Editing United States Electoral College (section)

====The emergence of parties and campaigns====
{{main article|Political parties in the United States}}
{{see also|George Washington's Farewell Address#Political parties}}
The framers of the Constitution did not anticipate [[Political party|political parties]].<ref name=":02">{{Cite book |last=Davis |first=Kenneth C. |title=Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned |publisher=HarperCollins |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-06-008381-6 |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=620 |author-link=Kenneth C. Davis}}</ref> Indeed [[George Washington's Farewell Address]] in 1796 included an urgent appeal to avert such parties. Neither did the framers anticipate candidates "running" for president. Within just a few years of the ratification of the Constitution, however, both phenomena became permanent features of the political landscape of the United States.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

The emergence of [[Political party|political parties]] and nationally coordinated election campaigns soon complicated matters in the elections of [[1796 United States presidential election|1796]] and [[1800 United States presidential election|1800]]. In 1796, [[Federalist Party]] candidate [[John Adams]] won the presidential election. Finishing in second place was [[Democratic-Republican Party]] candidate [[Thomas Jefferson]], the Federalists' opponent, who became the vice president. This resulted in the president and vice president being of different political parties.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

In 1800, the Democratic-Republican Party again nominated Jefferson for president and also again nominated [[Aaron Burr]] for vice president. After the electors voted, Jefferson and Burr were tied with one another with 73 electoral votes each. Since ballots did not distinguish between votes for president and votes for vice president, every ballot cast for Burr technically counted as a vote for him to become president, despite Jefferson clearly being his party's first choice. Lacking a clear winner by constitutional standards, the election had to be decided by the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] pursuant to the Constitution's contingency election provision.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

Having already lost the presidential contest, Federalist Party representatives in the [[Lame duck (politics)|lame duck]] House session seized upon the opportunity to embarrass their opposition by attempting to elect Burr over Jefferson. The House deadlocked for 35 ballots as neither candidate received the necessary majority vote of the state delegations in the House (The votes of nine states were needed for a conclusive election.). On the 36th ballot, Delaware's lone Representative, [[James A. Bayard (politician, born 1767)|James A. Bayard]], made it known that he intended to break the impasse for fear that failure to do so could endanger the future of the Union. Bayard and other Federalists from South Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont abstained, breaking the deadlock and giving Jefferson a majority.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-17/|title=Today in History – February 17|website=Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.}}</ref>

Responding to the problems from those elections, Congress proposed on December 9, 1803, and three-fourths of the states ratified by June 15, 1804, the [[Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Twelfth Amendment]]. Starting with the [[1804 United States presidential election|1804 election]], the amendment requires electors to cast separate ballots for president and vice president, replacing the system outlined in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}