Continuity of the state

Why this exists

Amendment I gives the President the office for life and puts them beyond removal by any person, vote, assembly, court, senate or petition. Amendment III makes the Vice President the successor. The Vice Presidency is currently vacant.

So as things stand, if the President were to die tomorrow the Union would have no head of state and no way to acquire one, because every mechanism it has runs through a vote that somebody has to call. That is a hole, and it is worth naming rather than hoping about.

The President's presence is recorded whenever they sign in. If it lapses for more than 180 days while the Vice Presidency is vacant, the registry publishes a Vice Presidential election on its own initiative.

Why it is not a removal

• It fills a vacancy in a different office. The President remains President throughout, holds the office for life, and votes in the very election it opens with the twenty percent Amendment II gives them.
• Amendment III says the Vice President is elected by a vote of all citizens and is silent on who may call that vote. Reading a power to block it into that silence would be exactly the reading Amendment V voids.
• Amendment V requires that a matter belonging to the people be decided by the people. A vacancy nobody is able to call an election about is that Amendment defeated by inaction, which makes it no less defeated.

A President who is simply away signs in, and the counter resets.