Has the House of Representatives Ever Chosen the President

Information technology was on this day that a constitutional crunch was averted when the relatively new 12th Subpoena to the Constitution settled the last presidential election decided in the House of Representatives.

On February nine, 1825, the House met to elect a new President after i candidate failed to win a bulk of the electoral college vote. The Firm besides met 24 years before to also settle a presidential election, simply this fourth dimension, the process was much smoother thank you to the 12th Subpoena.

After the Neb of Rights was ratified in 1791 information technology had just been inverse, or amended, twice. The 11th Amendment, ratified in 1795, cleared upwards a matter near lawsuits against states and sovereign immunity. The 12th Subpoena, ratified in 1804, cleared upward a mess created by the Founders in the matter of how presidential elections were resolved by the Electoral College.

The Constitution'southward original provision for electing a president and vice president didn't survive the biting 1800 election between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

The original Article II, Department i, of the Constitution required electors in states to cast two carve up ballots—1 for president and one for vice president. Information technology was upwards to the political parties to coordinate among their electors to make sure their vice-presidential candidates had at least one fewer balloter vote than presidential candidates.

Nonetheless, there was a "communication breakdown" inside Jefferson's political party, when someone forgot to not vote for Jefferson's running mate, Aaron Burr. After the electoral votes were counted, Jefferson and Burr each had 73 votes, and tied as the winner. (Jefferson had really received 61 percent of the popular vote.) Worse yet, Article II sent the necktie ballot to the House, which was controlled by Adams' Federalist Party.

The House members could only vote for Jefferson or Burr, and not Adams, and so Burr made the controversial move to endeavour to take the ballot from his ain running mate, Jefferson.

The contingent runoff election between Jefferson and Burr was a true ramble crisis. Jefferson ultimately won the House election on the 36th ballot after a calendar week of voting. Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson's long-time enemy, supported Jefferson instead of his quondam rival from New York, Burr. (Hamilton considered Jefferson equally the least dangerous of the ii options.)

Some other gene that concerned Congress later the 1800 election was the outcome of the 1796 ballot, when members of opposing parties (Adams and Jefferson) were elected president and vice president.

After this crisis, the 12th Amendment speedily followed. It was written, approved in Congress and ratified within three years, then that information technology was in event for the 1804 election. (The next subpoena to the Constitution wouldn't be ratified until December 1865.)

The 12th Subpoena fabricated sure split ballots were cast in the Balloter College specifically for president and vice president; the House would settle an ballot without a bulk winner with a contingent election featuring the tiptop three vote-getters, and the Firm would determine rules for conducting the election.

Twenty years later, Congress institute itself in a position to settle some other presidential ballot that involved an Adams.

In this case, it was John Quincy Adams, in a bitterly contested 1824 election much like the 1800 race involving his begetter—but this fourth dimension among 4 candidates: Adams, William Crawford, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay.

During the eight years prior to the 1824 race, political partisanship was at an all-time low. In the "Era of Good Feelings," President James Monroe ran generally unopposed for re-election in 1820.

Merely the unity inside the Autonomous-Republicans, the one remaining party in the United States, crumbled as the issues of slavery, states' rights, regionalism, and the economy drove wedges between sometime comrades.

Two of the candidates had been in Monroe'southward nonpartisan cabinet: Secretary of State Adams and Treasury Secretarial assistant William Crawford. Andrew Jackson was the hero of the War of 1812, while Henry Clay of Kentucky was the powerful speaker of the Firm of Representatives.

In the full general election, Jackson led on December 2, 1824, with 99 balloter votes, simply he needed 131 to win the presidency. Clay came in fourth with 37 electoral votes, which was enough to cost Jackson the ballot.

Under the provisions of the 12th Subpoena, the election in the House involved the top iii vote-getters: Jackson, Adams, and Crawford (who also had suffered a stroke during the election campaign).

A lame-duck Congress was left with the task of selecting a new president over the adjacent two months. (A vice presidential candidate, John C. Calhoun, had easily won a majority of ballots.) It was Clay, similar Hamilton in 1800, who interceded to decide the House election, in favor of the New Englander, Adams. (Clay too disliked Jackson.) Clay secured enough votes for Adams to win on the first House ballot on February 9, 1825, despite Jackson's wide atomic number 82 in the pop vote.

The 12th Subpoena worked. It immune the House to adopt rules about conducting the vote that became a precedent, and a winner was selected on the first ballot. Each state had i vote in the process.

But what happened next had a longer-term effect on the American political organization.

Adams appointed Clay equally Secretarial assistant of State, which was the second-highest position in 1824 politics, and the usual chore held past the favorite to become the side by side president.

The anger of Jackson and his supporters nearly the "corrupt bargain" led to the official formation of the Democratic Party, with Jackson as its leader. After Jackson'south re-ballot in 1832, the remaining political factions united to grade the Whig Political party, to oppose the Democrats.

In an interesting footnote to history, the 1824 ballot wasn't the only competition settled past the 12th Amendment. In 1837, Martin Van Buren won the election to replace Jackson every bit president, but there was dissent inside the Democratic Political party about the vice-presidential candidate, Richard Mentor Johnson. During the Electoral College voting, 23 faithless electors refused to vote for Johnson.

Co-ordinate to the twelfth Amendment, a contested vice-presidential election is decided by the Senate. In February 1837, the Senate chose Johnson over a Whig rival, in a runoff ballot.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in main of the National Constitution Centre.

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Source: https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-that-the-12th-amendment-worked