President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are the longest-serving presidential candidates in US history.
By Inauguration Day in January 2025, Biden will be 82 and Trump will be 78.
Beyond political ideologies, if there is a concern that unites Democrats and Republicans, it is the age of both politicians, their ability to face another period in the White House and what happens if - hypothetically - one of the two dies before the elections ?
[Trump or Biden? The majority of voters do not seem convinced of anyone for president in 2024]
Although there is no precedent for this, the Constitution, as well as state and federal election laws, would help guide the country through the process.
And the answer depends on when that happened.
By Inauguration Day in January 2025, Biden will be 82 and Trump will be 78.Getty Images
If the candidate dies or becomes incapacitated between January 1 and mid-June 2024, some states could postpone their primaries (as many did during the COVID-19 pandemic), to give new candidates time to enter the race. , explains the policy and governance research center, Brookings Institution.
If this hypothetical scenario were to happen between mid-June 2024, when the primaries end, and before the national convention of the corresponding party, the delegates from each state would vote among themselves and decide there at the convention who their candidate should be, as they used to do years ago, before the 1960s.
What happens if a candidate dies around November 3?
If ballots have been finalized in many states, and early and mail-in voting has already begun, it would be too late to change the names on the ballot unless the presidential election is postponed.
However,
only Congress can change the election date
, and academics agree that such a move would be unlikely.
If the worst were to happen in mid-October 2024, and one of the candidates died, their name would still be on the national ballot.
And
according to the Constitution, you can vote for someone who has died.
In fact, in 2000, Mel Carnahan, who was running for the United States Senate, died in a plane crash while en route to a campaign event.
He was elected posthumously
, and her widow, Jean, became the first senator to represent Missouri when she was appointed to replace her husband.
Jean died this Tuesday at the age of 90, The Associated Press reported.
Her family did not specify the cause of death, but she said the Democrat died after a brief illness at a hospice center in suburban St. Louis.
In the case of the president-elect, if the winning candidate dies after Election Day but before the inauguration, then the vice president would take the oath.
In Biden's case it would be Kamala Harris.
Trump has not yet defined who would be his second in command.
The debate over the age of officials in the US
In recent years, concern about the age of US officials has been a recurring theme.
Biden arrived at the White House as the oldest president in US history.
And if Trump is elected, he would finish his second term at 82 years old.
Furthermore, in 2023 the images of Republican Congressman Mitch McConnell, 81, paralyzed at a press conference, put the spotlight on a term that dominates politics in the United States: gerontocracy, a government exercised by the elderly.
McConnell is not the greatest of senators.
Republican Chuck Grassley is 90 and former presidential candidate, progressive Bernie Sanders, is 82.
In the Lower House, Grace Napolitano also stands out with 86, followed by Eleanor Holmes, Harold Rogers and Bill Pascrell, born a year later.
According to data from the US Congressional Research Service, in January 2023 the average age of members of the House of Representatives was 57.9 years old and that of senators was 64 years old.
Although many people choose to retire when they reach the required age—in the United States you are eligible at age 66 or 67, depending on the year of birth—
the number of octogenarians working in the country has been increasing
in recent decades.
“It is legitimate to worry about anyone's age, including mine.
I think it is totally legitimate,” Biden said in October 2022 to journalist Jonathan Capehart of the MSNBC television network.
In the midst of the debates about age, voices like that of Nikki Haley, 52-year-old Republican presidential candidate, are heard again, who recalled in an interview with Fox News one of her proposals: that any politician over 75 years of age have to submit to to mental competence tests.
“Right now
the Senate is the most privileged nursing home
in the country,” he stated in August 2023.