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The Twelfth Amendment requires a person to receive a majority of the electoral votes for vice president for that person to be elected vice president by the Electoral College. If no candidate for vice president has a majority of the total votes, the Senate, with each senator having one vote, chooses the vice president.
The Electoral College was officially selected as the means of electing president towards the end of the Constitutional Convention, due to pressure from slave states wanting to increase their voting power, since they could count slaves as 3/5 of a person when allocating electors, and by small states who increased their power given the minimum of ...
The Bayh–Celler amendment was the closest the United States has come to passing an Electoral College abolition amendment. The amendment would have replaced the current Electoral College with a simpler two-round system modeled after French presidential elections. It was proposed during the 91st Congress (1969–1971). [36]
There would also have been a nationwide electoral threshold of 40 per cent of electoral votes, with a joint session of Congress acting as tie-breaker between the two top candidates in case none crossed the threshold. The amendment passed in the Senate, with a super majority of 64–27, but failed to pass in the House of Representatives. [9] [10]
Would treat the District of Columbia as if it were a state regarding representation in Congress (including repealing the 23rd Amendment), representation in the Electoral College and participation in the process by which the Constitution is amended. Proposed August 22, 1978. Ratification period ended August 22, 1985; amendment failed.
An electoral college is a body whose task is to elect a candidate to a particular office. It is mostly used in the political context for a constitutional body that appoints the head of state or government , and sometimes the upper parliamentary chamber , in a democracy.
In the United States, a contingent election is used to elect the president or vice president if no candidate receives a majority of the whole number of electors appointed. A presidential contingent election is decided by a special vote of the United States House of Representatives, while a vice-presidential contingent election is decided by a vote of the United States Senate.
The rules for the Electoral College are outlined in the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. Because democracy was a new idea at the time, says Field, the nation’s founders thought it would be ...