Today is October 12, 2024. On November 5, 2024, we will go to our respective voting booths all over America and not elect anyone to the office of Vice President of the United States. The vice president of the United States is the second-highest office in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The vice president is also an officer in the legislative branch, as the president of the Senate. In this capacity, the vice president is empowered to preside over the United States Senate, but may not vote except to cast a tie-breaking vote.[1]
The position of vice president did not exist under the Continental Congresses or the Articles of Confederation. Prior to our first revolution, from April 19, 1775, to September 3, 1783, the fight was between Great Britain and us. We didn’t have either a president or a vice president. Back then we had governor’s councils of the royal colonies, which also functioned as upper houses of the legislatures. This system was adapted in some states after the Revolution, such as in New York, where the lieutenant governor presided over the state senate.[2]
Our first vice president was John Adams. He served as George Washington’s VP. Then, from 1797 to 1801 he was elected as President. In between he was elected to the office of Vice President. “Under the Constitution’s original election process, each elector in the Electoral College cast two ballots. The candidate with the most votes became the president; the candidate with the second most became vice president. With 69 votes, Washington was elected president unanimously. Adams came in second, but with only 34 votes. He felt humiliated and considered turning down the office. His poor showing was probably the result of future Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s “backroom maneuvering” to prevent a tie and ensure a decisive victory for Washington.”[3]
It seems as though we’ve endured “backroom maneuvering” ever since.
The vice president is indirectly elected at the same time as the president to a four-year term of office by the people of the United States through the Electoral College, but the electoral votes are cast separately for these two offices. Following the passage in 1967 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, a vacancy in the office of vice president may be filled by presidential nomination and confirmation by a majority vote in both houses of Congress.[4]
This voting and electoral college reality started in 1837. We were still burdened then by the presidential election of 1800. The presidential election of 1800 revealed a need to amend the U.S. Constitution. The original system for electing presidents provided that the candidate receiving a majority of Electoral College votes would become president, while the runner-up would become vice president. The 1800 election resulted in a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Under the Constitution, this stalemate sent the election to the House of Representatives, which chose Jefferson. The states soon ratified a twelfth amendment to the Constitution, requiring separate contests for the offices of president and vice president. To balance the role of the House in breaking presidential ties, the Twelfth Amendment requires the Senate to handle that responsibility for deadlocked vice-presidential contests. The Senate must choose between the two top electoral vote recipients, with at least two-thirds of the Senate’s members voting.”[5]
The Electoral College
A college is an educational institution. The “Electoral College” decides who will be elected president and vice president of the U.S. It is not a physical place. It is a process which includes the selection of electors. Once selected they meet and cast votes for the president and vice president of the U.S. In all other U.S. elections, candidates are elected directly by popular vote. However the president and vice president are not elected directly by citizens. Instead, they are chosen through the Electoral College process.[6]
“Established by Article II, Section 1, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the Electoral College is the institution through which the next president of the United States is chosen. There are 538 total electors who cast their votes, and a presidential candidate must achieve a simple majority of electoral votes (270) to win the election. Each state receives at least two electoral votes—one electoral vote per senator—and an additional number of votes equal to the state’s number of representatives in the House of Representatives. This ensures that even the least populus states receive at least three electoral votes. This system for allocating votes means that as state populations fluctuate with each decennial census, states’ total electoral college votes are responsive to changes in the composition of the country. The presidential election is the only U.S. election in which the Electoral College is used to elect the winning candidate; the popular vote is used to determine all congressional, state, and local races.”[7]
The upcoming election on November 5, 2024, will be the sixtieth election in U.S. history from 1789 to the present. Once again, neither the president nor vice president will be elected based on the public vote. It is possible for a candidate to win the most votes nationally but lose the electoral vote, ultimately losing the election. An election in which the winning candidate for president did not win the most individual votes has only occurred five times in U.S. history, most recently in 2016: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W. Bush (2000), Donald Trump (2016).[8]
Fifty-three of the fifty-nine presidential elections in U.S. history took both the electoral college vote and the popular vote. But in five incredibly close elections—including those for two of the past three presidents—the winner of the Electoral College was in fact the loser of the popular vote.[9] At the risk of repetition, this could happen again this year.
Since most states award all of their electoral votes to the person who wins the statewide popular vote, it’s mathematically possible to win more electoral votes while still losing the popular vote. For example, if one candidate wins by large percentages in a handful of very populous states, for example, they’ll probably win the popular vote. But if their opponent wins a bunch of smaller states by tight margins, he or she could still win the Electoral College. That’s basically what happened in 2016.[10]
That infamous year, Donald Trump, in a surprise victory beat Hillary Clinton despite the fact that she had won 2.8 million more votes in the “popular” vote. But Trump saw narrow victories in battleground states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. That gave him the win in the Electoral College with 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227.[11]
This year, Vice President Kamala Harris has a slight polling lead over former President Trump. She leads him “53 times out of 100.” His polling odds are “47 times out of 100.”[12] Those odds are from FiveThirtyEight.com. Their forecast is based on a combination of polls and campaign “fundamentals,” such as economic conditions, state partisanship, and incumbency.”[13]
Vice Presidents Who Later Became President
Of the 15 vice presidents who went on to become president, eight succeeded to the office on the death of a president, and four of these were later elected president. Two vice presidents, Hannibal Hamlin and Henry Wallace, were dropped from the ticket after their first term, only to see their successors become president months after taking office when the president died. Similarly, when Spiro Agnew resigned, he was replaced under the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment by Gerald Ford, who then became president when Richard Nixon resigned less than a year later.[14]
The 2024 Candidates for U.S. Vice President
V P candidates are selected by the candidate for president. This year, the Democratic candidate for vice president is Tim Blaz. The Republican candidate is J.D. Vance. Blaz is the governor of Minnesota. Vance is a U.S. senator from Ohio. Neither was well known nationally before being picked as a running mate by the presidential candidate.
Tim Walz is Minnesota’s 41st Governor. He was first elected Governor in 2018 and won re-election in 2022. Accomplishments from his time as Governor include providing universal free school meals for students, protecting reproductive freedom, strengthening voting rights, laying the groundwork to get Minnesota to 100% clean electricity by 2040, cutting taxes for the middle class, and expanding paid leave for Minnesota workers. Throughout his time as Governor, Tim has prioritized making Minnesota the best state in the country to raise a family.[15]
J.D. Vance is a politician, author, venture capitalist, and Marine veteran who has served since 2023 as the junior United States senator from Ohio. He is the Republican nominee for vice president in the 2024 United States presidential election. After high school, Vance joined the US Marine Corps, where he served as a military journalist from 2003 to 2007. He graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He practiced briefly as a corporate lawyer before embarking on a career in the tech industry as a venture capitalist. His memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, was published in 2016 and was adapted into a film in 2020.[16]
Can Either VP Help the Presidential Candidate in 2024?
FDR famously said the vice presidency “is not worth a bucket of warm spit.” He was talking about one of his four vice presidents, John Nance Gardner.[17]
Arguably, the most influential vice-president was Dick Cheney who served from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He previously served as White House Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford, the U.S. representative for Wyoming’s at-large congressional district from 1979 to 1989, and as the 17th United States secretary of defense in the administration of President George H. W. Bush. He is the oldest living former U.S. vice president.[18] His daughter says he is going to vote for Kamala Harris in the upcoming coming presidential election.[19] Mr. Cheney confirmed his daughter’s statement: “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again,” he said. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”[20]
It is debatable whether J.D. Vance will help or harm Trump’s chance to regain the White House. “He’s on the far right: conservative on social and cultural issues, authoritarian on institutional design, populist on economic questions. Not dissimilar to President Trump overall, but with different intellectual scaffolding for his views. He is new to elected office, having only been in the Senate since January of 2023. His voting record so far supports the idea that he is on the far right—more conservative than 91 percent of Senate Republicans—and has exhibited slightly lower party loyalty than his peers.”[21]
Conversely, by picking Walz, Harris has chosen a vice president who is well-qualified for the job. The two-term governor previously served six terms in Congress, where he was the ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Among Harris’s finalists, he is the only one who has served in state and federal office. Walz’s combination of executive and foreign policy experience — plus his 24 years of service in the Army National Guard — distinguishes him as a plausible “second in command” in a Harris White House.[22]
Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michele Obama said, “Kamala Harris has chosen an ideal partner – and made it clear exactly what she stands for. Governor Walz doesn’t just have the experience to be vice president, he has the values and the integrity to make us proud.”[23]
Politico headlined its coverage of Tim Walz as the Democratic pick for VP: “55 Things to Know About Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ Pick for VP.”[24] Actually, reason number twenty-four may be enough to put the democratic ticket in the White House this election: He won re-election five times in Minnesota’s mostly rural, conservative 1st District, serving in the House for twelve years.”[25]
Understandably, nearly a third of all American voters say J.D. Vance hurts Trump’s chances. The poll supporting that view was conducted by YouGov among 1,567 adult citizens, also revealed that less than a quarter believed the Ohio senator would help Trump’s chances, while 29 percent said he hurt them, 34 percent said he would make no difference, and 13 percent said they were unsure.[26]
The Economic Times’s headline is blunt: JD Vance is actually not helpful but is harming Donald Trump’s chances in the upcoming election. “JD Vance has been announced as Donald Trump’s running mate. According to many Republicans, this could be a disastrous move, and Trump may be reconsidering his choices. Survey after survey indicate that the Ohio senator is in fact the most unpopular vice-presidential nominee in the country’s history since 1980.”[27]
The insurrection of our capitol on January 6, 2021, happened because the vice president of the United States followed the law and refused to allow fake electors to decide the actual 2020 presidential vote by real electors in the Electoral College. The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads “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.” Under the Constitution, the vice president also serves as president of the Senate.[28]
The J6 attack and insurrection happened because the then President, Donald Trump insisted that his vice president overturn the election. “Trump fueled the rage of the mob marching toward the Capitol and he egged them on, even after he knew violence was possible. When the rioters chanted ‘hang Mike Pence,’ Trump reportedly said Pence ‘deserves it.’ Pence barely escaped the mob’s wrath. [J6] testimony shows that the rioters were just forty feet from the vice president. But as rioters called for his execution and erected gallows outside the Capitol building, Pence refused to leave the Capitol complex. He didn’t want anyone to see the vice president fleeing the Capitol. . . We still don’t have all the evidence, but it appears Pence also coordinated city and federal responses to the riot from the secure underground location where he took refuge. And once the mob had been driven out of the Capitol, Pence insisted on completing the ceremony in the early morning hours of January 7, 2021.”[29]
Former Vice President Mike Pence is a hero in everyone’s eyes today. Current candidate for vice president J. D Vance, says he “wouldn’t have certified the 2020 race until the states submitted pro-trump electors.”[30] He also says he “would have asked for new electors instead of certifying 2020 election results.”[31]
J.D. Vance is no Mike Pence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_President_of_the_United_States
[2] https://www.britannica.com/event/Timeline-of-the-American-Revolution
[3] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-vice-presidency/
[4] https://www.senate.gov/about/officers-staff/vice-president/overview.htm#:~:text=The%20Constitution’s%20framers%20provided%20that,election%20through%20the%20Electoral%20College.
[5] https://www.senate.gov/about/officers-staff/vice-president/senate-elects-vice-president.htm
[6] https://www.usa.gov/electoral-college
[7] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/the-electoral-college-simplified/
[8] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/the-electoral-college-simplified/
[9] https://www.history.com/news/presidents-electoral-college-popular-vote
[10] https://www.history.com/news/presidents-electoral-college-popular-vote
[11] https://www.history.com/news/presidents-electoral-college-popular-vote
[12] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/
[13] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/
[14] https://www.senate.gov/about/officers-staff/vice-president/vice-presidents.htm#:~:text=Of%20the%2015%20vice%20presidents,these%20were%20later%20elected%20president.
[15] https://mn.gov/governor/about-gov/timwalz/
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JD_Vance
[17] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nance_Garner#:~:text=Garner%20once%20described%20the%20Vice,president%20of%20the%20United%20States.
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney#:~:text=Richard%20Bruce%20Cheney%20(%2F%CB%88t%CA%83,vice%20president%20in%20American%20history
[19] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/06/dick-cheney-kamala-harris-liz-cheney-colin-allred/
[20] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/06/dick-cheney-kamala-harris-liz-cheney-colin-allred/
[21] https://www.bu.edu/articles/2024/how-does-jd-vance-help-and-potentially-hurt-trump/
[22] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-06/tim-walz-kamala-harris-donald-trump-jd-vance-vice-president-election
[23] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/reactions-kamala-harris-pick-tim-walz-vice-president-2024-08-06/
[24] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/08/06/tim-walz-55-things-harris-vp-00172790
[25] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/08/06/tim-walz-55-things-harris-vp-00172790
[26] https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-third-voters-jd-vance-hurts-donald-trump-chances-2024-election-tim-walz-1939583
[27] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/jd-vance-is-actually-not-helpful-but-harming-donald-trumps-chances-in-the-upcoming-election-here-are-the-reasons/articleshow/112138692.cms?from=mdr
[28] https://theconversation.com/mike-pences-actions-on-jan-6-were-wholly-unremarkable-until-they-saved-the-nation-185325
[29] https://theconversation.com/mike-pences-actions-on-jan-6-were-wholly-unremarkable-until-they-saved-the-nation-185325
[30] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jd-vance-defends-trump-claims-invoking-jean-carroll/story?id=106925954
[31] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/10/vance-electors-2020-election-0017826
I am an author and a part-time lawyer with a focus on ethics and professional discipline. I teach creative writing and ethics to law students at Arizona State University. Read my bio.
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I am an author and a part-time lawyer with a focus on ethics and professional discipline. I teach creative writing and ethics to law students at Arizona State University. 
My latest novel is Hide & Be. 
If you have an important story you want told, you can commission me to write it for you. 