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The Vice President of the United States is the ex-officio President of the United States Senate. He may have a casting vote in the Senate's decisions only to break a tie.1
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Historical significance
The first President of the Senate, John Adams, cast twenty-nine tie-breaking votes – a record that none of his successors has matched. His votes protected the president's sole authority over the removal of appointees, influenced the location of the national capital, and prevented war with Great Britain. On at least one occasion he persuaded senators to vote against legislation that he opposed, and he frequently lectured the Senate on procedural and policy matters. Adams's political views and his active role in the Senate made him a natural target for critics of the Washington administration. Toward the end of his first term, as a result of a threatened resolution that would have silenced him except for procedural and policy matters, he began to exercise more restraint in the hope of realizing the goal shared by many of his successors: election in his own right as president of the United States.2
In 2001, during the 107th Congress, the Senate was divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats and thus Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote gave the Republicans the Senate majority. Interestingly, however, because the 107th Congress was sworn in on January 3, while the president and vice president were not sworn in until the 20th, Democrats technically held a 51-50 majority in the Senate for the 17 days while Al Gore was still Vice President. However, no substantive legislating was done in this time.
List of Presidents of the Senate by number of tie-breaking votes
There have been 244 tie-breaking votes cast by 46 Presidents of the Senate. The median and mean numbers of tie-breaking votes cast per Senate President are 3 and 5.30 respectively.
| Rank by # of Tie- breaking votes |
# of Tie- breaking votes |
President of the Senate | Party | # in Office |
Term of Office | President(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 29 | John Adams | Federalist | 1 | April 21, 1789 – March 4, 1797 | Washington |
| 2 | 28 | John C. Calhoun | Democratic-Republican | 7 | March 4, 1825 – December 28, 1832 | J. Q. Adams / Jackson |
| 3 | 19 | George Dallas | Democrat | 11 | March 4, 1845 – March 4, 1849 | Polk |
| 4 | 17 | Richard Johnson | Democrat | 9 | March 4, 1837 – March 4, 1841 | Van Buren |
| 4 | 17 | Schuyler Colfax | Republican | 17 | March 4, 1869 – March 4, 1873 | Grant |
| 6 | 12 | George Clinton | Democratic-Republican | 4 | March 4, 1805 – April 20, 1812 | Jefferson / Madison |
| 7 | 9 | John C. Breckinridge | Democrat | 14 | March 4, 1857 – March 4, 1861 | Buchanan |
| 8 | 8 | Thomas Marshall | Democrat | 28 | March 4, 1913 – March 4, 1921 | Wilson |
| 8 | 8 | Alben Barkley | Democrat | 35 | January 20, 1949 – January 20, 1953 | Truman |
| 8 | 8 | Richard Nixon | Republican | 36 | January 20, 1953 – January 20, 1961 | Eisenhower |
| 8* | 8* | Dick Cheney | Republican | 46 | January 20, 2001–present | G. W. Bush |
| 12 | 7 | Hannibal Hamlin | Republican | 15 | March 4, 1861 – March 4, 1865 | Lincoln |
| 12 | 7 | George H. W. Bush | Republican | 43 | January 20, 1981 – January 20, 1989 | Reagan |
| 14 | 6 | Elbridge Gerry | Democratic-Republican | 5 | March 4, 1813 – November 23, 1814 | Madison |
| 14 | 6 | William Wheeler | Republican | 19 | March 4, 1877 – March 4, 1881 | Hayes |
| 16 | 4 | Martin Van Buren | Democrat | 8 | March 4, 1833 – March 4, 1837 | Jackson |
| 16 | 4 | Levi Morton | Republican | 22 | March 4, 1889 – March 4, 1893 | B. Harrison |
| 16 | 4 | James Sherman | Republican | 27 | March 4, 1909 – October 30, 1912 | Taft |
| 16 | 4 | Henry Wallace | Democrat | 33 | January 20, 1941 – January 20, 1945 | F. Roosevelt |
| 16 | 4 | Hubert Humphrey | Democrat | 38 | January 20, 1965 – January 20, 1969 | L. B. Johnson |
| 16 | 4 | Al Gore | Democrat | 45 | January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001 | Clinton |
| 22 | 3 | Thomas Jefferson | Democratic-Republican | 2 | March 4, 1797 – March 4, 1801 | J. Adams |
| 22 | 3 | Aaron Burr | Democratic-Republican | 3 | March 4, 1801 – March 4, 1805 | Jefferson |
| 22 | 3 | Daniel Tompkins | Democratic-Republican | 6 | March 4, 1817 – March 4, 1825 | Monroe |
| 22 | 3 | Millard Fillmore | Whig | 12 | March 4, 1849 – July 9, 1850 | Taylor |
| 22 | 3 | Chester A. Arthur | Republican | 20 | March 4, 1881 – September 19, 1881 | Garfield |
| 22 | 3 | Charles Curtis | Republican | 31 | March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1933 | Hoover |
| 22 | 3 | John Nance Garner | Democrat | 32 | March 4, 1933 – January 20, 1941 | F. Roosevelt |
| 29 | 2 | Adlai E. Stevenson | Democrat | 23 | March 4, 1893 – March 4, 1897 | Cleveland |
| 29 | 2 | Charles Dawes | Republican | 30 | March 4, 1925 – March 4, 1929 | Coolidge |
| 29 | 2 | Spiro Agnew | Republican | 39 | January 20, 1969 – October 10, 1973 | Nixon |
| 32 | 1 | Henry Wilson | Republican | 18 | March 4, 1873 – November 22, 1875 | Grant |
| 32 | 1 | Garret Hobart | Republican | 24 | March 4, 1897 – November 21, 1899 | McKinley |
| 32 | 1 | Harry Truman | Democrat | 34 | January 20, 1945 – April 12, 1945 | F. Roosevelt |
| 32 | 1 | Walter Mondale | Democrat | 42 | January 20, 1977 – January 20, 1981 | Carter |
| 36 | 0 | John Tyler | Whig | 10 | March 4, 1841 – April 4, 1841 | W. H. Harrison |
| 36 | 0 | William King | Democrat | 13 | March 4, 1853 – April 18, 1853 | Pierce |
| 36 | 0 | Andrew Johnson | Democrat | 16 | March 4, 1865 – April 15, 1865 | Lincoln |
| 36 | 0 | Thomas Hendricks | Democrat | 21 | March 4, 1885 – November 25, 1885 | Cleveland |
| 36 | 0 | Theodore Roosevelt | Republican | 25 | March 4, 1901 – September 14, 1901 | McKinley |
| 36 | 0 | Charles Fairbanks | Republican | 26 | March 4, 1905 – March 4, 1909 | T. Roosevelt |
| 36 | 0 | Calvin Coolidge | Republican | 29 | March 4, 1921 – August 2, 1923 | Harding |
| 36 | 0 | Lyndon Johnson | Democrat | 37 | January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963 | Kennedy |
| 36 | 0 | Gerald Ford | Republican | 40 | December 6, 1973 – August 9, 1974 | Nixon |
| 36 | 0 | Nelson Rockefeller | Republican | 41 | December 19, 1974 – January 20, 1977 | Ford |
| 36 | 0 | Dan Quayle | Republican | 44 | January 20, 1989 – January 20, 1993 | G. H. W. Bush |
*As of March 14, 20083
References
- ^ "Senate.gov: The Senate and the United States Constitution".
- ^ "Senate.gov: John Adams, 1st Vice President (1789-1797)".
- ^ U.S. Senate: Reference Home > Statistics & Lists > Votes to Break Ties in the Senate
External links
- List of Vice Presidential Tie-Breaking Votes, 1789-2003 (U.S. Senate Historical Office)
- Votes by Vice Presidents to Break Tie Votes in the Senate, 1981-2005 (Secretary of the U.S. Senate)
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Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 18 October 2008, at 14:20.
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