The Presidential Election of 1800: Second Essay

Electors were elected by two different methods in 1800. They could either be selected by the State Legislature or by popular vote of the people of the state in which the Elector lived. If he was chosen by popular vote, the state, of course, could determine the basis on which people could vote for Electors (property holdings, etc.). Here is another place where scholarship hasn't quite yet agreed. My best information at this point is that of the 16 states, 10 elected the electors through the State Legislature and 6 were elected popularly. Of the category of 6 states which chose electors popularly, three "sub-methods" were used. This article lays it out in a table. I will go into this below.

Those States electing Electors by the State Legislature (10) in 1800 were as follows: New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia. Those selecting Electors by popular vote in 1800 (6) were these: Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia and Tennessee. Of the states selecting Electors popularly, you had either a "general ticket" or a "district system." Let me explain what this means.

The general-ticket system of popular election of Electors was where people voted statewide for a "slate" of Elector candidates by party. The party whose slate won the majority of votes cast would thus get all the electoral votes of that state. It was a "winner-take-all" system. In 1800 this system only prevailed in Rhode Island and Virginia. The four other states which selected Electors by popular vote did so by district. Three of these four states, Kentucky, Maryland and North Carolina, divided the state into electoral districts, with one Elector chosen per district by the voters of that district.

Tennessee had a more complex district system. It divided the state into electoral districts, with one Elector per district, but since an electoral district comprised many counties, each county chose its own electoral delegate by popular vote and then the Electors from Tennesssee would be determined by electoral delegates of the counties within their district. The reality of the popular selection system by electoral district is that a state could thereby split its electoral votes. In fact, in the Election of 1800, the electors of North Carolina and Maryland would be split. Pennsylvania also would have split electors, but that is another story, which I will mention a few essays below.

A Footnote on Popular/Legislative Choice of Electors

There is a strong correlation in the list above between the strength of the "Democratic/Republican" ideology and the presence of popular selection of Electors. KY, TN, VA, NC were decidedly "Republican" states, while RI and MD were divided fairly closely down the middle. But a further note on these varied methods of choosing Electors shows that it was not an "academic" or "technical" issue at all. Whereas in 1800 there were six states popularly choosing electors (Ferling's excellent book Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, p. 156, says that there were only five--he doesn't include TN), there had been eight in 1796 (Ferling says seven), but the list is quite different. That is, in 1796, the following states permitted popular selection of Electors: TN, VA, NC, RI, MD, GA, PA and MA. Between 1796 and 1800, then, three states decided to abandon popular selection of Electors (MA, PA, GA) and one stated added it (KY). But the "sneakiest" change came not in these larger shifts but in Virginia's 1799 shift from a "district" to a "general ticket" method, while staying within the "popular" system.

Why? Well, as Ferling says, to "rig" the election. Recall from the chart in the previous essay Virginia's strength and influence at the time. It would become the heart of the great triad of Republican Presidents: Jefferson, Madison, Monroe--which saw the Old Dominion exercise sway over the White House for a quarter of a century (1801-25). It was a strongly Republican state in 1796. But in a surprising turnaround in 1798, the Federalists took 8 of the 19 Congressional elections. This was the last high point of Federalist influence, coming on the heels of the anti-French feeling after the XYZ affair. But who knew that this was going to be the case? The Republican-controlled state legislature then had a decision on their hands. Fearing that this Federalist surge could cause real problems for them in 1800 if they kept their district plan of selecting Electors, they voted in 1799 to get rid of their district plan in favor of a statewide popular election of Electors. The result would be that instead of outpolling the Federalists by a narrow margin in votes for Electors in 1800, they could put up a statewide slate of Republican Electors, who would be voted in as a slate. This was precisely what happened. All 21 of Virginia's electoral votes in 1800 would go to the Jefferson-Burr ticket. This was 28% of what a candidate needed to be elected President. Now we can understand the lament of a Federalist from Virginia in 1799 who, in disgust said that the action of the Virginia Legislature had been designed "to exclude one-third at least of the citizens of Virginia from a vote for the President of the United States."

Well, as we know (and as I can personally attest), two can tango, and Massachusetts also got into the act. In 1796 this Federalist-controlled bastion had had a district voting system for Electors. But so dominant was the party that Federalist Electors were returned throughout the state. Yet, Republicans began to make inroads during the Presidency of favorite son John Adams, as the Federalists began to bicker among themselves on a number of issues. Therefore, becoming worried, the Massachusetts legislature decided to change to a legislative election of Electors, thus ensuring all Federalist Electors in 1800.

One final note on voting systems will close this essay. One of the crucial states in 1800 was New York. Aaron Burr, who would be named with Jefferson to the Republican national ticket in 1800, arranged the best-organized political campaign in US history up to that point in March-April 1800--just before the New York Legislature was elected. The NY Legislature had generally been Federalist, but was changing rapidly in the late 1790s. Thus, if Burr could help elect a Republican legislature by electing Republicans to it from NYC, the Legislature, which chose the Electors, would choose a slate of Republican electors. He pulled out an astonishing victory in New York for the Republicans; perhaps I will have time to tell that story sometime. A chagrined Alexander Hamilton, who by this time hated the very ground on which Burr walked, urgently repaired to the Federalist governor of the state, John Jay, quickly to change the law so that elections for Electors might be by district (and thus divide the vote). Jay, who had just left the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court for this position, refused to consider this dramatic last-second measure. Thus, New York would have a dozen Republican Electors in 1800.

Conclusion

When you patiently work through some of these issues in selecting Electors, you begin to see the complexity and allure of the Election of 1800. Now, let's get to the actual voting.

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