How Did The Twelfth Amendment Change The Electoral College?

"…and if at that place be more than one who accept such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, and then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot 1 of them for President…"
— U.S. Constitution, Article 2, section 1, clause 3

/tiles/non-drove/i/i_origins_electoral_leslie_lc.xml Epitome courtesy of the Library of Congress The Electoral Commission comprised of House Members, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices investigated the disputed Balloter College ballots from the South after the 1876 presidential election. The Commission, seen here meeting past candle light in the Onetime Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol, awarded all the disputed ballots to Rutherford B. Hayes, who became President by a unmarried electoral vote.

The founders struggled for months to devise a way to select the President and Vice President. Gouverneur Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania, compared the Federal Constitutional Convention's debates on this event to the Greek ballsy The Odyssey. "When this article was under consideration in the National Convention it was observed, that every way of electing the principal magistrate of a powerful nation hitherto adopted is liable to objection," Morris recounted in an 1802 letter.

Ramble Framing

Various methods for selecting the executive were offered, reviewed, and discarded during the Constitutional Convention: legislative; direct; gubernatorial; balloter; and lottery. A decision resulted just late in the Convention, when the Committee of Particular presented executive election by special electors selected by the state legislatures. This compromise preserved states' rights, increased the independence of the executive branch, and avoided popular ballot. In this program, Congress plays a formal role in the election of the President and Vice President. While Members of Congress are expressly forbidden from being electors, the Constitution requires the Firm and Senate to count the Balloter Higher'due south ballots, and in the result of a tie, to select the President and Vice President, respectively.

The House Decides: 1801

The provisions for electing the President and Vice President have been among the most amended in the Constitution. Initially, electors voted for two individuals without differentiating between the ballot for President and Vice President. The winner of the largest bloc of votes, and so long equally it was a majority of all the votes cast, would win the presidency. The private with the second largest number of votes would become Vice President. In 1796, this meant that John Adams became President and Thomas Jefferson became Vice President despite opposing each other for the presidency.

The 1800 presidential election further tested the presidential selection system when Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the Republican candidates for President and Vice President, tied at 73 electoral ballots each. The Firm, under the Constitution, then chose between Jefferson and Burr for President. The Constitution mandates that House Members vote every bit a country delegation and that the winner must obtain a simple majority of the states. The House deadlocked at viii states for Jefferson, six for Burr, and ii tied. Later half dozen days of debate and 36 ballots, Jefferson won 10 state delegations in the Firm when the Burr supporters in the 2 tied states (Vermont and Maryland) filed bare ballots rather than support Jefferson.

The 12th Subpoena

After the experiences of the 1796 and 1800 elections, Congress passed, and the states ratified, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution. Added in time for the 1804 election, the subpoena stipulated that the electors would now bandage two votes: one for President and the other for Vice President. While states varied in how they selected presidential electors through the 19th century, electors today are uniformly popularly elected (rather than appointed) and pledged to support a given candidate.

The House Decides Again: 1825

Since the 12th Amendment, one other presidential election has come to the Business firm. In 1824, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won a plurality of the national pop vote and 99 votes in the Balloter College—32 short of a majority. John Quincy Adams was runner-upwards with 85, and Treasury Secretarial assistant William Crawford had 41. Speaker of the House Henry Clay had 37 and expected to use his influence in the House to win ballot. But the 12th Subpoena required the House to consider only the top-3 vote-getters when no one commands an overall majority. The House chose Adams over Jackson. And when Adams made Dirt Secretary of State, Jackson said the two had struck a corrupt bargain. "[T]he Judas of the W has closed the contract and will receive the xxx pieces of silvery . . . Was there ever witnessed such a bare faced abuse in any country earlier?" Jackson said.

Congress Decides: 1877

The contested 1876 presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York was the last to require congressional intervention. Tilden won the popular vote and the electoral count. But Republicans challenged the results in three Southern states, which submitted certificates of election for both candidates. While the Constitution requires the House and Senate to formally count the certificates of election in joint session, it is silent on what Congress should do to resolve disputes. In Jan 1877, Congress established the Federal Electoral Committee to investigate the disputed Electoral College ballots. The bipartisan committee, which included Representatives, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices, voted forth party lines to laurels all the contested ballots to Hayes—securing the presidency for him by a single electoral vote. The Commission's controversial results did non spark the violence in the post-Civil War South that some had feared largely because Republicans had struck a compromise with Southern Democrats to remove federal soldiers from the Southward and finish Reconstruction in the event of a Hayes victory.

See Electoral College Fast Facts and the Firm History Blog: Congress and the Case of the Faithless Elector for more information almost the procedure.

For Further Reading

Ackerman, Bruce. The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Academy Press, 2005.

Berns, Walter, ed. After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College, revised and enlarged edition. Washington: AEI Printing, 1992.

Ceaser, James. Presidential Choice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Academy Printing, 1979.

Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Rev. ed. four vols. New Haven and London: Yale University Printing, 1937.

Holt, Michael F. By I Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876. Lawrence, Kan: University of Kansas Press, 2008.

Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay. The Federalist Papers. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

Polakoff, Keith Ian. The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.

Rawle, William. A View of the Constitution of the United States of America. 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1829. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.

Jared Sparks, ed. The Life of Gouverneur Morris, with Selections from His Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers. 3 vols. Boston, 1832.

Source: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Electoral-College/

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