When Does the House of Representatives Elect the President

"…and if there be more than than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the Business firm of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Election ane of them for President…"
— U.S. Constitution, Article II, section one, clause three

/tiles/not-drove/i/i_origins_electoral_leslie_lc.xml Image courtesy of the Library of Congress The Electoral Committee comprised of House Members, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices investigated the disputed Electoral Higher ballots from the South after the 1876 presidential election. The Commission, seen here coming together past candle light in the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol, awarded all the disputed ballots to Rutherford B. Hayes, who became President past a unmarried electoral vote.

The founders struggled for months to devise a manner to select the President and Vice President. Gouverneur Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania, compared the Federal Constitutional Convention'south debates on this upshot to the Greek epic The Odyssey. "When this article was under consideration in the National Convention information technology 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.

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 Committee of Particular presented executive election by special electors selected past the state legislatures. This compromise preserved states' rights, increased the independence of the executive branch, and avoided pop election. 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 House and Senate to count the Electoral College'southward 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 have been amongst 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, so long as information technology was a majority of all the votes bandage, 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 ballot further tested the presidential selection arrangement 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 House Members vote as a country delegation and that the winner must obtain a simple majority of the states. The Firm deadlocked at 8 states for Jefferson, half dozen for Burr, and two tied. After 6 days of debate and 36 ballots, Jefferson won 10 country delegations in the House when the Burr supporters in the ii tied states (Vermont and Maryland) filed blank ballots rather than back up Jefferson.

The 12th Amendment

Subsequently 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 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 support a given candidate.

The House Decides Once again: 1825

Since the twelfth Amendment, 1 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 Electoral Higher—32 brusk of a majority. John Quincy Adams was runner-up with 85, and Treasury Secretarial assistant William Crawford had 41. Speaker of the House Henry Dirt had 37 and expected to use his influence in the Firm to win ballot. But the twelfth Amendment required the Firm to consider only the tiptop-3 vote-getters when no one commands an overall majority. The House chose Adams over Jackson. And when Adams made Clay Secretary of State, Jackson said the two had struck a corrupt deal. "[T]he Judas of the Westward has closed the contract and volition receive the xxx pieces of silver . . . Was there e'er witnessed such a bare faced corruption in any country before?" 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 crave congressional intervention. Tilden won the popular vote and the electoral count. But Republicans challenged the results in three Southern states, which submitted certificates of ballot for both candidates. While the Constitution requires the House and Senate to formally count the certificates of election in articulation session, it is silent on what Congress should do to resolve disputes. In January 1877, Congress established the Federal Balloter Commission to investigate the disputed Electoral College ballots. The bipartisan commission, which included Representatives, Senators, and Supreme Courtroom Justices, voted along party lines to award all the contested ballots to Hayes—securing the presidency for him by a unmarried electoral vote. The Commission'south controversial results did non spark the violence in the post-Ceremonious State of war South that some had feared largely because Republicans had struck a compromise with Southern Democrats to remove federal soldiers from the South and finish Reconstruction in the event of a Hayes victory.

Meet Electoral College Fast Facts and the Business firm History Web log: Congress and the Instance of the Faithless Elector for more information near the process.

For Further Reading

Ackerman, Bruce. The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University 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 Selection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Rev. ed. 4 vols. New Haven and London: Yale Academy Press, 1937.

Holt, Michael F. By Ane 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 Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Academy Press, 1973.

Rawle, William. A View of the Constitution of the Us of America. 2nd 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.

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

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