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If a Presidential Candidate Dies or Is Incapacitated Before Election Day

58 points| dsr12 | 5 years ago |electionlawblog.org

17 comments

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[+] yread|5 years ago|reply
It's amazing that it can get this messy. A president-elect dying in 4 months is not that unlikely: 65+ has a probability of dying about 1.5%/year [1], so 0.5% that they die between November and January. For a 74 year old it's even 3.6% and 1.2% respectively, for a 77 year old 4.5% and 1.5% [2]. And that's not even considering that there is a lot more stress in that time.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Excerpt_...

[2] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/United-States-life-tab...

[+] rich_sasha|5 years ago|reply
Interesting! And yes, really puts the "no time like right now" into perspective.

Though I suppose there is some selection bias too: if you can run for presidency at 74/77 etc. you must be fitter than the average person your age; be it because of better health, better genes, or easier life hitherto, or something else still. So your odds of making it are probably better too.

Most people that age I know wouldn't be able to keep up with the electoral calendar pace.

[+] tinus_hn|5 years ago|reply
It’s not like Trump is as healthy as an average 65+ person.
[+] srtjstjsj|5 years ago|reply
Despite technicalities, what matters is what the mass populace and people in government accept, and obviously that means the VP candidate on the slate takes over.
[+] smkellat|5 years ago|reply
It is comforting that people are at least thinking about this potential situation.
[+] askl56|5 years ago|reply
Why is this relevant to Hacker News?
[+] cjsawyer|5 years ago|reply
It’s a very real possibility that these rules will directly impact the course of the world in the immediate future. We live in the world, too. Not everything is code and venture capital.
[+] troelsSteegin|5 years ago|reply
It's an interesting state machine problem complicated by poorly understood exception handling.