Election of 1800
In the election of 1800, the Federalist incumbent John Adams ran against the rising Republican Thomas Jefferson. The extremely partisan and outright nasty campaign failed to provide a clear winner because of a constitutional quirk. Presidential electors were required to vote for two people for the offices of president and vice-president. The individual receiving the highest number of votes would become president. Unfortunately， Jefferson and his vice-presidential running mate Aaron Burr both received the identical number of electoral votes, and the House of Representatives voted to break the tie. When Adams’s Federalists attempted to keep Jefferson from the presidency, the stage was set for the first critical constitutional crisis of the new American federal republic.
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