The Twelfth Amendment

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Stephanie Englar
  • 14th Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
COLUMBUS AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  In November 2012, we held the 57th election for a new term of presidency. The president is determined by the candidate that receives the majority of electoral votes from the Electoral College. However, the Electoral College process has changed significantly from its earliest beginnings.

Article Two of the Constitution created the executive branch of the government and was originally established as the method for electing the president. Under the original system, Electoral College voters could cast two votes for two different candidates. The individual with the most votes would be named president while the next runner up would be named the vice president. There were little problems initially as George Washington was unanimously elected president in 1789 and 1792. However, this system caused a few problems in the elections of 1796 and 1800.

In the election of 1796, President Washington refused a third presidency term and his vice president became the candidate for presidency on the Federalist ticket. His vice president, John Adams, had a lot of support from the Federalist Party along with Adam Pinckney, his running mate and the public's second most favored candidate from the Federalist party. The Democratic-Republican Party supported both Thomas Jefferson and Adam Burr for presidency. The Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party were at each other's throats through-out the whole campaign. When the votes were counted, John Adams had received the most votes but his running mate Adam Pinckney was beat out by Thomas Jefferson, ending up with a president and vice president from two opposing parties.

When it came to the situation of having a vice president from another party, there were concerns that having two people from opposing parties might not work together as well as concerns that there might be a "coup d'état" , to put the "defeated" vice president into presidency.

In the 1800 election, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson again ran against each other. However, this time Thomas Jefferson won. Thomas Jefferson ran alongside Adam Burr while former president John Adams ran for re-election alongside his vice president Charles Pinckney. The Democratic-Republican Party had planned for one of the electors to not cast his vote for Burr which would give Thomas Jefferson one more vote than him. The election exposed a weakness in the electoral vote system that could allow for a tie between two of the runners, in addition to the weakness and potential corruption of having two opposite-minded persons holding the offices of president and vice president.

As a result, in 1804, the Twelfth Amendment was ratified. The Twelfth Amendment came as an emergency fix for the election of 1804 after the previous two elections had gone wrong. It replaced the procedure defined in Article two, and stated that a President and Vice President must run on the same ticket. This was to ensure that there wouldn't be a President from one political party with a vice president from another political party.

By ensuring that the president and vice president run together on a single ticket, the Twelfth Amendment lowered the chance of a "coup d'état". The amendment also contains a Habitation Clause which claims that two individuals running cannot come from the same state. It changed the way that a president and vice president were elected, but did not change the composition of the Electoral College.

All elections have been run under the Twelfth Amendment since 1804. Since then, and even still today, individuals running for presidency are elected by "electors" from the Electoral College, and not individual votes. Electors are apportioned to each state based on the number of members of Congress that the state is entitled, and are pledged to particular presidential candidates.

There are 538 electors: 435 from congress, 100 senators, and 3 more from the District of Columbia. In all states, except for Maine and Nebraska, the electors pledged to a specific presidential candidate who wins the most votes in the state become the electors for the state. Although they are not legally bound to cast their vote for a specific candidate, it is not commonly heard of for them to change their vote to the other candidate. The winning candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the election.