Question

List the two times that congress invoked its power to elect the president in an election that does not give one candidate a majority of electoral votes.

Answer 1

The election of 1800 and the election of 1824. The story of the 1800 election starts with the results of the 1796 election where John Adams received the majority vote and Thomas Jefferson was the second place winner. This issues with this was that Adams and Jefferson were on opposing parties and since the President and Vice President need to work closely with each other, this was a bad idea. The idea of the electors voting on a party ticket was proposed and the idea of having the constitution was ignored for the next 4 years. Then for the election of 1800, the flaw in voting a party ticket was revealed in that there was a tie for the electoral vote with Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both of the Democratic-Republican party, having 73 electoral votes. This tie was eventually resolved by the House of Representatives on their 36th ballot, over a period of 7 days. These 2 elections are the primary reason that the 12th amendment to the constitution was proposed on December 9, 1803 and ratified on June 15, 1804. For the 1824 election, none of the presidential candidates got the required majority of electoral votes, so because of the provisions in the 12th amendment, the House of Representatives performed a contingent election with the top three candidates from the electoral vote. John Quincy Adams was elected president on the first ballot.