to being
President of the Senate.
With each state voting, that would be 26 to 25 in favor of whoever the VP picks.
Now, a state (or several) could abstain from voting, which would completely alter the outcome.
If an abstaining state prevents the VP vote to be the deciding one, then the presidency
goes to the Speaker of the House.
To attempt to make that jumble of a mess a little more clear, here’s a potential scenario
for something like this happening with the 2016 election.
Let’s say Clinton and Trump are tied with 269 electoral votes each.
Now the decision would go to the House of Representatives in January to be determined
by the recently-elected Congress.
If that ends up in a tie, the Senate would choose between the VP candidates Tim Kaine
and Mike Pence.
Now, if a state ends up abstaining and turns incumbent VP Joe Biden’s vote into the tying
one instead of the tie-breaker, it makes the current Speaker of the House President of
the United of States.
And that is Paul Ryan.
It is also possible that both the House and Senate elect their respective offices, but
they end up being from different parties.
This means, for example, you could get a Clinton-Pence or a Trump-Kaine White House.