We Have to Ensure No One Like Him Never Again Runs for President

The Twelfth Amendment cannot exist understood outside of the Electoral College, which was set out in the 1787 Constitution as the machinery past which Americans select their presidents.

There were four crucial aspects of that mechanism. The get-go was that the electors would vote for 2 persons (at least one of whom had to exist from outside the elector'due south home state). The second was that the electors did not differentiate between the two persons as potential presidents or vice presidents. Electors should simply vote for the 2 persons they viewed equally near qualified to become president. The person gaining the well-nigh votes (if a bulk) would go president. The runner-up (presumably the second-nearly-qualified person) would become vice president. The third assumption was that the electors—at least following the completely predictable (and unanimous) election of George Washington as our first president—would quite often fail to reach majority blessing of a specific candidate; in that case, according to the original Constitution, the decision would be made by the Firm of Representatives, with each state's delegation having one vote. The Constitution likewise provided that the House would cull in example of a tie vote between two candidates each of whom had received a majority of votes. Finally, because the Constitution, until amended in 1933, provided that newly elected representatives would meet for the first time only a total yr subsequently election, the option would be made past a House that would likely include a number of "lame-ducks," including representatives who had been defeated in the recent elections. All of these features were on display in 1801.

The election of 1800 was one of the nigh important in American history and, arguably, even in world history, for it represented the start time that an incumbent leader was defeated in an ballot. The incumbent was John Adams, who had been Washington'south Vice President for two terms and was then elected in his own right in 1796. His Vice President was Thomas Jefferson. This result reflects the desire of the Framers of 1787 to avoid evolution of political parties and focus indeed on some notion of "all-time men." Any such hopes were apace frustrated, notwithstanding. Even by 1796, Adams was associated with the Federalist Political party, while Jefferson was supported by the Autonomous-Republican Party. They ran against each other again in 1800, and both Adams and Jefferson had "running mates," Charles Cotesworth Pinckney from Southward Carolina in the example of Adams (and the Federalist Political party) and Aaron Burr of New York, for Jefferson. The Federalist Party electors figured out that it was important not to cast both of their votes for Adams and Pinckney, for that would create a tie and, if both got a majority of the vote, throw the election into the House; the Democratic-Republican electors were not and so sagacious. They dutifully cast both of their votes for their party'south champions, creating a tie bulk vote that forced the Business firm to cull between Jefferson and Burr.

The tie vote exposed deep problems in the 1787 arrangement. The i-country/ane-vote rule had the applied outcome of giving Delaware's sole Representative Bayard, an ardent Federalist, the same voting ability as Virginia, and so the largest state (and dwelling house, of course, of Jefferson).  And what if a state had an fifty-fifty number of representatives who split evening on their option? In that case, the country's vote was non cast at all. Given that there were 16 states in the Union in 1801, nine delegations had to agree on their choice. Only on the 36th ballot did Bayard agree to vote for Jefferson and to pause the deadlock (by which time at to the lowest degree 2 Jeffersonian governors, from Pennsylvania and Virginia, were threatening to call out their state militias and club them to march on the new national capitol in Washington, D.C.). Jefferson was peacefully inaugurated on March 4, and the all-important precedent was prepare for peaceful transfer of ability. Notwithstanding the original electoral higher system was exposed every bit problematic, and at that place was widespread agreement that something had to be washed. Only what?

1 possibility, evidently, was to adopt the proposition of Pennsylvania'south James Wilson at the Philadelphia Convention that presidents exist elected by a national pop vote. That was rejected in 1787 and did non go a serious possibility in the early on 19th century (nor, of course, has it been adopted since and so). Still, it had go clear that political parties had become a characteristic of American politics and that the balloter higher system should be modified to reflect this. How was this achieved?

The answer is quite simple: electors would in the futurity proceed to cast two votes (and one of them, as before, would have to be for a not-native of the elector's habitation state), but, crucially, one of the ii votes would explicitly be to make full the presidency, while the other designated who should become vice president. Never once again could  presidential candidates and their running mates confront the embarrassing kind of tie vote that forced the Firm to choose between Jefferson and Burr. The 12th Amendment was proposed past the Eighth Congress on December 9, 1803 and submitted to united states three days later. In that location being seventeen states in the Marriage at that time, 13 had to ratify it. Secretarial assistant of Country James Madison alleged that the Subpoena had been added to the Constitution on September 25, 1804, at which time fourteen of the seventeen states had ratified it. Delaware, Connecticut, and Massachusetts had rejected it (though Massachusetts in fact ratified it in 1961!). The election of 1804 and all subsequent elections were carried out under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment.

This splitting of the presidency and vice-presidency did not get uncontested. At least two senators expressed their reservations nigh the quality of vice presidential candidates. Rather than asking of a candidate "Is he capable? Is he honest?", Delaware's Senator White suggested that the question instead would be "Can he past his name, by his connections, by his wealth, by his local state of affairs, by his influence, or his intrigues, best promote the election of a President?" Senator Tracy of Connecticut agreed: "Will the ambitious, aspiring candidate for the Presidency, will his friends and favorites promote the election of a human being of talents, probity and popularity for Vice President, and who may prove his rival? No! They will seek a man of moderate talents." I might well ask how oft such fears accept been realized in our history.

In addition to its implicit recognition of the existence of political parties, the Subpoena fabricated another important alter: The original Constitution provided that the failure of any candidate to achieve a majority would crave the House to choose equally president one of the 5 top-ranking candidates, with the person coming in 2d to serve as vice-president unless there was necktie for second place, in which case the Senate would choose between them. At present, however, the Firm would choose only the President from the superlative three choices of the electors; the Senate would now cull the Vice President from the elevation two choices of the electors for that specific office. Among other things, this guaranteed, in consequence, that in that location would always be a vice president, who could presumably accept the reins of the presidency should the Business firm be hopelessly divided among the height three candidates for the presidency.

This attribute of the Twelfth Subpoena became crucial in 1824, the only time since 1800 that the House in fact selected the president equally the result of the inability of whatsoever of the presidential candidates to achieve a majority of electoral votes. Andrew Jackson had won 99, John Quincy Adams 84, William Crawford 41, and Henry Clay 37. Under the original Constitution, the Business firm would take been able to choose among all 4, and one might plausibly believe that Clay might accept prevailed. Under the Twelfth Amendment, notwithstanding, Dirt was out of the running, and the selection was reduced to Jackson, Adams, and Crawford.

Although no election since 1824 has been decided in the House of Representatives, a shift of relatively few votes in a pocket-size number of key states might well take led to that result in 1948, 1968, and 2000. What this means, practically speaking, is that in contemporary America, Wyoming, the smallest state with under 600,000 people, would have the same say in choosing a new president as California, with a population nearly 70 times that of Wyoming. As much to the indicate, perhaps, information technology is quite easy to imagine the pop vote winner losing to the runner-up in part because gerrymandered delegations in the Firm of Representatives voted for their political party'due south favorite rather than the person who really received a majority of their state's popular vote.

Because of the potential disconnect between the pop vote and the upshot of the electoral vote (or potential vote in the House), there accept been recurrent proposals merely to elect the president by popular vote. If, though, 1 shares any of White'due south or Tracy'due south concerns about the vice presidency, popular election would non necessarily assuage them if one were forced to vote for the president and vice-president every bit a single ticket. (Political scientists have determined that voters rarely bandage their vote on the basis of the vice presidential candidate.)

One possible reform is to prefer the practice in many states and "unbundle" the election of our two top executive branch officials. That is, just as in many states candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run entirely carve up campaigns, meaning that sometimes the governor is from i party and the lieutenant governor from some other, one could imagine separate elections for the president and vice president. Even within the electoral college, we could imagine voting for two slates of electors, i charged with choosing the president, the other picking the vice president. Well-nigh of the fourth dimension, of course, voters would selection the slates of the same political party. Simply 1 can imagine that at least on occasion voters might be so put off past the vice presidential candidate that they would "divide" their ticket. That very possibility might serve to subject presidential candidates more than is now the case, especially considering candidates who win the presidential nomination today basically exercise unlimited discretion in choosing their running mates. This was not the case before the 20th century, when political conventions often exercised real choice in picking both candidates.

In any event, the Twelfth Amendment, though probably unknown to virtually Americans, has non only a fascinating history simply, much more chiefly, has the chapters to play a cardinal role should we ever become a multi-political party arrangement (as was the case in 1948 and 1968) in which enough candidates go electoral votes to deprive anyone of a majority and thus force election by the House. Perhaps this helps to explain why a popular television program, "Veep," concluded its 4th flavour past setting up a tie vote between the title figure, who had succeeded to the presidency and was now running for election, and the other party'due south candidate. Amid other possibilities explored in the terminal v minutes as the final show concluded, was that her vice-presidential running mate (who could be chosen past the Senate) might in fact end up every bit President should the House be unable to decide between the 2 somewhat unpopular and flawed presidential candidates! (Had the scriptwriters really wished to teach a civics lesson, they could have introduced a distinguished "contained" candidate who received millions of pop votes and, crucially, the electoral vote of at least one country. That would have allowed the House to cull among the top 3.) And then i of the most esoteric features of the Constitution made its own contribution to pop culture—and equitably so.

Sanford Five. Levinson W. St. John Garwood and West. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Constabulary, University of Texas Police School and Professor of Government, University of Texas

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Source: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-xii/interps/171

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