Why Does the House Need to Voe Again?
"…and if at that place be more than i who accept such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President…"
— U.Due south. Constitution, Commodity Two, department one, clause three
/tiles/not-drove/i/i_origins_electoral_leslie_lc.xml Image courtesy of the Library of Congress The Electoral Commission comprised of House Members, Senators, and Supreme Courtroom Justices investigated the disputed Electoral Higher ballots from the South afterwards the 1876 presidential election. The Commission, seen here meeting by candle light in the Former Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol, awarded all the disputed ballots to Rutherford B. Hayes, who became President past a single balloter vote.
The founders struggled for months to devise a way to select the President and Vice President. Gouverneur Morris, a consul from Pennsylvania, compared the Federal Constitutional Convention's debates on this issue to the Greek ballsy The Odyssey. "When this commodity was under consideration in the National Convention it was observed, that every mode of electing the principal magistrate of a powerful nation hitherto adopted is liable to objection," Morris recounted in an 1802 letter.
Constitutional Framing
Various methods for selecting the executive were offered, reviewed, and discarded during the Constitutional Convention: legislative; directly; gubernatorial; electoral; and lottery. A decision resulted merely late in the Convention, when the Committee of Detail presented executive ballot by special electors selected by the state legislatures. This compromise preserved states' rights, increased the independence of the executive co-operative, and avoided pop election. In this plan, 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 House and Senate to count the Electoral College'due south ballots, and in the event of a tie, to select the President and Vice President, respectively.
The House Decides: 1801
The provisions for electing the President and Vice President take been among the most amended in the Constitution. Initially, electors voted for two individuals without differentiating betwixt the ballot for President and Vice President. The winner of the largest bloc of votes, then long every bit it was a majority of all the votes cast, would win the presidency. The individual with the 2d largest number of votes would go 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 House, under the Constitution, then chose between Jefferson and Burr for President. The Constitution mandates that Business firm Members vote as a state delegation and that the winner must obtain a elementary majority of united states. The House deadlocked at viii states for Jefferson, six for Burr, and two tied. Later on six days of debate and 36 ballots, Jefferson won x state delegations in the House when the Burr supporters in the two tied states (Vermont and Maryland) filed blank ballots rather than support Jefferson.
The 12th Amendment
After the experiences of the 1796 and 1800 elections, Congress passed, and the states ratified, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution. Added in fourth dimension for the 1804 election, the amendment stipulated that the electors would now cast 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 back up 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 popular vote and 99 votes in the Electoral College—32 short of a majority. John Quincy Adams was runner-up with 85, and Treasury Secretary William Crawford had 41. Speaker of the House Henry Clay had 37 and expected to use his influence in the House to win election. But the 12th Subpoena required the House to consider merely the top-three vote-getters when no ane commands an overall majority. The Business firm chose Adams over Jackson. And when Adams fabricated Clay Secretarial assistant of State, Jackson said the two had struck a corrupt bargain. "[T]he Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver . . . Was in that location e'er witnessed such a blank faced corruption 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 pop vote and the electoral count. But Republicans challenged the results in 3 Southern states, which submitted certificates of election for both candidates. While the Constitution requires the House and Senate to formally count the certificates of ballot in joint session, it is silent on what Congress should practice to resolve disputes. In January 1877, Congress established the Federal Electoral Commission to investigate the disputed Electoral College ballots. The bipartisan commission, which included Representatives, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices, voted forth party lines to award all the contested ballots to Hayes—securing the presidency for him by a single electoral vote. The Committee'due south controversial results did non spark the violence in the mail service-Civil War Due south that some had feared largely because Republicans had struck a compromise with Southern Democrats to remove federal soldiers from the South and cease Reconstruction in the outcome of a Hayes victory.
See Electoral College Fast Facts and the House History Blog: Congress and the Instance of the Faithless Elector for more information nearly the procedure.
For Farther Reading
Ackerman, Bruce. The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Ascension of Presidential Democracy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Berns, Walter, ed. After the People Vote: A Guide to the Balloter Higher, revised and enlarged edition. Washington: AEI Press, 1992.
Ceaser, James. Presidential Selection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Academy Press, 1979.
Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Rev. ed. four vols. New Haven and London: Yale Academy Press, 1937.
Holt, Michael F. By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Ballot 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 Terminate of Reconstruction. Billy Rouge: Louisiana State University Printing, 1973.
Rawle, William. A View of the Constitution of the U.s.a.. 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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