269-269 EC with 50-50 Senate

[Slander and/or Libel]

What if the House vote were a 25-25 split, with no delegations willing to abstain or switch votes?  If still a stalemate by the 20th, is the presidency deemed vacant?

20th Amendment:

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So the Vice President-Elect would become acting president until the stalemate in the House could be broken. And if the House and Senate were both deadlocked, then the Speaker  would be acting president until either stalemate could be broken.

[SPOILERS]

This is exactly what seems about to happen in the end of the latest season of Veep. Though they've been playing fast and loose and saying the Vice President-Elect would become President, not Acting President.

[/SPOILERS]

[Slander and/or Libel]

What if the House vote were a 25-25 split, with no delegations willing to abstain or switch votes?  If still a stalemate by the 20th, is the presidency deemed vacant?

20th Amendment:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So the Vice President-Elect would become acting president until the stalemate in the House could be broken. And if the House and Senate were both deadlocked, then the Speaker  would be acting president until either stalemate could be broken.

[SPOILERS]

This is exactly what seems about to happen in the end of the latest season of Veep. Though they've been playing fast and loose and saying the Vice President-Elect would become President, not Acting President.

[/SPOILERS]

Yeah, that bugged me. Plus they hinted that if Tom James became President under that scenario that he might appoint Selena as his Vice President, which I guess is probably technically allowable but would open up a really big can of worms if the House did break the stalemate later on after the term began.

So would an Acting President have all of the power that a President has? I mean, presumably, right? It just feels weird to me that somebody in a transitional role like that could potentially nominate a Vice President.

Of course that's probably the way to get Selina back into the VP's office, right? Tom James becomes President, nominates Selina to be Vice President, and then the vote in the House breaks to O'Brien, so Selina winds up as VP to her opponent?

Except that Tom James would still be the Vice-President-Elect in that scenario. Wouldn't that keep him from being able to nominate someone to the Vice Presidency, as he's technically pre-occupying the office himself?

[Slander and/or Libel]

That raises an interesting question. If the President is incapacitated and the VP dead, and the Speaker as acting president nominated and confirmed a Vice President, would the VP then become acting president?

[Slander and/or Libel]

I think it would get pretty knotty with the acting president/president thing, but I think it seems clear that the Act intends that there remain some fundamental distinction between the Presideny and the person carrying out the duties of the President, but not the President.

Other question I just thought of: if the Speaker of the House becomes Acting President, is he still Speaker, carrying out the duties of both offices? What if the House votes him out as Speaker? Does he cease to be Acting President?

[Slander and/or Libel]

The other thing I just thought of is that a Speaker/Acting President could short circuit the 25th amendment by just not appointing a VP, right?

[Slander and/or Libel]

Oh, I'd missed that part. So...have we been missing a way to force out an unwanted speaker, by having the president and vice president declare themselves incapable of carrying out the duties of the office to force the speaker into resigning and becoming acting president for like 10 minutes at which point the president and vice president recover?

[Slander and/or Libel]

I guess there's some ambiguity in there to me. The relevant text:

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(a)(1) says "the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, upon his resignation as Speaker and as Representative in Congress, act as President."

(b) says "If...when...a Speaker is to begin the discharge of the powers and duties of the office of President...the Speaker fails to qualify..."

So I guess my questions are these:

1) Is there specific legal guidance about the meaning of the word "shall" here? Is it meant to signal that the Speaker is compelled to become Acting President, and consequently must resign? "Shall" in (a)(1) comes before the bits about resignation, after all, and it's "shall," not "if he chooses to resign."

2) Under subsection (b), would a Speaker's refusal to resign count as failure to qualify? I suppose this goes back to whether the language of (a)(1) makes acceptance of the office compulsory, and resignation a part of what goes along with that.

[Slander and/or Libel]

Well you're right that under the most literal reading of the statute, "shall" means that the speaker has to do it. But I can't see the courts upholding an act that requires a member of congress to resign absent the two-thirds vote the constitution requires in order to expel a member, and I'm fairly certain the courts would hold that congress couldn't have intended the act to compel a person to serve as president against their will.

And if the speaker refuses to resign, then I think that obviously counts as failure to qualify.

Obviously there's no case law interpreting the act, so this is all just my speculation on how the act could be most reasonably interpreted under such circumstances.

Yeah, I agree with just about all of what you said. Obviously it's never going to happen. I just think the language of the thing is a bit sloppy and I was interested in ripping open some of those holes and seeing what they could imply.