What Presidents Were Chosen by the House of Representatives
"…and if there be more than ane who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the Firm of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President…"
— U.S. Constitution, Article II, section 1, clause 3
/tiles/not-collection/i/i_origins_electoral_leslie_lc.xml Image courtesy of the Library of Congress The Balloter Committee comprised of House Members, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices investigated the disputed Electoral College ballots from the South afterward the 1876 presidential election. The Commission, seen here meeting by candle light in the Old Supreme Courtroom Sleeping accommodation 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 way to select the President and Vice President. Gouverneur Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania, compared the Federal Constitutional Convention's debates on this outcome to the Greek epic The Odyssey. "When this article was nether consideration in the National Convention it was observed, that every manner 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; directly; gubernatorial; electoral; and lottery. A decision resulted just late in the Convention, when the Commission of Detail presented executive election by special electors selected by the state legislatures. This compromise preserved states' rights, increased the independence of the executive co-operative, and avoided popular 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 issue of a necktie, to select the President and Vice President, respectively.
The House Decides: 1801
The provisions for electing the President and Vice President accept been amidst the most amended in the Constitution. Initially, electors voted for two individuals without differentiating between the election for President and Vice President. The winner of the largest bloc of votes, and then long as it was a bulk of all the votes bandage, would win the presidency. The individual with the second largest number of votes would become 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 organisation when Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the Republican candidates for President and Vice President, tied at 73 balloter ballots each. The House, nether the Constitution, and so chose betwixt Jefferson and Burr for President. The Constitution mandates that House Members vote as a country delegation and that the winner must obtain a unproblematic majority of the states. The House deadlocked at eight states for Jefferson, six for Burr, and two tied. After six days of argue and 36 ballots, Jefferson won 10 state delegations in the House when the Burr supporters in the 2 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 us ratified, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution. Added in time for the 1804 ballot, the subpoena stipulated that the electors would now cast two votes: 1 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 Business firm Decides Again: 1825
Since the 12th Subpoena, i 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 Secretarial assistant William Crawford had 41. Speaker of the House Henry Clay had 37 and expected to apply his influence in the Business firm to win election. Merely the 12th Amendment required the House to consider only the top-iii 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 West has closed the contract and volition receive the thirty pieces of silverish . . . Was at that place always witnessed such a blank faced corruption in whatever 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 require congressional intervention. Tilden won the pop vote and the balloter count. But Republicans challenged the results in three Southern states, which submitted certificates of election for both candidates. While the Constitution requires the Firm and Senate to formally count the certificates of election in joint session, it is silent on what Congress should practice to resolve disputes. In January 1877, Congress established the Federal Electoral Committee 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's controversial results did not spark the violence in the post-Civil War Southward that some had feared largely considering 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 House History Blog: Congress and the Case of the Faithless Elector for more information nearly the process.
For Farther Reading
Ackerman, Bruce. The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Printing, 2005.
Berns, Walter, ed. After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College, revised and enlarged edition. Washington: AEI Press, 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 University Press, 1937.
Holt, Michael F. Past 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 End of Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.
Rawle, William. A View of the Constitution of the Us 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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