Palin: VP 'In Charge of United States Senate'

Sarah Palin on the Vice-President's official duties.

A Vice-President has a really great job, because not only not only are they there to support the President's agenda. They are like the team member, the teammate to that President. But also, they're in charge of the United States Senate.

The Vice-President's only role in the Senate is as the tiebreaking vote and counting electoral ballots. The later is a formality. It is disgraceful that Palin doesn't even know the duties of the job she is running for.

The framers also devoted scant attention to the vice president's duties, providing only that he "shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be evenly divided" (Article I, section 3). In practice, the number of times vice presidents have exercised this right has varied greatly. John Adams holds the record at 29 votes, followed closely by John C. Calhoun with 28. Since the 1870s, however, no vice president has cast as many as 10 tie-breaking votes. While vice presidents have used their votes chiefly on legislative issues, they have also broken ties on the election of Senate officers, as well as on the appointment of committees in 1881 when the parties were evenly represented in the Senate.

The vice president's other constitutionally mandated duty was to receive from the states the tally of electoral ballots cast for president and vice president and to open the certificates "in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives," so that the total votes could be counted (Article II, section 1). Only a few happy vice presidents — John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, and George Bush — had the pleasure of announcing their own election as president. Many more were chagrined to announce the choice of some rival for the office.