Though Ike Eisenhower’s trip to Korea will be as safe as the Pentagon and Secret Service can make it, there are some who think the idea is still too risky. Shortly after the election, onetime Republican Presidential Candidate Alf Landon and onetime Democratic Secretary of War Harry Woodring issued a joint appeal for Ike to stay home for “the welfare” of the American people. The appeal was soon seconded by such jittery citizens as Walter Winchell and the editors of the pro-Stevenson New York Post. Behind the concern lies an unanswered question: Who would become President if anything happened to the man chosen by the voters?
Technically, Eisenhower will not become the President-elect until the Electoral College meets in state capitals on Dec. 15 to confirm the voters’ choice.* If a President-elect dies after the Electoral College meets, but before his inaugural day, the Vice President-elect succeeds him. But what would happen if Eisenhower should die before the Electoral College meets?
There are two historical precedents, both somewhat academic because they involve defeated candidates. In the campaign of 1872 (won by the Republicans’ Ulysses S. Grant), Candidate Horace Greeley, heading a ticket of Democrats and Liberal Republicans, died before the meeting of the Electoral College. Since the 66 electors pledged to Greeley were voting for a lost cause, they were left on their own. Three voted for the dead man, three spread their votes among other party leaders, 18 voted for their party’s vice presidential candidate. B. Gratz Brown, and 42 gave their ballots to the governor of Indiana, Thomas A. Hendricks. In 1912, the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee, James Sherman, died the Wednesday before election. There was no time to get his name off the ballot; after the election, the party’s national committee chose Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, as Sherman’s replacement. The eight Republican electors pledged to Sherman all voted for Butler.
In the case of the death of a winning candidate, the Republican National Committee, as empowered by its nominating convention, would pick another presidential candidate. The choice of the committeemen this year might be Vice President-Designate Richard Nixon; more likely, it would be someone of more seasoning and stature and almost certainly it would be Senator Robert A. Taft.
*Six states (Alabama, California, Idaho, Massachusetts, Mississippi and Oregon) have laws instructing electors to vote for the candidate of their party; in the other 42 states, the law is less specific and electors are bound mainly by tradition. As recently as 1948, the tradition was flouted in one instance. Tennessee Elector Preston Parks, though chosen as a Democrat, claimed his constitutional privilege to vote as he pleased. He cast his ballot for States Righter J. Strom Thurmond, and it was so counted.
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