Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of "U.S. presidential election"

The election of the president and vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not directly for those offices, but instead for members of the Electoral College. These electors then cast direct votes, known as electoral votes, for president and for vice president. The candidate who receives an absolute majority of electoral votes (at least 270 out of 538, since the Twenty-third Amendment granted voting rights to citizens of D.C.) is then elected to that office. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of the votes for president, the House of Representatives elects the president; likewise if no one receives an absolute majority of the votes for vice president, then the Senate elects the vice president.

United States presidential elections differ from many other republics around the world (operating under either the presidential system or the semi-presidential system) which use direct elections from the national popular vote ('one person, one vote') of their entire countries to elect their respective presidents. The United States instead uses indirect elections for its president through the Electoral College, and the system is highly decentralized like other elections in the United States. The Electoral College and its procedure are established in the U.S. Constitution by Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 4; and the Twelfth Amendment (which replaced Clause 3 after its ratification in 1804). Under Clause 2, each state casts as many electoral votes as the total number of its Senators and Representatives in Congress, while (per the Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961) Washington, D.C., casts the same number of electoral votes as the least-represented state, which is three. Also under Clause 2, the manner for choosing electors is determined by each state legislature, not directly by the federal government. Many state legislatures previously selected their electors directly, but over time all switched to using votes cast by state voters to choose the state's members of the electoral college (electors). Beyond the parameters set in the U.S. Constitution, state law, not federal, regulates most aspects of administering the popular vote, including most of the voter eligibility and registration requirements.

There have been five United States presidential elections in which the successful presidential candidate did not receive a plurality of the popular vote, including the 1824 election, which was the first U.S. presidential election where the popular vote was recorded. In these cases, the successful candidate secured less of the national popular vote than another candidate who received more votes, either a majority, more than half the vote, or a plurality of the vote.

In the U.S. presidential election system, instead of the nationwide popular vote determining the outcome of the election, the president of the United States is determined by votes cast by electors of the Electoral College. Alternatively, if no candidate receives an absolute majority of electoral votes, the election is determined by the House of Representatives. These procedures are governed by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The U.S. Constitution does not require states to hold a popular vote, however, since 1880, electors in every state have been chosen based on a popular election held on Election Day.

Presidential elections were held in the United States from October 31 to December 3, 1800. In what is sometimes called the "Revolution of 1800", the Democratic-Republican Party candidate, Vice President Thomas Jefferson, defeated the Federalist Party candidate and incumbent, President John Adams in the second peaceful transfer of power in the history of the United States, creating a political realignment that ushered in a generation of Democratic-Republican leadership. This was the first presidential election in U.S. history to be a rematch, the first election where an incumbent president lost re-election, leading to the first time in modern history where a national government changed hands peaceably following a free election.

Adams had narrowly defeated Jefferson in the 1796 election. Under the rules of the electoral system in place before the 1804 ratification of the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, each member of the Electoral College cast two votes, with no distinction made between electoral votes for president and electoral votes for vice president. As Jefferson received the second-most votes in 1796, he was elected vice president. In 1800, unlike in 1796, both parties formally nominated tickets. The Democratic-Republicans nominated a ticket consisting of Jefferson and Aaron Burr, while the Federalists nominated a ticket consisting of Adams and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Each party formed a plan by which one of their respective electors would vote for a third candidate or abstain so that its preferred presidential candidate (Adams for the Federalists and Jefferson for the Democratic-Republicans) would win one more vote than the party's other nominee.

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. During a contingent election in the House, each state delegation votes en bloc to choose the president instead of representatives voting individually. Senators, by contrast, cast votes individually for vice president.

The contingent election process is specified in Article Two, Section 1, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. The procedure was modified by the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, under which the House chooses one of the three candidates who received the most electoral votes, while the Senate chooses one of the two candidates who received the most electoral votes. The phrase "contingent election" is not in the text of the Constitution but has been used to describe this procedure since at least 1823.

The president-elect of the United States is the candidate who has presumptively won the United States presidential election and is awaiting inauguration to become the president. There is no explicit indication in the U.S. Constitution as to when that person actually becomes president-elect, although the Twentieth Amendment uses the term "president-elect", thereby giving the term constitutional basis. It is assumed the Congressional certification of votes cast by the Electoral College of the United States – occurring after the third day of January following the swearing-in of the new Congress, per provisions of the Twelfth Amendment – unambiguously confirms the successful candidate as the official "president-elect" under the U.S. Constitution. As an unofficial term, president-elect has been used by the media since at least the latter half of the 19th century and was in use by politicians since at least the 1790s. Politicians and the media have applied the term to the projected winner, even on election night, and very few who turned out to lose have been referred to as such.

While Election Day is held in early November, formal voting by the members of the Electoral College takes place in mid-December, and those votes are later delivered to a joint session of the Congress to be counted and certified, and the presidential inauguration (at which the oath of office is taken) is then usually held on January 20. The only constitutional provision pertaining directly to the person who has won the presidential election is their availability to take the oath of office. The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 empowers the General Services Administration to determine who the apparent election winner is, and provides for a timely and organized sequence for the federal government's transition planning in cooperation with the president-elect's transition team; it also includes the provision of office space for the "apparent successful candidates". By convention, during the period between the election and the inauguration, the president-elect actively prepares to carry out the duties of the office of president and works with the outgoing (or lame duck) president to ensure a smooth handover of presidential responsibilities. Since 2008, incoming presidents have also used the name Office of the President-Elect to refer to their transition organization, despite a lack of formal description for it.

Presidential elections were held in the United States from October 26 to December 2, 1824. Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford were the primary contenders for the presidency. The result of the election was inconclusive, as no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote. In the election for vice president, John C. Calhoun was elected with a comfortable majority of the vote. Because none of the candidates for president garnered an electoral vote majority, the U.S. House of Representatives, under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment, held a contingent election. On February 9, 1825, the House voted (with each state delegation casting one vote) to elect John Quincy Adams as president.

The Democratic-Republican Party had won six consecutive presidential elections and by 1824 was the only national political party. However, as the election approached, the presence of multiple viable candidates resulted in there being multiple nominations by the contending factions, signaling the splintering of the party and an end to the Era of Good Feelings, as well as the First Party System.

Three events in American political history have been called a corrupt bargain: the 1824 United States presidential election, the Compromise of 1877, and Gerald Ford's 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon. In all cases, Congress or the President acted against the most clearly defined legal course of action at the time, although in no case were the actions illegal. Two cases involved the resolution of indeterminate or disputed electoral votes from the United States presidential election process, and the third involved the controversial use of a presidential pardon. In all three cases, the president so elevated served a single term, or singular vacancy, and either did not run again or was not reelected when he ran.

In the 1824 election, without an absolute majority winner in the Electoral College, the 12th Amendment dictated that the outcome of the presidential election be determined by the House of Representatives. Then Speaker of the House — and low-ranked presidential candidate in that same election — Henry Clay gave his support to John Quincy Adams, the candidate with the second-most votes. Adams was granted the presidency, and then proceeded to select Clay to be his Secretary of State. In the 1876 election, accusations of corruption stemmed from officials involved in counting the necessary and hotly contested electoral votes of both sides, in which Rutherford B. Hayes was elected by a congressional commission. In the 1974 event, Ford, who had been appointed by Nixon, became president when Nixon resigned, and gave Nixon clemency.