What Should Happen When Presidential Electors Fail To Provide Majority Support

 

If the Presidential electors fail to muster the majority support needed to choose the President, the Top Three elector vote getters are subject to selection by the House of Representatives.

If those same electors fail to muster the majority support needed to choose the Vice-President, the Top Two elector vote recipients are subject to selection by the U.S. Senate.

While obviously both the Presidential candidates(Top Three) should be selected by the U.S. Senate and the Vice-Presidential candidates(Top Two) should be selected by the House of Representatives, the purpose of this post is to explain why the Top Three Presidential candidates are subject to selection while only the Top Two VP candidates are subject to the same.

The President needs a mandate considering the considerable authority given to that office. That is why the winner of the Presidential race must get a majority of states, that the House Representatives select on behalf of, to choose him or her out of three candidates. The framers of the U.S. Constitution wanted the winner of the Presidential race to get more states to select him or her than the other two candidates combined in case the electors were unsuccessful in their choosing.

They wanted the President to win convincingly because of the authority that office wields. Since the Vice-President does not have nearly as much authority, these framers limited the selection of the Vice-President by the legislative body to the Top Two elector vote getters only. 

Cliff Notes Version: The reason why the Top Three Presidential candidates are chosen to be voted on by a federal legislative house, if the electors fail to choose the President, is because the elected President must win convincingly before he is awarded Presidential authority. The President, as head of the federal executive branch and as America's representative to other nations and foreign entities, is given much authority. Therefore, he must be selected by mandate by this certain legislative house. 

The Vice-President, on the other hand, has far less authority. Therefore a candidate just needs more members of a legislative body to cast votes for him or her than the other Vice-Presidential candidate. That certain legislative body choose the winner out of the Top Two electoral vote recipients for that position.