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I understand that Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were the Democratic-Republican candidates in the US presidential election of 1800, with Jefferson intended for president and Burr for vice president. Yet both received 73 electoral votes, and the House had to choose the president.
What I’m missing is how electors recorded their choices before the Twelfth Amendment. If the party already had different roles in mind for the two candidates, why didn’t the electoral votes reflect that?
Was the tie mainly a coordination failure within the party, a consequence of the original constitutional voting system, or both? I’d also like to understand how the House’s voting procedure differed from simply counting each representative’s vote individually.
