U.S Vice Presidents - from Adams to Harris | 2021

There have been 48 vice presidents of the United States since the office came into existence in 1789. Originally, the vice president was the person who received the second most votes for president in the Electoral College. However, in the election of 1800 a tie in the electoral college between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr led to the selection of the president by the House of Representatives. To prevent such an event from happening again, the Twelfth Amendment was added to the Constitution, creating the current system where electors cast a separate ballot for the vice presidency.[1] The vice president is the first person in the presidential line of succession and assumes the presidency if the president dies, resigns, or is impeached and removed from office.[2] Nine vice presidents have ascended to the presidency in this way – eight (John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson) through the president’s death an