Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-465_i425.pdf
Page Number: 6

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

3 

Opinion of the Court 

The next clause (but don’t get attached: it will soon be su-
perseded) set out the procedures the electors were to follow 
in casting their votes.  In brief, each member of the College 
would cast votes for two candidates in the presidential field. 
The candidate with the greatest number of votes, assuming
he had a majority, would become President.  The runner-up 
would become Vice President.  If no one had a majority, the 
House  of  Representatives  would  take  over  and  decide  the 
winner. 

That plan failed to anticipate the rise of political parties,
and soon proved unworkable.  The Nation’s first contested 
presidential election occurred in 1796, after George Wash-
ington’s retirement.  John Adams came in first among the
candidates, and Thomas Jefferson second.  That meant the 
leaders of the era’s two warring political parties—the Fed-
eralists and the Republicans—became President and Vice
President respectively.  (One might think of this as fodder
for a new season of Veep.)  Four years later, a different prob-
lem arose.  Jefferson and Aaron Burr ran that year as a Re-
publican  Party  ticket,  with  the  former  meant  to  be  Presi-
dent  and  the  latter  meant  to  be  Vice.  For  that  plan  to
succeed, Jefferson had to come in first and Burr just behind
him.  Instead, Jefferson came in first and Burr . . . did too. 
Every elector who voted for Jefferson also voted for Burr, 
producing a tie.  That threw the election into the House of 
Representatives,  which  took  no  fewer  than  36  ballots  to
elect Jefferson.  (Alexander Hamilton secured his place on
the Broadway stage—but possibly in the cemetery too—by
lobbying Federalists in the House to tip the election to Jef-
ferson, whom he loathed but viewed as less of an existential 
threat to the Republic.)  By then, everyone had had enough
of the Electoral College’s original voting rules.

The result was the Twelfth Amendment, whose main part
provided that electors would vote separately for President 
and  Vice  President.  The  Amendment,  ratified  in  1804, 
says: