There being seventeen states in the Union at that time, thirteen had to ratify it. Secretary of State James Madison declared that the Amendment had been added to the Constitution on September 25, , 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 ! The election of and all subsequent elections were carried out under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment. This splitting of the presidency and vice-presidency did not go uncontested.
At least two senators expressed their reservations about the quality of vice presidential candidates. Is he honest? They will seek a man of moderate talents. In addition to its implicit recognition of the existence of political parties, the Amendment made another important change: The original Constitution provided that the failure of any candidate to achieve a majority would require the House to choose as president one of the five top-ranking candidates, with the person coming in second to serve as vice-president unless there was tie for second place, in which case the Senate would choose between them.
Now, however, the House would choose only the President from the top three choices of the electors; the Senate would now choose the Vice President from the top two choices of the electors for that specific office. Among other things, this guaranteed, in effect, that there would always be a vice president, who could presumably take the reins of the presidency should the House be hopelessly divided among the top three candidates for the presidency.
This aspect of the Twelfth Amendment became crucial in , the only time since that the House in fact selected the president as the result of the inability of any of the presidential candidates to achieve a majority of electoral votes. Under the original Constitution, the House would have been able to choose among all four, and one might plausibly believe that Clay might have prevailed.
Under the Twelfth Amendment, however, Clay was out of the running, and the choice was reduced to Jackson, Adams, and Crawford. Although no election since has been decided in the House of Representatives, a shift of relatively few votes in a small number of key states might well have led to that result in , , and What this means, practically speaking, is that in contemporary America, Wyoming, the smallest state with under , people, would have the same say in choosing a new president as California, with a population nearly 70 times that of Wyoming.
Because of the potential disconnect between the popular vote and the result of the electoral vote or potential vote in the House , there have been recurrent proposals simply to elect the president by popular vote. Political scientists have determined that voters rarely cast their vote on the basis of the vice presidential candidate.
That is, just as in many states candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run entirely separate campaigns, meaning that sometimes the governor is from one party and the lieutenant governor from another, 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, one charged with choosing the president, the other picking the vice president. Most of the time, of course, voters would pick the slates of the same political party. Arizona Near v. Minnesota Perry v. Schwarzenegger Powell v. Alabama Regents of the University of California v. Bakke Roper v. Simmons Schenck v. United States Terry v. Ohio Texas v. Johnson Tinker v.
Des Moines United States v. Lopez Worcester v. Georgia World Trade Center Bombing. Sign in. Log into your account. Password recovery. Recover your password. Forgot your password? Get help. Kids Laws. Home Kids 12th Amendment. Americans vote for President every four years, but did you know that it is the Electoral College that actually elects the President? Comments comments. A Quick Guide to Elbridge Gerry. While the Electoral College unanimously voted for George Washington in and , and John Adams as his Vice President, things got decidedly murkier during the election of As a matter of the history of the 12th Amendment, the Electoral College underwent a major overhaul after the election of This election ultimately served as the catalyst for the ratification of the 12th Amendment in As mentioned earlier, the 12th Amendment had originally called for members of the Electoral College to submit their votes without having to designate whether those votes were for the President or Vice President.
The candidate with the highest number of votes would then become President, and the candidate in second place would become his Vice President. Of course, this led to almost immediate problems, when the Electoral College voted for a president from one political party … and a vice president from the other.
The candidate who receives a majority of the votes for each office will become the President or Vice President, provided that number totals the majority of Electoral College voters. If the majority for the President is not enough, the House of Representatives then votes from the top three candidates. If the majority for the Vice President is not enough, then the Senate votes among the top two candidates for that office.
However, one example of the 12th Amendment coming before the U. Supreme Court is the matter of Ray v. Blair Ray declined certifying Edmund Blair as an elector because Blair had refused to take a pledge saying he would support the nominees.
The law did not require Blair to take such a pledge, however Ray had the authority to set the rules insofar as who he could certify as an elector.
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