October 30, 2008 09:51 PM UTC

Dead Candidates for President and Veep

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• by: Precinct854

Twice in US history a candidate for a major party has died with his name on the ballot or after winning electors. Neither one was on the winning ticket, but they are interesting examples of what may happen someday should a winning candidate snuff it between October the 1st and mid December.  

In the 1912 Presidential Election the Republicans were famously divided between Roosevelt and Taft. This resulted in Woodrow Wilson walking away with the election. But of interest for the people who like inside baseball politics was the October 30th death of Vice President James S. Sherman. His name was still on the ballot and technically the electors in Utah and Vermont were pledged to only vote for him. Instead when the electors met on December 16th the Republican name on the ballot was Nicholas M. Butler. Technically the electors were in violation of the law in both those states, but nothing came of it because the Taft ticket was not elected and because who would have standing to sue and object to replacing the name of a dead man?

Even more exciting was the 1872 Presidential Election that pitted Liberal Republican newspaper publisher Horace Greeley for whom Greeley, Colorado is named, against incumbent Republican President US Grant. The campaign was a bit of a farce and Greeley only got 3 states and 66 electoral votes. Except that he got none because his wife died soon after election day and he reputedly went mad and then died himself on November 29, 1872. When the electoral college met, again on December 16th in 1872, only three electors cast their votes for Greeley. The rest supported a variety of Liberal Republicans and Democrats. The three votes for the dead candidate were disallowed by congress.

Without party discipline and a strong choice of who should be the successor to the Liberal Republican electoral votes it all fell apart. Which, I think, is a real danger for even a modern party should there be a runner up waiting in the wings who thinks he or she should be president more than the VP nominee of the party.

Interesting times. I’m just glad it looks like <knocking on wood> that we won’t face such a problem in this election. But much like making a will when young, I think every party should think about this. Because even the healthiest candidate could have something disastrous happen. Small plane crash, assassination, and undetected weak blood vessels in the brain are just some of the more colorful possibilities. What would have happened if during a celebratory pretzel on election night 2000 George W. Bush had choked to death on top of everything else? Horrible interesting times. Or JFK had been assassinated by Richard Paul Pavlick on December 11, 1960?