who determined the outcome of the election or 1800
United States presidential election, 1800 The election exposed one of the flaws in the original Constitution of the United States. Members of the Electoral College were authorized by the original Constitution to vote for two names for President, theoretically one for the preferred President and one for the preferred Vice President but in fact counted up into the same ballot, enabling the possibility that a vice presidential candidate could be elected President. (The two-vote ballot was created in order to try to maximize the possibility that one candidate received votes from a majority of the electors nationwide; the drafters of the Constitution had not anticipated the rise of organized political parties, which made it much easier to attain a nationwide majority.) The candidate with the most electoral votes would become President and the candidate with the second most would become Vice President. The Democratic-Republicans had planned for one of the electors to abstain from casting his second vote for Aaron Burr, which would have led to Jefferson receiving one electoral vote more than Burr, making Jefferson President and Burr Vice President. The plan, however, was mishandled. Each elector who voted for Jefferson also voted for Burr, resulting in a tied electoral vote. The election was then put into the hands of the outgoing House of Representatives, which, after 35 votes in which neither Jefferson nor Burr obtained a majority, elected Jefferson on the 36th ballot.