jimpack123 wrote:
American Vet what happens in your opinion if the President elect dies before the Electoral college votes?
I looked at several articles, etc: This one seems to sum it up quite well. Bottom line: It's a grey area....
Before The Electoral College Has Met
If the president-elect dies between Election Day in November and the official Electoral College vote, things get a bit complicated.
Quite a few states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia — do not have laws binding their electors, which means that in the event that the president-elect dies, those electors could cast their vote for someone else.
As far as the 29 remaining states (plus Washington, D.C.) are concerned, federal law does not dictate that they must continue to cast their vote for the deceased president-elect. Nor does it say that these 29 states must vote for the vice president-elect in the president-elect’s stead. Technically, these electors could vote for whomever they wanted — and that’s where some serious questions arise.
As legal scholar Richard Pildes told The Washington Post, in this circumstance “the issue is how an elector should or can cast their vote. Should the elector vote for the dead winner of the election, if the elector otherwise would be obligated to do so? Should he or she vote for the vice-presidential candidate of that party instead? How would these votes be tallied in Congress?”
If that sounds muddy, that’s because it is — and thankfully, this has only happened once in history before. In 1872, Republican candidate Horace Greeley died after the general election but before the meeting of the electors. The electors slated to vote for Greeley ended up splitting their votes up between four Republican presidential hopefuls and eight vice president candidates. Some even voted for Greeley, despite his condition.
Unfortunately for “Zombie” Greeley, the House passed a resolution that discounted Greeley’s posthumous support. His opponent, Ulysses S. Grant, who had already won the popular vote in a landslide as well, ventured on to the White House.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/president-elect-die