“Consider the grand and simple ceremonial by which the third act is to be completed. On the day fixed by law the two Houses of Congress are assembled. The President of the Senate, who, by the Constitution, has been made the custodian of the sealed certificates from all the electoral colleges, takes his place. The Constitution requires a ‘person’ and a ‘presence.’ That ‘person’ is the President of the Senate; and that ‘presence’ is the ‘presence’ of the two Houses. Then two things are to be _done_. The certificates are to be opened, and the votes are to be counted. These are not legislative acts, but clearly and plainly executive acts. I challenge any man to find anywhere an accepted definition of an executive act that does not include both these. They can not be tortured into a meaning that will carry them beyond the boundaries of executive action. And one of these acts the President of the Senate is peremptorily ordered to perform. The Constitution commands him to ‘open all the certificates.’ Certificates of what? Certificates of the votes of the electoral colleges. Not any certificates that any body may choose to send, but certificates of electors appointed by the States. The President of the Senate is presumed to know what are the States in the Union, who are their officers, and, when he opens the certificates, he learns from the official record who have been appointed electors, and he finds their votes. “The Constitution contemplated the President of the Senate as the Vice-President of the United States, the elect of all the people. And to him is confided the great trust, the custodianship of the only official record of the election of President. What is it to ‘open the certificates’? It would be a narrow and inadequate view of that word to say that it means only the breaking of the seals. To open an envelope is not to ‘open the certificates.’ The certificate is not the paper on which the record is made; it is the record itself. To open the certificates is not a physical but an intellectual act. It is to make patent the record; to publish it. When that is done the election of President and Vice-President is published. But one thing remains to be done; and here the language of the Constitution changes from the active to the passive voice, from the personal to the impersonal. To the trusted custodian of the votes succeeds the impersonality of arithmetic; the votes have been made known; there remains only the command of the Constitution: ‘They shall be counted’—that is, the numbers shall be added up. “No further act is required. The Constitution itself declares the result: “‘The person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed.’