# Twentieth Amendment (Ratified January 23, 1933) The **Twentieth Amendment** moved the presidential and vice-presidential terms to end at **noon on January 20** and congressional terms to end at **noon on January 3**, compressing the four-month lame-duck gap that had existed since 1789. It is the reason a new Congress is seated *before* the electoral votes are counted — the incoming House and Senate, not the outgoing ones, sit in the January 6 joint session. Three provisions do structural work beyond the calendar. **§ 3** covers the case where the President-elect has died or no President has been chosen by January 20 — the Vice President-elect acts as President, which is the endpoint of a deadlocked [[Contingent Election]]. **§ 4** authorizes Congress to legislate for the death of a candidate during a contingent election, a power it has never exercised. And § 2 fixes January 3 as the date Congress convenes unless it appoints a different day by law. This is a stub — expand with the Norris drafting history, the lame-duck sessions the amendment was meant to end, and the unlegislated § 4 gap. ## See Also - [[Electoral College Process Flow]] - [[Contingent Election]] - [[Twelfth Amendment]] - [[Constitution]]