Death or unsuitability of a candidate
The U.S. constitution grants each state the right to appoint electors in a manner chosen by that state. While it is common to think of the electoral votes impersonally, as mere numbers, the college is in fact made up of real people (usually party regulars of the party whose candidate wins each state) with the capacity to adapt to unusual situations. That capacity might be particularly important if, for example, a candidate were to die or become in some other way unsuitable to serve as President or Vice President. Advocates of the current system argue that these electors could then choose a suitable replacement (who would most likely come from the same party of the candidate who won the election) more competently than could the general voting public. Furthermore, the time period during which such a death or the onset of such an unsuitability might call for such an adaptation extends, under the Electoral College system, from before Election Day (many states cannot change ballots at a late stage) until the day the electors vote (the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December). Thus, until the electors cast their votes, it is not a federal issue, per se, but a state's rights issue and state laws (should) regulate the situation. In Virginia, for instance, the law clearly states that the electors must vote for the name of the candidate who they represent on the ballot and therefore these electors are not able to adapt to unusual situations.
In the
election of 1872,
Democratic candidate
Horace Greeley did in fact die before the meeting of the Electoral College, resulting in Democratic disarray; the electors who were to have voted for Greeley split their votes across several candidates, including three votes cast for the deceased Greeley. However, President
Ulysses S. Grant, the
Republican incumbent, had already won an absolute majority of electors. Because it was the death of a losing candidate, there was no pressure to agree on a replacement candidate. There has never been a case of a candidate of the winning party dying.
In the
election of 1912, after the Republicans had renominated
President Taft and
Vice President Sherman, Sherman died shortly before the election, too late to change the names on the ballot, thus causing Sherman to be listed posthumously. That ticket finished third behind the Democrats (
Woodrow Wilson) and the Progressives (
Theodore Roosevelt), and the 8 electoral votes that Sherman would have received were cast for
Nicholas M. Butler.
