Importance Of The 12th Amendment

The 12th Amendment changed the rules of the electoral process by having electors make separate votes for president and vice president. It goes on to say that if no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives would select a president from the top three candidates. The Amendment also stipulates that the Senate would choose a vice-president from the top two candidates in the event of a tie for that office. This second design of the Electoral College provides for the workings of a two-party system in America and is still in effect today.

“The powers not delegated to the united states by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The purpose of the tenth Amendment is to define the division of power between the federal government and state governments.

The main result of the election of 1800 was the peaceful transition of political power and the tie between the two democratic-republican candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr with seventy-three votes each. The decision was then to be made by the House of Representatives. Due to Alexander Hamilton's help and persuasion by choosing Thomas Jefferson as the lesser of two evils, the House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson as president and Aaron Burr as vice president. As a result of the 1800 election, the Congress and the states passed the Twelfth Amendment in 1804 separating the ballots for the president and for the vice president to prevent the same crisis in the future.

There are ten Amendments in the Constitution, they are called the Bill of Rights. Each one of the Amendments protects a different right that people liveing the United States have. The Constitution was created in 1791. It took many drafts, but after 116 days on September 17, 1787 the members of Congress finally signed the Constitution (Constitutional FAQ Answer #87, usconstitution.net). James Madison wrote the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (U.S Founding Fathers, constitution facts.com). Each Amendment, of the Bill of Rights, is important for a different reason. The first Amendment states,” Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (1st Amendment, cornell.edu). The first Amendment is very important because it protects the U.S. citizen's freedom of religion, freedom of press, and freedom of speech.

The Bill of Rights accounts for amendments one through ten. Each of the additional 17 amendments has come about because of clarification needed for the original mechanics of the first three articles or to ensure civil rights. Amendments 11,16, and 24 are for clarifications of Article III. Amendments 12, 17, 20, 22, 25, 26, and 27are for further clarification of Articles I and II. Amendment 23 is further clarification of Article I. Only six amendments are to provide or clarify civil rights, those are13, 14, 15, 18, 19, and 21. Amendment 18 is the only one ever repealed. As we take a deeper look at amendments 13,14, and 15 they were also known as the Reconstruction

Twelfth Amendment – The twelfth amendment describes how a president shall be chosen if they do not have the majority. This is by the House of Representatives voting for who the president should by. If the votes were tied, then the people who had the same number of votes would be the options for the house to vote on. If no one had a majority, the five highest voted people would be candidates for the presidency.

The ability of The Constitution to be amended is what still allows it to be relevant today. The updates that are made reflect the attitude of the nation. An example of this being the

In June of 1804 the states had ratified the Twelfth Amendment which enacted the Electoral College in time for the 1804 election. When election time comes, Americans vote for the President and Vice President who are chosen by Presidential electors, who as a whole are known as the Electoral College. As a decision was needed for a method of choosing candidates, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 contemplated many different ways of electing the President, but toward the end of the proposals and ideas the matter had to be taken to the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters which is the committee who conceived the original Electoral College. In recent years, much debate has been stirring regarding whether or not the Electoral College has a place within this country's elections. For many states this method of tallying and casting votes is great because every state receives a minimum of three electoral votes considering each state has two senators and at least one representative (Lewis). However, these minimum electoral votes make the distribution of electoral college votes uneven throughout the fifty states, making each American citizen's vote count less or much more which is cause for change. If the information on these weighted votes is analyzed it can be concluded that states with a population similar to Wyoming has one “elector” for every 177, 556 persons while Texas has one “elector” for every 715,499 persons. While the Electoral College has worked for generations, there are some negative factors that give cause to abolish this practice, such that are; faithless electors, the winner take all system, and finally, safe and swing states.

On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights was ratified effective by Congress. These first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America promised the states certain rights and freedoms which could not be infringed by the government. After all, the founding fathers knew from experience that men in their weakness were often tempted by power. They had become all too familiar with this when under the control of King George in England. Therefore, in order to protect the future people of their beautiful country, they promised certain liberties which could not be taken away. Every single one of these freedoms is important for the United States of America. However, the second amendment is especially important

The constitution, in the 12th amendment, sets up the system by which we pick a president and vice president. The amendment lays out all of the specific guidelines concerning the electoral college, such as the requirement to only vote for the elected nominees. It lays out emergency plans in the case of a tie, and how electors are chosen. Replacing the guidelines in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, the 12th amendment states, “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

The history of the Electoral college goes back to 1804 to the framers of the constitution. Many of the nations founding fathers actually did not trust direct democracy and wanted to create a system that had balance between power of the people and power of the government. As James Madison described , he was worried about “ factions” in democracy. “These groups of citizens with a common interest in a proposal that would violate the right of citizens or the nation as a whole” (Joe Miller), Madison's fear which Alexis de Tocqueville later named as the “tyranny of majority”, was that these factions could become the fifty percent and win the majority. Subsequently delegates proposed a variety of different methods to elect the president in order for this to not occur. According to Joe Miller’s article the delegates voted more than 60 times before they finally chose a

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers could not decide if the president should be elected by Congress or elected by a popular vote, so they decided to create the Electoral College (“US Electoral College”). The Founding Fathers did not trust the people to vote on the right presidential candidate, so they decided that an indirect election was the best method (Becker). The Electoral College is a group of individuals who elect the president and vice president in the United States of America (TED-Ed). The number of electors that are given to each state is stated in Article II,

The Electoral College was created during the Constitutional Convention in 1787 when the framers of the constitution debated many options for determining how the President of the United States would be chosen. The Electoral College was created to give smaller states a voice in the process of choosing a President for the United States. If a President was chosen through popular vote, people feared numerous candidates would be receiving votes and a candidate would win the most votes from a populous state instead of votes from smaller states. Another option for voting for the President was that Congress would

In 1787, the framers of the constitution assembled and decided how the new nation would elect its president. It took the framers little less than a month to accomplish this task. During that month they considered various methods ranging from direct election of the president, to selection by legislators, to selection by electors. Finally, they settled on selection by electors, most commonly known as Electoral College. There were various reasons why Electoral College ultimately won out. We will explore some of the reason later in this essay. I believe that the reasons which were legitimate at the time are no longer valid and the time has come for us to replace the Electoral College with a system

The fourteenth amendment is also known as equal protection clause. Under the fourteenth amendment, the U.S. Constitution prohibits the states from denying a person that lives in the state the equal rights of the law (LII, 2017). The fourteenth amendment applies to education, especially those that are English language learners (ELL), this means that these students cannot be denied the same rights as non-English language learners. In the Supreme Court case of Lau v Nichols in 1974, this case involved a Chinese American student that attended the San Francisco Unified School District, this student was placed into a general education classroom despite the lack of being proficient in English (Wright, 2010). The school in which this student attended was found in violation, the school was giving ELL students the same material as all other students who speak proficient English and expected the Chinese American student to be able to comprehend the information that is being taught. School districts need to provide the same material, but in a modified form where the student’s will be able to access the information to learn it in the same manner as those non-English language learners.