Twelfth Amendment To The United States Constitution - Elections Since 1804

Elections Since 1804

Starting with the election of 1804, each Presidential election has been conducted under the Twelfth Amendment.

Only once since then has the House of Representatives chosen the President: In 1824, Andrew Jackson received 99 electoral votes, John Quincy Adams (son of John Adams) 84, William H. Crawford 41 and Henry Clay 37. All of the candidates were members of the Democratic-Republican Party (though there were significant political differences among them), and each had fallen short of the 131 votes necessary to win. Because the House could only consider the top three candidates, Clay could not become President. Crawford's poor health following a stroke made his election by the House unlikely. Andrew Jackson expected the House to vote for him, as he had won a plurality of the popular and electoral votes. Instead, the House elected Adams on the first ballot with thirteen states, followed by Jackson with seven and Crawford with four. Clay had endorsed Adams for the Presidency; the endorsement carried additional weight because Clay was the Speaker of the House. When Adams later appointed Clay his Secretary of State, many—particularly Jackson and his supporters—accused the pair of making a "Corrupt Bargain". In the less contested election for vice president, John C. Calhoun received 182 votes and was elected outright.

In 1836, the Whig Party nominated different candidates in different regions in the hopes of splintering the electoral vote and denying Martin Van Buren, the Democratic candidate, a majority in the Electoral College, thereby throwing the election into the Whig-controlled House. However, this strategy failed with Van Buren winning majorities of both the popular and electoral vote. In that same election no candidate for Vice President secured a majority in the electoral college as Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Richard Mentor Johnson did not receive the electoral votes of Democratic electors from Virginia, because of his relationship with a former slave. As a result Johnson received 147 electoral votes, one vote short of a majority; to be followed by Francis Granger with 77, John Tyler with 47 and William Smith with 23. This caused the Senate to choose whether Johnson or Granger would be the new Vice President. Johnson won with 33 votes, with Granger receiving 16.

Since 1836, no major U.S. party has nominated multiple regional presidential or vice presidential candidates in an election. However, since the Civil War there have been two serious attempts by Southern-based parties to run regional candidates in hopes of denying either of the two major candidates an electoral college majority. Both attempts (in 1948 and 1968) failed, but not by much—in both cases a shift in the result of two close states would have forced the respective elections into the House.

In modern elections, a running mate is often selected in order to appeal to a different set of voters. A Habitation Clause issue arose during the 2000 presidential election contested by George W. Bush (alongside running-mate Dick Cheney) and Al Gore (alongside Joe Lieberman), because it was alleged that Bush and Cheney were both inhabitants of Texas and that the Texas electors therefore violated the Twelfth Amendment in casting their ballots for both. Bush's residency was unquestioned, as he was Governor of Texas at the time. Cheney and his wife had moved to Dallas five years earlier when he assumed the role of chief executive at Halliburton. Cheney grew up in Wyoming and had represented it in Congress. A few months before the election, he switched his voter registration and driver's license to Wyoming and put his home in Dallas up for sale. Three Texas voters challenged the election in a federal court in Dallas and then appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where it was dismissed.