August 30, 2012
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The Kind Of Question That Gets You On Watchlists
So, if someone were to assassinate a major-party nominee prior to the election (and he/she wasn't the sitting President), what happens?
Does the VP nominee automatically get the Presidential nomination, or does it go to whoever got the second-most delegates? If there's no formal policy in place for the party, who decides?
Would the election be delayed, and would any debate over if it should be become a transparently facile set of arguments where supporters of the sitting President decree any such change would be "an unprecedented assault on the rule of law and a shameless attempt to exploit a tragedy for partisan gain" and supporters of the challenger's party claim that "it is necessary to preserve democracy and give the people the chance to make a fair choice for their leader"?
(OK, that last question is rhetorical. Like, duh. Of course it would. And if it happened two elections in a row, with the parties' roles reversed, the exact same people who made one argument would make the other and squeal "FALSE EQUIVALENCY!!!" at the top of their partisan lungs if anyone tried to point out the hypocrisy. But that's another thread.)
Comments (1)
formally, voters are not voting for the presidential candidates at all, but (more or less) voting for a slate of electors at all, so technically, it doesn't matter, and presumably the candidate's party could work out some sort of deal for pledging elector's votes to someone else prior to the election.
Now, after the election, it's a different matter, and really depends on party discipline. In 1872, Democratic/Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greely died after the general election, but before the electoral college submitted its votes. As he was the losing candidate, nobody really worried about discipline. If he'd been the winning candidate, things might have gotten really interesting with the election going to the House of Representatives.
Of his 66 pledged electors: 18 voted for his VP candidate (a fellow by the name of Benjamin Gratz Brown), 42 voted for Indiana governor Thomas Hendricks, who later became Grover Cleveland's first VP, 3 votes for assorted others, and 3 went ahead and voted for Greely anyway.