[13], One last order of business for the amendment was to deal with the possibility that the House would fail to choose a president by March 4. In both sets of circumstances, each state delegation had one (en bloc) vote. In 1800, representatives debated a national plan to award electoral votes based on popular vote victories by congressional district. [31][32] Unlike the BayhCeller amendment, with its 40% threshold for election, these proposals do not require a candidate to achieve a certain percentage of votes to be elected. It replaced the Mechanism Taking the form of an interstate compact, the agreement would go into effect among participating states only after they collectively represent an absolute majority of votes (currently at least 270) in the Electoral College. That kind of system or that kind of support I should say just isn't there for very many issues. Determination of controversy as to appointment of electors. The first formulation of the amendment had the five highest electoral vote earners on the ballot in the House if no one candidate had a majority of the electoral votes. Section 3 of the 20th Amendment states that the Vice President-elect will act as President until such a time as a President has qualified. "[8] Between 1813 and 1824 the Senate approved amendments for the district plan four different times, and the House approved a separate amendment in 1820. George Washington's decision not to seek a third term and the emergence of partisan political activity exposed problems with the original procedure. However, Adams bitter ideological adversary,Thomas Jeffersonan avowedAnti-Federalistand member of theDemocratic-Republican Party, having gotten the second-most electoral votes, was elected vice president under the Electoral College system. In essence, the states balanced the power of the people. After A Disrupted Census, Congress Tries Again To Extend Deadlines For Results. Twelfth Amendment: Changes to the Electoral College | FindLaw . [11], Federalist senators argued for retaining the original procedure for the Electoral College. Senator DeWitt Clinton of New York began discussions on a proposed amendment in the U.S. Congress. In 1979, it was defeated by a Senate filibuster. When voting, the electors did not designate which of the two candidates they had voted for was to be vice president. Frequently Asked Questions | National Archives But census experts say metrics at a more detailed level are needed because the quality of the count can vary greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood. 1 For additional information on contemporary operation of the electoral college system, consult CRS Report RL32611, The Electoral College: How It Works in Contemporary Presidential Elections, by Thomas H. Neale. [22] Some legal scholars propose the contention above would inadequately consider the opportunity it affords for one to serve as president more than two terms plus "[acting] as President, for more than two years," resulting in a violation of the Twenty-second Amendment. The Twelfth Amendment requires a person to receive a majority of the electoral votes for vice president for that person to be elected vice president by the Electoral College. Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution The Supreme Court could end affirmative action. Here's - POLITICO The Trump administration's failed push for a citizenship question may also have further discouraged households with immigrants and people of color from getting counted. Failure of certificates of electors to reach President of the Senate or Archivist of the United States; demand on State for certificate. This prohibition was designed to keep electors from voting for two "favorite sons" of their respective states. None of the amendments managed to pass both houses. Since then, only in the tumultuous 1824 election has the House of Representatives been required to hold a contingent election to choose the president. Given the technical limitations of 18th-century communications, DemocraticRepublican electors in each state were left to assume that an elector in some other state was the one responsible for casting the one abstention necessary to ensure the election of Burr to the vice presidency. It's time to abolish the Electoral College | Brookings Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. There's also a question about money: Would Congress be willing to fund another head count shortly after what's estimated to be the most costly census in U.S. history at $15.6 billion? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/can-the-electoral-college-system-be-changed, Rwanda builds new national identity 25 years after genocide. [24] However, the proposal was never considered again and died when the 91st Congress ended on January 3, 1971. Abolishing The Electoral College Would Be More Complicated Than - NPR Consequently, a contingent presidential election was held in the House of Representatives. Many members of the constitutional convention assumed states would choose electors by district instead of at large. On September 8, 1970, the Senate commenced openly debating the proposal,[22] and the proposal was quickly filibustered. The Census Bureau is conducting its Post-Enumeration Survey to estimate how many people may have been missed as well as rates of overcounting and undercounting among racial and ethnic groups. The 12th Amendment requires that each elector cast one vote specifically for president and one vote specifically for vice president, rather than two votes for president. In that same election, no candidate for vice president secured an electoral majority as the Democratic electors from Virginia refused to vote for Democratic vice presidential nominee, Richard Mentor Johnson, due to his relationship with a former slave, and instead cast their votes for William Smith. The U.S. Census Bureau's acting director, Ron Jarmin, reported the new state population counts at a virtual news conference. Texas has gained two more votes in Congress and the Electoral College for the next decade, while Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gained one seat, based on the first set of results from the 2020 census, released Monday. Whichever candidate received the second greatest number of votes for president became vice president. The Twelfth Amendment requires the Senate to choose between the candidates with the "two highest numbers" of electoral votes. [a], The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. In the House, each state delegation would cast one vote, with a candidate needing the votes of a majority of delegations to be elected president. Neither Burr nor Jefferson was able to win on the first 35 ballots. The Senate in 1975 reduced the required vote for cloture from two-thirds of those voting (67 votes) to three-fifths (60 votes). Legal Provisions Relevant to the Electoral College Process The process continued in New York on February 15 when Representative Benjamin Walker of New York proposed the designation and district election amendments to the House. [25] This constitutional ambiguity allowed for speculation in 2020 about whether twice-elected former president Barack Obama was eligible to be vice president.[26]. Alabama and Ohio are asking the federal courts to force the bureau to put out this data by the end of July so they can meet their state redistricting deadlines. . The winner take all systems versus what kind of the framers had put it in mind. If enough states that agreed to such a pact that it got up to that 270 electoral college vote number, then you could theoretically have the result of a national popular vote election but keep the Electoral College system intact. In 2009, the Legislature removed the . The pandemic and Trump officials' last-minute changes to the schedule have heightened concerns about how well certain groups were counted, especially historically undercounted groups who are less likely to participate in the census unless they receive in-person visits from door knockers. I recently spoke with NPR reporter Miles Parks who joined us from Washington D.C. to talk about the electoral college and whether it could be changed. (Records of the National Archives) The committee's proposal gave each state as many electors as it had Representatives and Senators in Congress. In March 1801, just weeks after the election of 1800 had been resolved, the state legislature of New York proposed two constitutional amendments similar to what would become the 12th Amendment. The first would be changing the constitution, which as we know, it is very very difficult to do. According to nj.com, two crowds gathered in protest on each side of the road. If even just one state, say California, suddenly turned red in 20 or 30 years, you can't really see that happening but if it were to happen, it would change the way this debate looked for both political parties. The 12th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, and 25th Amendments all changed the way voting works in the United States. The amendment did not change the way in whichelectoral vote tiesor lack of majority are handled: theHouse of Representativeschooses the president, while theSenatechooses the vice president. The presidential election of 1968 resulted in Richard Nixon receiving And that is really one of the biggest arguments for people who are in favor of the electoral college system, is that it keeps kind of middle America and smaller population areas in play. The Electoral College: Options for Change and 117th Congress Proposals Lastly in the 2020 election, Joe Biden won Maine's 1st district while Donald Trump won Maine's 2nd district; and Donald Trump won Nebraska's 1st and 3rd districts, while Joe Biden won Nebraska's 2nd district.[7]. Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President; officers eligible to act. In addition, the electors may not vote for both candidates of a presidential ticket, thus ensuring that candidates of different political parties would never be elected president and vice president. Midterms 2022: New Jersey school board elections - Deseret News United States Electoral College - Wikipedia [14], It seemed clear all along that the DemocraticRepublican dominance would render this a no-contest and the DemocraticRepublicans were just waiting for all their votes to be present, but the Federalists had one last defense. On its first day, the 8th Congress considered the designation amendment. But those things ebb and flow. H.J.Res.14 - Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United Each elector of the Electoral College was allowed to vote for any two candidates, at least one of whom was not a resident of the electors home state. According to the National Archives, there have been more proposed constitutional amendments to change the Electoral College than any other topic (700 proposals in Congress in the last 200 years! Rather than have the office of the president balanced between the states and the people, Adams felt designation of president and vice president would tip that scale in favor of the people. Instead, the House elected Adams on the first ballot with thirteen states, followed by Jackson with seven and Crawford with four. Right. Extra time was needed, the bureau argued, to sort through a high volume of duplicate and incomplete responses. However, Nixon had received only 511,944 more popular votes than Humphrey, 43.5% to 42.9%, less than 1% of the national total. The amendment requires that the electors of the Electoral College cast separate votes for president and vice president, rather than two votes for president. Because right now it seems that they really only care about a very small handful of battleground states. Newspapers like The New York Times saw President Carter's proposal at that time as "a modest surprise" because of the indication of Carter that he would be interested in only eliminating the electors but retaining the electoral vote system in a modified form. Each presidential election since has been conducted under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment. It replaced the procedure provided in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, by which the Electoral College originally functioned. ", "BRIA 8 4 a The Election of 1824-25: When the House Chose the PresidentConstitutional Rights Foundation", "The Election of 1824 Was Decided in the House of Representatives", "Student Activity: Presidential Campaign of 1948", "American Experience: George Wallace1968 Campaign", Obscure Texas Case Offers Peek Into Role Of Court Nominee, CRS Annotated Constitution: Twelfth Amendment, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Twelfth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution&oldid=1159262166, This page was last edited on 9 June 2023, at 07:44. On January 6, 1797, Federalist Representative William L. Smith of South Carolina responded to the 1796 result by presenting a resolution on the floor of the House of Representatives for an amendment to the Constitution requiring each elector to cast one vote for president and another for vice president. [28], The Senate took up the debate on a constitutional amendment in 1977. In creating the Electoral College system, the Framers specifically sought to eliminate the potentially divisive influence of partisan politics from the electoral process. Cheney had grown up in Wyoming, had represented it in Congress and had continuously maintained a residence[clarification needed] in the state during his tenure at Halliburton. [28] Clay had endorsed Adams for the presidency, which carried additional weight because Clay was the Speaker of the House. Twelfth Amendment: Changes to the Electoral College By FindLaw Staff | Legally reviewed by Laura Temme, Esq. As the House could consider only the top three candidates, Clay was eliminated, while Crawford's poor health following a stroke and heart attack made his election by the House unlikely. On advocate for the amendments, James Madison, wrote in 1823 that the district plan "was mostly, if not exclusively, in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted. Districts within a state would vote for only one elector, allowing states to split their votes between different candidates. In 48 states and Washington, D.C., the winner gets all the electoral votes for that state. ThoughtCo, Aug. 3, 2021, thoughtco.com/12th-amendment-4176911. Electoral College | USAGov Adams subsequently appointed Clay as his Secretary of State, to which Jackson and his supporters responded by accusing the pair of making a "corrupt bargain". By September 25, 1804, fourteen states had ratified it and James Madison declared that the 12th Amendment had become a part of the Constitution. As this contingent election process in the House drug on, the people, thinking they had elected Jefferson, became increasingly unhappy with the Electoral College system. If no candidate for president has a majority of the total votes, the House of Representatives, voting by states and with the same quorum requirements as under the original procedure, chooses the president. The first four presidential elections were conducted under these rules. The Electoral College consists of 538 members, one for each U.S. s enator and r epresentative, and three . President Trump, who used to be in favor of a national vote system, has now switched teams and is in favor of the Electoral College. A candidate was required to receive an absolute majority, more than half of the total number of states, in order to be chosen as president. The institution has been criticized since its establishment and a number of efforts have been made to reform the way it works or abolish it altogether. 1-86-NARA-NARA or 1-866-272-6272, Summary: State Laws Regarding Presidential Electors, Get Presidential Election Information for My State, What Congress Does in the Electoral College, Historical Electoral College Facts and Results, National Association of State Election Officials, National Association of Secretaries of State, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Archives and Records Administration. Tracy claimed the original procedure was formulated to give the small states a chance to elect the vice president, who would be a check on the president's powers. People vote at a polling site in a public library in Englewood, N.J., Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. Credentials of electors; transmission to Archivist of the United States and to Congress; public inspection. [12], Representative Emanuel Celler (DNew York), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to public concerns over the disparity between the popular vote and electoral vote by introducing House Joint Resolution 681, a proposed Constitutional amendment that would have replaced the Electoral College with a simpler plurality system based on the national popular vote. Vintage print of the first twenty-one Presidents seated together in The White House. [3] However, no action was taken on his proposal. Politics Exposes Electoral College Problems. It would take a constitutional amendment to change the process. With more than a dozen Democrats now in the race for the 2020 presidential nomination, talk is again turning to the final deciders the members of the Electoral College. There was no such thing as a political partys president-vice president ticket as there is today. Also for the first time, both Adams and Jefferson ran with running mates from their respective parties. [26], Newspaper reaction to Carter's proposal ranged from some editorials praising the proposal to other editorials, like that in the Chicago Tribune, criticizing the president for proposing the end of the Electoral College. [6][note 1]. [6], The original proposal starting in the New York State Legislature would have, along with designation, put forward the idea of the district election of electors that Treasury Secretary Gallatin had supported. The amendment passed in the Senate, with a super majority of 6427, but failed to pass in the House of Representatives. It's not clear if state population numbers from a do-over can be used to redistribute seats in the House of Representatives the count's main purpose as outlined by the Constitution. [31], Since 1836, no major U.S. party has nominated multiple regional presidential or vice presidential candidates in an election. Thank you. The ELRC eventually produced (1) an Initial Report in 1965 recommending the elimination of paper ballots, (2) an Interim Report in 1970 recommending . In what the angered Jackson called the corrupt bargain, Clay had endorsed Adams for the presidency. Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution Interaction with the Twelfth Amendment, constitutional requirements as provided for the president, United States presidential line of succession, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, United States presidential eligibility legislation, "Constitution of the United States: Amendments 1127", "House Journal --FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1803", "A Far Superior Methodthe Original Electoral College", "Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation", "Ratification of Constitutional Amendments", "Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution", "VERIFY: No, President Barack Obama can not be named Biden's VP; Here's why", "Hillary Clinton: Bill as VP has 'crossed her mind', "Could Barack Obama Serve as Vice President? Electors are expected to cast their votes in the state in favor of the candidate for which they pledged. Certificates of votes for President and Vice President. The scramble for the last of the 435 seats for voting members in the House was remarkably close. Congress The bill that could make it harder to overturn an election The proposed reforms to the Electoral Count Act, explained. A marathon session of debate from 11:00a.m. to 10:00p.m. was the order of the day on December 2, 1803. The presidential candidate receiving the greatest number of votesprovided that number at least equaled a majority of the electorswas elected president, while the presidential candidate receiving the second-most votes was elected vice president. The Twelfth Amendment introduced a quorum requirement of two-thirds of the whole number of senators for the conduct of balloting. [2] The person receiving the greatest number of votes, provided that number constituted a majority of the electors, was elected president. Were people who died from COVID-19 last year counted in the census? Senators were not elected by direct vote until the 17th Amendment established the direct election of U.S. [14] Debate on the proposal before the full House of Representatives ended on September 11, 1969[15] and was eventually passed with bipartisan support on September 18, 1969, by a vote of 339 to 70. Shortly after the committee was formed, Federalist Benjamin Huger attempted to add a provision regarding district elections to the proposed amendment, but the committee ignored him. In the event, all the DemocraticRepublicans electors were so reluctant to be responsible for causing outgoing President Adams to be elected as vice president that every DemocraticRepublican elector cast a vote for both Jefferson and Burr, resulting in a tie. Bush's residency was unquestioned, as he was Governor of Texas at the time. 12th Amendment: Fixing the Electoral College. While the Twelfth Amendment did not change the composition of the Electoral College, it did change the process whereby a president and a vice president are elected. Any change would require a constitutional amendment. Starting with the election of 1804, each presidential election has been conducted under the Twelfth Amendment. [33][34][35], On September 14, 2017, Congressman Steve Cohen introduced a concurrent resolution asking that the sense of Congress be expressed that: (1) Congress and the states should consider a constitutional amendment to reform the Electoral College and establish a process for electing the President and Vice President by a national popular vote, and (2) Congress should encourage the states to continue to reform the Electoral College process through such steps as the formation of an interstate compact to award the majority of Electoral College votes to the national popular vote winner. Under the new rules, a contingent election is still held by the House of Representatives if no candidate wins a presidential electoral vote from a majority of the electors, but there is no longer any possibility of multiple candidates winning presidential electoral votes from a majority of electors. While there is no federal law requiring electors to vote according to a state's popular vote, some states have put in place sanctions on electors who do not. National Popular Vote Interstate Compact - Wikipedia That is a laborious process and a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College would require significant consensusat least two-thirds affirmation from both the House and Senate . You look at a state like Colorado that is very solidly blue right now. Around six-in-ten U.S. adults (63%) say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency, while 35% favor keeping the current Electoral College system, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted June 27-July 4, 2022. The really interesting thing about this debate is that we talk about it in these very concrete terms that Democrats are in favor at this point in the popular vote and Republicans are in favor of the Electoral College. Thus, when candidates have high support levels in states with smaller populations and lower support level in more populous ones, such as in 2016, this can have the consequence that the winner of the national popular vote can lose the electoral vote and not be elected president. Named after its sponsors senator Henry Lodge (R-Massachusetts) and representative Ed Gossett (D-Texas), the Lodge-Gossett Amendment was a plan to allocate the electoral votes proportional to the popular vote. Debate on the amendments began in May. With help from Alexander Hamilton, the gridlock was finally broken on the 36th ballot and Jefferson was elected president on February 17, 1801. The need for the 12th Amendment is better understood when placed in historical perspective. Some states that have lost seats may sue the Biden administration to challenge how the House was reapportioned, and that may change some states' new number of congressional districts before next year's midterm elections. The candidate getting more than 50 percent of the votes became president. So the Electoral College favors white voters and people who live in rural areas over the votes of these other populations. The two votes being automatically allocated has allowed for disproportional representation of where people live in favor of the smaller states. Huger and New York Federalist Gaylord Griswold argued that the Constitution was a compromise between large and small states and the method chosen by the Framers is supposed to check the influence of the larger states. Make sure to update your bookmarks! Opinions on the viability of the Electoral College system may be affected by attitudes toward third parties. Robert Longley is a U.S. government and history expert with over 30 years of experience in municipal government and urban planning. Thereafter, the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana, moved to lay the proposal aside so the Senate could attend to other business. Forfeiture for messenger's neglect of duty. The Twelfth Amendment requires the House to choose from the three highest receivers of electoral votes, compared to five under the original procedure. The Electoral College, explained | CNN Politics Instead, the House elected John Quincy Adams on its first ballot. Well there's really two ways that if you were going to get rid of the electoral college system that you would do it. All Rights Reserved. [26] During his second term as Washingtons vice president, John Adams had associated himself with theFederalist Party, the nations first political party. In modern elections, a running mate is often selected in order to appeal to a different set of voters. At this point, we've gotten to a point where the Electoral College system, put very simply, values the votes of some people more than others. "If New York had had 89 more people, they would have received one more seat," said Kristin Koslap during the press conference. People who died on or after April 1 last year should have been counted. A Brief History of Electoral College Reform Efforts Thus, it became necessary for the Senate to hold a contingent election between Johnson and Granger for vice president, which Johnson won on the first ballot with 33 votes to Granger's 16. For the first time, the bureau is releasing quality metrics at the national and state levels on the same day it puts out the first numbers. Matthew Lyon of Kentucky denounced any reference to the three-fifths clause as mere provocation. Having won the fewest electoral votes, Henry Clay was eliminated and William Crawfords poor health made his chances slim. Book banning is on the ballot in the New Jersey school board elections. The Twelfth Amendment stipulates that each elector must cast distinct votes for president and vice president, instead of two votes for president. As the turn of the century approached, Americas budding love affair with political parties would soon expose the weaknesses of the original Electoral College system.
