to elect a president before the fourth of March, the newly elected vice president shall act as president. If the electors fail to elect a vice president, that duty devolves upon the Senate, which makes its choice from the two highest on the list voted on for vice president. In case neither president nor vice president should be chosen before the fourth of March, the Constitution makes no provision for the succession.

Another Defect. In the election of 1876 another defect became apparent. In that election there were 369 electoral votes to be cast, 185 being necessary to a choice. Of these Mr. Tilden, the Democratic candidate, had unquestionably received 184, while Mr. Hayes had received 164 undisputed votes. In four states, however (South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon), with 21 electoral votes, both parties claimed the election. In all these states both sets of electors had met, voted, and sent up certified returns. The question now arose, Who shall decide which return is to be accepted?" All that the Constitution says in regard to the matter is that "the president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted." The Republicans insisted that the vice president, a Republican, should decide, since he was president of the Senate. The Democrats maintained that since the count was to be made in the presence of Congress, the reasonable inference was that that body was to decide upon the validity of it. In this case, however, the Senate was Republican and the House Democratic, so that the only result of leaving the decision to Congress would be a deadlock. The difficulty was temporarily solved by the creation by Congress of an electoral commission consisting of five senators, five representatives, and five justices

of the Supreme Court. The vote in the commission, which was made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, was given on strictly party lines, and the Republican candidate was elected. In 1887 an act was passed by Congress requiring the choice of electors to be settled by the laws of the state at least six days before the meeting of the electors. In case such settlement is not effected, the dispute is referred to Congress, and if Congress fails to decide, the electoral vote of the state is lost.

Time and Method of Choosing Electors. The Constitution gives to Congress the right to determine the time for choosing the electors in the various states, as well as the right to fix the day when the electors shall cast their votes. The only restriction is that the day fixed for the final vote shall be the same throughout the United States. The time of choosing electors and the time when they should meet and vote for president and vice president has been changed by Congress at different times. These changes have been made with a view to making it easier to settle disputed elections. The law now is that electors shall be chosen on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and shall meet and vote for president and vice president on the second Monday in January following. The method of choosing the electors was left by the Constitution to the decision of the state legislatures; consequently it would be possible for them to be chosen in a great variety of ways. As a matter of fact, the method is now uniform. Electors are chosen in every state on a common ticket by direct popular vote. At one time the district plan of election was used in some of the states, but this had long been abandoned when, in 1891, it was revived in Michigan by an act of the legislature. The law was contested in the courts, but it was declared

constitutional by the Supreme Court. It was, however, repealed in 1893.

Failure of the Electoral College. Such, then, is the method of the presidential election as provided by the Constitution and by statute. How does it work in practice? We have seen that in providing the method of double election the framers of the Constitution were influenced by the belief that it would secure the choice of men especially fitted for the electorship, who would then, unfettered by outside influence, make the choice that seemed to them the wisest. Naturally they could not foresee the growth of our party system of government, which was to render their carefully elaborated scheme a failure and make of the electoral college a mere machine for registering the choice of the people; for this is what it has become. Every elector has an unquestionable legal right to vote for whom he pleases, but he is bound by a pledge of honor, by a custom as strong as any law, to vote for the candidate of his party. So completely has the elector become a mere party agent, whose sole business it is to ratify the choice already made, that in general nobody knows and nobody cares what his personal qualifications may be.1 The voter, when he casts his ballot, is in reality voting directly for the presidential candidate whose name is placed at the top of the ticket.

A More Serious Defect. Some of the other consequences of the employment of this particular method of election under the system of party government are more serious. The present system of choosing the electors by general ticket over the whole state makes the election virtually an election by states. The state "goes Republican" or it

1 Divided state delegations are, to be sure, by no means unknown. Occasionally this is due to the rejection of a candidate on personal grounds; more frequently to other reasons. See Woodburn, p. 127, note.

goes Democratic"; that is, it elects, with rare exceptions, its full complement of electors from a single party, and casts the whole number of its electoral votes for the candidate of that party. Now it may happen that in one state the plurality of the winning party is very large and more than overcomes the small adverse pluralities in a dozen states, while the electoral vote of the dozen states is greater than that in the one state giving a larger plurality. For example, in the presidential election of 1900, Idaho, with three electoral votes, gave Mr. Bryan a plurality of 2448 votes; Kentucky, with thirteen votes, gave him a plurality of 7975; Nevada, with three electoral votes, gave him 2516 - a total plurality in the three states named of 12,939; Michigan, with fourteen electoral votes, gave Mr. McKinley a plurality of 104,584. Thus Mr. McKinley, with 91,645 more votes than his opponent received, would have been defeated in the electoral college by a vote of 19 to 14 if the decision had been left to the four states above named. Thus it will be seen that the electoral college may be the means of defeating the clearly expressed wishes of the people. This actually happened in 1888, when Mr. Cleveland received a plurality over Mr. Harrison of 95,534. This verdict of the individual voters was reversed by the electoral college, which gave Mr. Harrison 233 electoral votes as against 168 for Mr. Cleveland. Moreover, under the present plan the struggle is concentrated in a few doubtful states. To win or lose them means to win or lose the election, and this naturally increases the temptation to political corruption in those states.

Presidential Primaries. In some states presidential primaries are held. At these primaries, voters are permitted to express by ballot their preference for president and vice president. In this way the wishes of the people

are determined. While these results are merely suggestive, it is more than likely that delegates to national conventions will be chosen in harmony with the wishes of the voters as expressed in such primaries. The present tendency is toward direct nomination by the individual voter of candidates for the presidency. Direct nomination and direct election of the president by the individual voter without reference to state lines and the abolition of the electoral college are present-day tendencies.

Presidential Succession. The president is removable only on impeachment. Only one president, Andrew Johnson, has been impeached, and he was acquitted. A vacancy in the presidential office may, however, occur in a variety of other ways by the death or resignation of the incumbent; by his inability, from whatever cause, to discharge the duties and powers of the office; by the refusal of the newly elected president to accept the office, though this is not likely to occur. If a vacancy does occur in any of these ways, the vice president succeeds to the office. Further than this the Constitution makes no provision for the presidential succession, but the deficiency has been supplied by statute. By the presidential succession bill of 1886 it is provided that in case of the inability of both president and vice president to perform the duties of the office, the cabinet officers shall succeed in the following order: (1) Secretary of State, (2) Secretary of the Treasury, (3) Secretary of War, (4) Attorney-General, (5) PostmasterGeneral, (6) Secretary of the Navy, (7) Secretary of the Interior. A bill making the Secretary of Agriculture eighth and the Secretary of Commerce and Labor ninth in the order of presidential succession was introduced in the Fifty-eighth Congress, but for some reason this failed to become a law.