The Twelfth Amendment

I would like to say this would have been the first Amendment outside of the Bill of Rights if Georgia had just paid its debt to the Farquhar estate, but there were other pending cases with similar issues, so it isn't really that simple. It never is.

You could on a very elementary level say that this amendment is needed and inevitable because the previous process takes two rivals and puts them in a partnership, which tends not to go smoothly, but that's an oversimplification too.

XII
"The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and all persons voted for as Vice-President and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate.

The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.

The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.

The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."

No longer will the vice president be the first runner up for president. It is not quite to the modern process of a president and vice-president running together either, but it's a change.

One of the inspirations for this amendment was the election of 1800, where there was a tie in the presidential race, settled by the states with the higher populations, which made the deciders those states with slaves, even though they were only counted as 3/5 per person. It doesn't only sound ugly now; it bothered people then.

One of the concerns, which you can see in the first paragraph, is that people will try and have a region exert undue influence, which at the time was guarded against by the stipulation "shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves". There have been other attempts to manipulate votes by setting up nominations that will split the vote, but not successful. Those patterns stabilized for the most part after 1836, with a few hiccups after the Civil War. This system as designed works, and when people do manage to manipulate results, it tends to only work because the law is not enforced rather than the law being insufficient. (That's more of a reference to 2000.)