With so much unclear about the upcoming presidential election, it’s nice to know that there is one absolute certainty.
Mail-in ballots may take a long time to count. Many states will have recounts, either statewide or in specific areas. President Donald Trump has signaled he may not like the outcome – and it remains to be seen if he or others will accept the result.
As a historian who has taught and written about the Constitution for over 40 years, however, I know that one thing is certain. Trump’s term will end at noon on Jan. 20. At that same instant, either he will begin a second term, or the country will have a new chief executive.
The framers of the Constitution were very clear that the president “shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years.”
There is nothing magical about that number. The framers debated whether the president’s term should be four, six or seven years, whether the president might serve only one term, or might serve for life. Ultimately, they settled on four years and allowed reelection.
However, they were emphatic that the president would serve for a defined period. Why? Because kings didn’t.
In September 1788, after the Constitution was ratified, the Confederation Congress directed that the new government would begin on March 4, 1789, although George Washington took the oath of office on April 30.
Every four years thereafter, for more than 140 years, presidents began their term on March 4 because Congress established it as Inauguration Day in 1792 and never changed it.
Electoral crises – a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in 1800, the secession crisis in 1860-61 and a contested election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden in 1876 – did not prevent one term from ending and another beginning on March 4.
The 20th Amendment, adopted in 1933, changed the day and time of presidential inaugurations to noon on Jan. 20.
The amendment was the result of a 16-year crusade by Sen. George W. Norris of Nebraska. Norris believed that lame-duck congresses that met between November and March following elections did not reflect the people’s will and should not legislate.
Equally a problem were defeated presidents who served for months after voters had declined to reelect them.
The Constitution set the term lengths for presidents, senators and representatives.
So the 20th Amendment changed the date and also offered a path forward if things didn’t go smoothly in the runup to Inauguration Day.
If the president-elect died between the election and Jan. 20, the vice president-elect would become president. The amendment also declared what should happen if Congress couldn’t agree on who had won the presidential election, either because of deadlock over counting electoral votes or the House’s failure to declare a winner when no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.
If that happened, or if the person chosen wasn’t at least 35 years old and what the Constitution calls a “natural born citizen” of the country, the vice president-elect would serve until Congress picked someone else. If there wasn’t a vice president-elect or that person didn’t meet the Constitution’s criteria either, then Congress could determine who would serve as acting president until it decided how a new president would be chosen.
These provisions have never been tested.
One thing is clear, however. The 20th Amendment creates a hard stop. The sitting president’s term ends at noon on Jan. 20. If Congress can’t determine a winner, the Presidential Succession Act, adopted in 1947, would make the speaker of the House of Representatives the new chief executive – at least for a time.
Whether he likes it or not, and whether he wins reelection or not, Trump’s current term as president will end Jan. 20.
Donald Nieman is executive vice president of academic affairs and provost at Binghamton University State University of New York. Distributed by The Associated Press.
