Original Presidential Election Clause

Original process

Each elector cast two undifferentiated votes. The top vote-getter became President if that candidate received a majority of appointed electors; the runner-up became Vice President. If no candidate had a majority, or if majority candidates tied, the House chose the President by state delegations. If the Vice Presidency remained tied, the Senate chose the Vice President.

Founding compromise

The procedure blended national and federal features. Electoral votes tracked each state's congressional delegation, tying allocation partly to population and partly to equal state representation. The House contingent-election rule then shifted to one vote per state, preserving a federal check when the electoral vote failed to produce a majority.

Breakdown and supersession

The system worked while Washington dominated national politics. It broke down once organized parties competed. In 1796, John Adams became President and Thomas Jefferson, his leading opponent, became Vice President. In 1800, Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied because party electors gave both Republican-Democratic candidates their votes, sending the election to a deadlocked House. The Twelfth Amendment responded by requiring separate electoral votes for President and Vice President.

The two-vote, one-elsewhere design's own origin: Williamson and Gouverneur Morris, 25 July 1787

Every other section of this page reads the two-vote elector mechanism as a finished rule, sourced only to the Committee of Eleven's early-September report. Elliot's Debates (Vol. V) — Madison's own Convention notes — traces the design to a specific floor exchange six weeks earlier, on 25 July, inside the mode-of-election debate Executive Vesting Clause documents at length. Hugh Williamson, searching for a fix to the small-state disadvantage a popular vote would create, proposed a three-candidate ballot:

"He suggested, as a cure for this difficulty, that each man should vote for three candidates; one of them he observed, would be probably of his own state, the other two of some other states; and as probably of a small as a large one." — Hugh Williamson, Notes on the Convention, 25 July 1787

Gouverneur Morris narrowed Williamson's proposal to the exact rule the ratified Clause states above — two votes, at least one for a candidate from outside the voter's own state:

"Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS liked the idea; suggesting, as an amendment, that each man should vote for two persons, one of whom at least should not be of his own state." — Gouverneur Morris, Notes on the Convention, 25 July 1787

James Madison endorsed the amended proposal in the same breath with an observation that anticipates the original runner-up-becomes-Vice-President design below, without yet naming an office for the second-place finisher:

"Mr. MADISON also thought something valuable might be made of the suggestion, with the proposed amendment of it. The second-best man in this case would probably be the first in fact." — James Madison, Notes on the Convention, 25 July 1787

key-insight

Neither Williamson's nor Morris's proposal was voted on 25 July — the Convention adjourned with the executive's mode of election still unsettled, and the two-vote elector rule would not become operative text until the Committee of Eleven's report six weeks later. But the mechanism's two defining, and otherwise unexplained, design choices — two votes rather than one, and the requirement that at least one go to a non-resident — both appear here, attributed to named authors, before any committee draft existed. The "greatest number of votes... second... Vice President" rule below is close kin to Madison's own remark that "the second-best man... would probably be the first in fact," though Madison did not yet propose making the runner-up an officer.

Virginia Convention, 18 June 1788: Grayson's arithmetic — 17 votes against 139

William Grayson gave the ratification debate's most concrete numerical stress-test of the contingent-election procedure, building a worked example of how a President with as few as two electoral votes could nonetheless secure reelection through the House's state-by-state contingent vote. Grayson began from the ninety-one electors, each casting two ballots (182 votes total), and supposed forty-five votes split among four rival candidates while the sitting President received only two — enough, he argued, to land among the "five highest" and go to the House:

"Let there be forty-five votes for four different candidates, and two for the President. He is one of the five highest, if he have but two votes, which he may easily purchase. In this case, by the 3d clause of the 1st section of the 2d article, the election is to be by the representatives, according to states." — William Grayson, Virginia Convention, 18 June 1788

Grayson then tabulated a seven-state House majority — New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, and North Carolina, controlling only 15 of 65 House votes but a majority of state delegations — sufficient under the one-state-one-vote contingent rule to elect the President over the objection of the other six states' full congressional weight:

"The total number of voices (91 electors and 65 representatives) is 156. Voices in favor of the President are, 2 state electors and 15 representatives, 17... So that the President may be reëlected by the voices of 17 against 139." — William Grayson, Virginia Convention, 18 June 1788

Grayson called the calculation neither hypothetical nor rare: "It may be said that this is an extravagant case, and will never happen. In my opinion, it will often happen. A person who is a favorite of Congress, if he gets but two votes of electors, may, by the subsequent choice of 15 representatives, be elected President. Surely the possibility of such a case ought to be excluded."

Mason's "mere ignis fatuus," and Madison's correction of the majority requirement

George Mason answered that the entire electoral mechanism was "a mere deception, — a mere ignis fatuus on the American people," because extending the contingent list to the five highest candidates (rather than the two highest, as Mason preferred) lets "a person having a very small number of votes" be elected once the choice passes to the House:

"But when it is extended to the five highest, a person having a very small number of votes may be elected. This will almost constantly happen. The states may choose the man in whom they have most confidence... The people will, in reality, have no hand in the election." — George Mason, Virginia Convention, 18 June 1788

Mason then asserted, as a claim about the text itself, that a majority of the whole number of electors appointed was required before the popular vote (rather than the contingent procedure) could settle the election, and that such a majority "would rarely happen." James Madison answered that Mason had misstated the threshold — the clause requires only a number of votes equal to a majority of electors appointed, which for ninety-one electors is forty-six, not unanimity or near-unanimity:

"[N]othing was necessary but a number of votes equal to a majority of the electors, which was forty-six; for the clause expressly said that 'the person having the greatest number of votes shall be President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed.' Each had two votes, because one vote was intended for the Vice-President." — James Madison, Virginia Convention, 18 June 1788

Mason disputed the correction; Madison expressed "astonishment at the construction of the honorable member" and repeated it a second time. Neither man's position moved the other on the floor.

key-insight

Grayson's arithmetic and Mason's and Madison's dispute attack the same clause from two different angles that the Convention floor never reconciled: Grayson assumes the House contingent-election path is reached easily (a President needs only two electoral votes to land among the five highest) and objects to what happens once it is reached; Mason and Madison dispute how often the contingent path is reached at all — Mason believing a electors'-majority outcome is rare, Madison correcting the arithmetic of what "majority" means without disputing Mason's underlying fear that the five-highest list, not the two-highest list Mason preferred, remains the practical rule.

Originalist note

The Clause shows that the original Constitution expected elector judgment and did not yet account for disciplined national parties. Hamilton's Federalist No. 68 defended the House contingent-election fallback — triggered when no candidate wins a majority of appointed electors — as a safeguard for legitimacy, not a flaw:

"as it might be unsafe to permit less than a majority to be conclusive, it is provided, that in such a contingency, the house of representatives shall select out of the candidates, who shall have the five highest numbers of votes, the man who in their opinion may be best qualified for the office." — Federalist No. 68

The Twelfth Amendment is an early constitutional correction of the undifferentiated two-vote design rather than a judicial reinterpretation; it left the House contingent-election mechanism itself substantially intact.