If House of Representatives Need to Decide Election
"…and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and accept an equal Number of Votes, so the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse past Ballot ane of them for President…"
— U.S. Constitution, Article Ii, section 1, clause 3
/tiles/non-collection/i/i_origins_electoral_leslie_lc.xml Image courtesy of the Library of Congress The Electoral Commission comprised of Firm Members, Senators, and Supreme Courtroom Justices investigated the disputed Electoral College ballots from the South after the 1876 presidential election. The Committee, seen here meeting past candle calorie-free in the Old Supreme Court Bedchamber in the Capitol, awarded all the disputed ballots to Rutherford B. Hayes, who became President by a single electoral vote.
The founders struggled for months to devise a manner to select the President and Vice President. Gouverneur Morris, a consul from Pennsylvania, compared the Federal Ramble Convention's debates on this issue to the Greek epic The Odyssey. "When this article was under consideration in the National Convention it was observed, that every mode of electing the chief magistrate of a powerful nation hitherto adopted is liable to objection," Morris recounted in an 1802 letter of the alphabet.
Constitutional Framing
Various methods for selecting the executive were offered, reviewed, and discarded during the Constitutional Convention: legislative; direct; gubernatorial; electoral; and lottery. A decision resulted merely late in the Convention, when the Commission of Detail presented executive ballot by special electors selected by the state legislatures. This compromise preserved states' rights, increased the independence of the executive branch, and avoided pop ballot. 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's ballots, and in the consequence of a tie, to select the President and Vice President, respectively.
The Business firm Decides: 1801
The provisions for electing the President and Vice President take been amid the nigh 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, so long every bit it was a majority of all the votes cast, would win the presidency. The private with the second largest number of votes would get 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 Business firm, under the Constitution, then chose between Jefferson and Burr for President. The Constitution mandates that Business firm Members vote as a land delegation and that the winner must obtain a simple majority of the states. The Business firm deadlocked at viii states for Jefferson, vi for Burr, and two tied. After six days of contend 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 u.s.a. ratified, the 12th Subpoena to the Constitution. Added in fourth dimension for the 1804 election, the amendment stipulated that the electors would now cast 2 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 Once again: 1825
Since the 12th Amendment, one other presidential election has come up to the Firm. In 1824, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won a plurality of the national popular vote and 99 votes in the Balloter College—32 short of a majority. John Quincy Adams was runner-upward with 85, and Treasury Secretary William Crawford had 41. Speaker of the Firm Henry Clay had 37 and expected to utilize his influence in the House to win election. But the 12th Amendment required the House to consider just the top-three vote-getters when no one commands an overall majority. The Firm chose Adams over Jackson. And when Adams made Clay Secretarial assistant of State, Jackson said the 2 had struck a decadent bargain. "[T]he Judas of the Due west has closed the contract and volition receive the thirty pieces of silver . . . Was there ever witnessed such a bare faced corruption in any state before?" Jackson said.
Congress Decides: 1877
The contested 1876 presidential election betwixt Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York was the concluding to require congressional intervention. Tilden won the pop vote and the electoral count. Simply 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 practice to resolve disputes. In Jan 1877, Congress established the Federal Electoral Commission to investigate the disputed Electoral Higher ballots. The bipartisan commission, which included Representatives, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices, voted forth party lines to accolade all the contested ballots to Hayes—securing the presidency for him by a single balloter vote. The Commission's controversial results did not spark the violence in the mail service-Ceremonious War South that some had feared largely because Republicans had struck a compromise with Southern Democrats to remove federal soldiers from the South and end 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 about the procedure.
For Further Reading
Ackerman, Bruce. The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Republic. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Academy Press, 2005.
Berns, Walter, ed. Later on the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral Higher, revised and enlarged edition. Washington: AEI Printing, 1992.
Ceaser, James. Presidential Pick. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Printing, 1979.
Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Rev. ed. iv vols. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1937.
Holt, Michael F. Past One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876. Lawrence, Kan: Academy 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 Ballot of 1876 and the Stop 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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