g to a decision are such as the two houses,
acting separately or together, may lawfully employ. Sir, the grant
of power to the commission is in just that measure, no more and no
less. The decision they render can be overruled by the concurrent
votes of the two houses. Is it not competent for the two houses of
Congress to agree that a concurrent majority of the two houses is
necessary to reject the electoral vote of a State? If so, may they
not adopt means which they believe will tend to produce a
concurrence? Finally, sir, this bill secures the great object for
which the two houses were brought together: the counting of the
votes of the electoral college; not to elect a President by the two
houses, but to determine who has been elected agreeably to the
Constitution and the laws. It provides against the failure to count
the electoral vote of a State in event of disagreement between the
two houses, in case of single returns, and, in cases of contest and
double returns, furnishes a tribunal whose composition secures a
decision of the question in disagreement, and whose perfect justice
and impartiality cannot be gainsaid or doubted.

The tribunal is carved out of the body of the Senate and out of the
body of the House by their vote _viva_ _voce_. No man can sit upon
it from either branch without the choice, openly made, by a majority
of the body of which he is a member, that he shall go there. The
five judges who are chosen are from the court of last resort in this
country, men eminent for learning, selected for their places because
of the virtues and the capacities that fit them for this high
station. ... Mr. President, objection has been made to the
employment of the commission at all, to the creation of this
committee of five senators, five representatives, and five judges of
the Supreme Court, and the reasons for the objection have not been
distinctly stated. The reasons for the appointment I will dwell
upon briefly.

Sir, how has the count of the vote of every President and
Vice-President, from the time of George Washington and John Adams,
in 1789, to the present day, been made? Always and without
exception by tellers appointed by the two houses. This is without
exception, even in the much commented case of Mr. John Langdon, who,
before the government was in operation, upon the recommendation of
the constitutional convention, was appointed by the Senate its
President, for the sole purpose of opening and