Article XX: Section. 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
What the Constitution says is that Biden would "act as President until a President shall have qualified".
What this means, the "shall have qualified" part, is unclear to me. If Obama was born in Kenya, then nothing can happen to remove his disqualification. Under a simple interpretation, it means that Biden would "act as President" until January 20, 2013. But an alternative scenario would be that the House of Representatives would have to elect a President from among the top three electoral vote getters who were qualified, i.e, John McCain, John McCain, or John McCain, and after the House election, Biden would resume his elected office of Vice President under President McCain.
Thx for explaining, understood well...and it brings me this concern. I didn’t see anything that stated the 3 top vote getters had to be the 3 considered. See the caps below, that says to me Congress can kinda just decide on it’s own by law. They don’t care what we think now, so what prevents them from going outside of those 3 candidates? Anything you are aware of?
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“then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the CONGRESS may BY LAW provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, DECLARING WHO SHALL BE PRESIDENT.”
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Aren't there a couple of electoral votes for some other person who is also eligible to be one of the three? McCain has the same problem Obama has--he is foreign born; citizen of Panama at birth.
Unless there was at least one "faithless" elector who voted for some other prominent Democrat. Then even if she only got one electoral vote, the House could, and likely would, pick her.
Bad as that would be, it's preferable to having an ineligible person, a usurper if you will, pretending to be President. It would also at least be consistent with the Constitution.
How does one get qualified? What does that mean?