Like the title says, what if there was a double vacancy in the offices of the President and Vice President of the United States in 1790? One way to accomplish this scenario is for Benjamin Franklin to be elected President instead of George Washington (perhaps he dies shortly after the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to avoid butterflies to the US Constitution or just decides to refuse the presidency and never enters politics) but with Washington's right-hand-man in the American Revolutionary War, attorney Robert H. Harrison as his Vice President. Harrison was originally nominated by Washington and confirmed by Congress to a seat on the newly established Supreme Court in September 1789 IOTL but refused due to poor health. Had he been selected as Ben Franklin's Veep in 1788, before his health started failing, he would have died in office on April 2, 1790. Franklin himself died on April 17, 1790 from pleuritic attack. Such a scenario would lead to both the offices of President and Vice President becoming vacant before even the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 was even conceived! The 1792 PSA IOTL was proposed in order to avoid a so-called "nightmare scenario" in which Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, the leader of the Anti-Federalist movement at the time, could make a valid claim to the presidency. So would Jefferson claim the presidency with no laws in place to legitimize his claim? Would anyone argue for the presidency against Jefferson? Would Alexander Hamilton just sit idly by and watch Jefferson undo all of his hard work until the next election (he was too young to take office in 1790 I believe)? How would this effect the 1792 PSA, if it's passed earlier that is? Would the Secretary of State and the rest of the cabinet still be omitted from the Succession Act until 1886? Would Jefferson be called an Acting President by Americans at the time and future historians (considering this is literally taking place a year after the US was officially established and Tyler faced backlash to his claim in 1841 and he was literally the VP at the time)? And finally, how would this effect the presidential election of 1792 (there was no mechanism at the time to hold a special presidential election in 1790 unless an act of legislation was passed by Congress and signed off on by the President, or Acting President)? Or would the presidency just remain vacant until a law is passed by Congress (keep in mind that Congress wasn't in session in April 1790 so a special emergency joint session must be called in order for Congress to do anything)?
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