12. Amendment to the United States Constitution
The 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America changed Article II, of the presidential election is. Originally, the Electoral Committee elected the President and Vice President of the United States in one ballot, with each elector having two equal votes, which he divided in practice between his predestined candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency. The person with the most votes should become President and the runner-up should become Vice President.
However, the election of 1800 showed that there were some problems with this procedure due to the fact that parties were not actually intended to emerge and the resulting proportional representation for the closed allocation of both votes to a joint “party ticket”. On the one hand, there could be a stalemate over the presidency between two party colleagues, on the other hand, a head-to-head race between two opposing candidates from different parties, who ultimately took the first two places, could lead to two incumbents with significant differences. The twelfth amendment, proposed by Congress on December 9, 1803 and ratified by the necessary number of state parliaments on June 15, 1804, made it possible to hold two separate ballots: one for the election of President and another for the Election of the Vice President.
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The electors meet in their states and vote by ballot for a president and a vice-president, at least one of whom is not a resident of the same state as they are. They indicate on their ballot the person they want to elect president and on one separate slip of paper the person you want to elect as Vice-President. They keep separate lists of all persons who have received votes for the presidency and for the vice-presidency and the number of votes they have received; sign, certify and send these lists, sealed, to the seat of the United States Government for the attention of the President of the Senate.
The President of the Senate opens all these certified lists to the Senate and the House of Representatives; then the votes are to be counted.
The one who has the greatest number of votes for the presidency shall be president if this number corresponds to the majority of the total number of elected electors; if no such majority has been achieved, the House of Representatives should immediately elect the President by ballot paper from among the three people at most who have the largest number of votes on the list of votes cast for the presidency. In this presidential election, however, votes are taken by state, with the representation of each state having one vote. For a quorum, the presence of one or more members from two thirds of the states is required for this purpose and a majority of all individual states is required for voting. If the House of Representatives has the right to vote and it does not elect a president before March 4, the vice-president will serve as president as in the event of death or any other constitutional incapacity of the president.
The person who has the greatest number of votes for the Vice-Presidency shall be the Vice-President if this number corresponds to the majority of the total number of elected electors; if no such majority has been achieved, the Senate shall elect the Vice-President from the two persons with the largest number of votes on the list; for a quorum, the presence of two thirds of the total number of senators is required for this purpose and a majority of their total number is required for voting. However, anyone who is not eligible for office under the Constitution may not be elected to the office of Vice President of the United States.
The Electoral Committee in accordance with Article II
Article II presupposed an indirect method of electing the president; the states elect a number of electors, as they are given by the parliaments in the respective states, who in turn elect the president. The number of electors assigned to each state is equal to the number of U.S. Senators (two in each state) and the number of MPs (at least one MP, proportional to the state's population) who represent the state in Congress. State parliaments were free to decide who would be elected elector, but a senator or deputy could not assume the office of elector.
Each voter could cast two votes, but at least one of those two votes had to be cast for a person who does not come from the same state as the voter. This provision was created to prevent electors from voting for their favorites from their own states. The two houses of Congress then met to count the electoral votes of the respective states with the President of the Senate. It took a majority of the electoral vote to win the election. If more than one candidate was elected by a majority of the electorate (which was entirely possible since each elector could cast two votes), the candidate with the greater number of votes won. Had there been a tie, the House of Representatives would have had to choose one of the two candidates. If none of the running candidates achieved a majority, the House of Representatives had to elect a president from the five candidates who received the most votes. In such cases, the votes of a state were combined into one vote. MPs from two-thirds of the states organized a quorum majority; a majority of the votes was necessary to elect a president.
The choice of vice president was easier. The candidate who received the majority of the votes, except for the election of the president, became vice-president. In contrast to the president, the vice-president did not need a majority of the electoral votes. In the event of a tie between several candidates, the Senate elected one of the candidates as vice-president. Each senator had one vote; Article I gives the Vice-President in office at the time of the election the casting vote.
The Electoral Committee under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution
Due to the events of the 1800 election , the 12th Amendment to the Constitution was proposed and applied. The constitutional amendment, first applied in the 1804 elections , did not change the composition of the Electoral Committee. Rather, the procedure by which the Electoral Committee, or in some cases the House of Representatives, elects the President has been changed. Today, under the 12th Amendment, electors must cast different votes to elect the President and Vice-President instead of two votes to elect the President. Electors may not vote for presidential and vice-presidential candidates who both live in the elector's own state. However, you can vote for a candidate from your own country if the country of origin of the other candidate does not match the country of origin of the elector. Furthermore, the twelfth amendment clearly excludes from the office of vice-president those who are not also eligible for the office of president: persons under the age of 35, those who have not been permanently resident in the United States for at least 14 years and persons who were not a natural born citizen of the United States.
According to the old procedure, the votes were counted before both chambers of Congress. A majority of the votes is necessary for the election of the candidate for President or Vice-President. If no majority is obtained, the House of Representatives elects a president through the states with the same quorum majority requirements as defined in Article II.
While the original Constitution allowed the House of Representatives to elect a President from the five candidates with the most votes, the 12th Amendment allows the House of Representatives to consider no more than three candidates for president. The Senate can elect a vice-president in a similar manner if no candidate has received a majority of the electoral votes. The Senate can only choose from the two candidates with the most electoral votes. This provision does not mean that the Senate's election is limited to two candidates; if several candidates received the same number of votes, the Senate may select all of them in addition to the candidate who received the most votes.
The 12th Amendment also introduced a requirement for a quorum majority for any votes on the presidential and vice-presidency in the House of Representatives and in the Senate: at least two-thirds of the senators must be present in the Senate, and at least two-thirds of all states must be present in the House of Representatives, each with at least be represented by a local representative.
Furthermore, the 12th amendment ensures that the votes of a majority of the senators lead to an election of the candidate. Therefore, since the incumbent Vice President is Senate President but not a Senator, he does not have the right to cast a decisive vote under these circumstances, as he can otherwise in the case of a tie in the Senate. To prevent a standstill because the nation is without a president, the 12th Amendment ensures that if the House of Representatives fails to elect a president by March 4, the first day of the president's term, the candidate, who has been elected Vice President will act as President until a candidate has been elected President. The Twentieth Amendment changed the start date of the presidency to January 20, allowing Congress to determine who should serve as president if both houses of Congress fail to win elections.
The elections from 1804 until today
The 1804 election and each subsequent presidential election were held under the 12th Amendment. Since then, the House of Representatives has only once elected the President: 1824 was Andrew Jackson 99 electoral votes, John Quincy Adams (son of John Adams ) 84, William H. Crawford 41 and Henry Clay 37. All candidates were members of the Democratic-Republican Party , though it between gave them significant political differences. None of them achieved the 131 majority required to be elected president. Since the House of Representatives could only choose between the first three candidates, Clay could not become president. Crawford's poor health forced him to retreat. Andrew Jackson expected that the House of Representatives would vote for him because he could get a majority of the electoral vote beforehand. Instead, in the first election, 13 states voted for Adams, followed by Jackson with seven and Crawford with three votes. Clay supported Adams' claim to the office of president. The support had added weight because Clay was the Speaker of the House of Representatives . When Adams later named Clay Secretary of State , many accused the two of having made a corrupt deal; others saw this move as a normal alliance in politics. Some historians have argued that Clay was ideologically closer to Adams than Jackson. So it was more natural for Clay supporters to vote for Adams.
After the 1824 election, the Democratic Republican Party split into the Democratic Party and the Whig Party . In the run-up to the election of 1836 , the Whigs, because of their still very weak nationwide organization, nominated various candidates in different regions in the hope of fragmenting the election of the electors and denying Martin Van Buren , the Democratic candidate, an absolute majority on the electoral committee. This was meant to move the election to a Whigs-controlled House of Representatives. While the strategy failed, given the election of the president, Democratic nominee for vice president Richard M. Johnson received 147 electoral votes (one vote below the majority), followed by Francis Granger with 77, John Tyler with 47, and William Smith By 23. In the Senate, however, Johnson won by 33 votes, followed by Granger with 17 votes.
The 12th Amendment does not preclude the election of a president and a vice-president from the same state; it merely precludes an elector from voting for candidates for president and vice-president who are both from the same state as the elector himself. Nonetheless, party members who are running usually come from different states to avoid situations in which electors are from different countries of the candidate must vote for another. The debate arose during the 2000 presidential election , when he voted between George W. Bush and his fellow party member Dick Cheney and Al Gore and his fellow party member Joseph Lieberman . It was stated that both Cheney and Bush were residents of Texas and therefore the Texas electorate could not cast their votes for both. The place of residence of Bush was undisputed as he was governor of Texas at the time . Cheney lived in Texas and had registered for election there, but a few months before the election he changed his official address to Wyoming , the state where he grew up and had been an MP for years. A lawsuit took place arguing that Cheney should still be considered a resident of Texas, but the lawsuit was dismissed by the federal district court for the Northern District of Texas .
Fictional application of the 12th Amendment
In the 5th season of the US series House of Cards , the rules of the 12th additional article apply. After the (fictional) presidential election in 2016 did not bring a majority in the electoral committee, the House of Representatives should elect the President and the Senate the Vice-President. The question arises as to whether the elections should take place simultaneously or one after the other in order to prevent candidates from different parties from being elected as president and vice-president.
The election of the Vice President in the Senate finally works in the first ballot, in the House of Representatives, on the other hand, there is no majority for one of the candidates. The Vice-President therefore temporarily takes over the office of President.
The situation is resolved by a by-election of electors in the states that were canceled on the actual election day due to terrorist threats.
