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Cracks in the Foundation

The Foundation of Democracy
Elections are the foundation of democracy. We vote on matters as impor-
tant as who will be the next president, and as trivial as who will be the
next American Idol.
When a candidate receives a majority of votes, there is no difficulty de-
termining the winner of the election—but when no candidate receives
a majority of the votes, problems can arise. Although the winner of the
election is sometimes unclear (as in the 2000 presidential election), often
the election is decided by the choice of the rules that govern the election.
American elections have a long history of exposing the soft underbelly of
the election rules that are currently in use.
Presidential elections currently use the Electoral College rather than the
popular vote to decide the outcome, but this system first ran into trouble
in the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the two
leading candidates, received the same number of electoral votes. The
Twelfth Amendment was passed to resolve the problems that occurred in
this election by transferring the election to the House of Representatives