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 counting these votes.  He did it, as did every successor to him, under the motion and authority of the two houses of Congress, who appointed their own agents, called tellers to conduct the count, and whose count, being reported to him, was by him declared.

From 1793 to 1865 the count of votes was conducted under concurrent resolutions of the two houses, appointing their respective committees to join “in ascertaining and reporting a mode of examining the votes for President and Vice-President.”

The respective committees reported resolutions fixing the time and place for the assembling of the two houses, and appointing tellers to conduct the examination on the part of each house respectively.