If a Presidential Candidate Dies or Is Incapacitated Before Election Day | Hacker News Reader

If a Presidential Candidate Dies or Is Incapacitated Before Election Day

electionlawblog.org

58 pointsdsr1217 comments

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...

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.

When you use the term "fit", I think you are equating stamina with immune response. Being able to withstand a grueling schedule has nothing to do with how well your immune system will rally to infection, so I don't think it's a strong indicator of anything.

Further, this assessment also assumes the 74/77 year olds who died as a consequence of infection were all of average health, rather than randomly sampled across the health spectrum (which us a fairer assumption). I don't think there's any basis to conclude that they were average health.

We do know Trump has some complicating conditions such as mild obesity and unconfirmed heart disease: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/10/02/heal... If anything, these elevate his risk.

Surely someone with grueling stamina has shown an ability to withstand infection that would have interrupted that stamina.

Or just gotten lucky

What evidence is there to suggest they had an infection during their period of grueling stamina?

It’s not like Trump is as healthy as an average 65+ person.

Are you sure? What is the average?

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.

It is comforting that people are at least thinking about this potential situation.

Why is this relevant to Hacker News?

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.

Only if "the world" ends at the border to Mexico :P

Our ICBM range extends a bit farther than that, actually.

Us politics has major effects on world economies and power balance. No country is an island - even the ones that literally are, but the US especially so.

Even the US civil war had long reaching effects on other countries - and were far more connected now.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13118921906800148...

It's an interesting state machine problem complicated by poorly understood exception handling.

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