Finally, after all the electors have cast their ballot, if there is no clear winner with at least 270 electoral votes, a scary scenario may happen.
Instead, the state legislatures appointed electors, and the Democratic-Republicans swept most of the South, including all the electors from Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, while Adams ran strong in the northeast, capturing all the electoral votes from Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
In keeping with federalism, the constitution can be altered only by majorities in both federal houses of the legislature followed by a referendum that gains the consent of a majority of all the electors and a majority in at least four of the six states.
But all the electors have done really is extend slightly the era of Benedict XVI.
Equally important, it leaves most states as bystanders in the most important election in the world because 48 states give all of the electors to the state winner, regardless of whether the margin of victory is 500 votes or 5 million.
Not all the Democratic electors are party officials like Busby.
Hamilton took the election as an opportunity: he urged all the northern electors to vote for Adams and Pinckney, lest Jefferson get in; but he cooperated with Edward Rutledge to have South Carolina's electors vote for Jefferson and Pinckney.
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Philip III of Spain, and Frederick V, the Elector Palatine, all sought her hand.
Between 2006 and 2011 eight states and the District of Columbia enacted, and every state legislature in the country considered, bills that would pledge all their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, but only when states with a majority of the country's 538 electoral votes have done the same (the electoral votes pledged currently total just 132).
