who presides in the senate when the vice president is absent
Presiding Officer of the United States Senate The U.S. Constitution also provides for appointment of one of the elected Senators to serve as President pro tempore. This Senator presides when the vice president was absent from the body. The President pro tempore is selected by the body specifically for the role of presiding in the absence of (as the meaning of pro tempore, literally "for the time being") the actual presiding officer. By tradition, the title of President pro tempore has come to be given more-or-less automatically to the most senior senator of the majority party. In actual practice in the modern Senate, the President pro tempore also does not often serve in the role (though it is his or her constitutional right to do so), instead, as governed by the aforementioned Rule I, he or she frequently designates a junior senator to perform the function.
Robert Todd Lincoln Robert Lincoln was coincidentally either present or nearby when three presidential assassinations occurred.[42]
United States presidential election The election of President and Vice President of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the 50 U.S. states or in Washington, D.C. cast ballots not directly for those offices, but instead for members of the U.S. Electoral College, known as electors. These electors then in turn cast direct votes, known as electoral votes, for President, and for Vice President. The candidate who receives an absolute majority of electoral votes (at least 270 out of a total of 538, since the Twenty-Third Amendment granting voting rights to citizens of Washington, D.C.) is then elected to that office. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of the votes for President, the House of Representatives chooses the winner; if no one receives an absolute majority of the votes for Vice President, then the Senate chooses the winner.
United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they compose the legislature of the United States.