amendment 12?

Question

How did the changes that Amendment 12 of the Constitution made change the way that the President and Vice-President were elected?
...understandable speech please!

Answer 1

Prior to the 12th amendment the election system was messed up. President was the person with the most votes. Vice-President was the person that got the second most votes. What happened was that John Adams (Federalist) won the election of 1796 and Thomas Jefferson (Dem-Rep) got second. An executive branch with two feuding leaders did not work so well. So when in 1800 Jefferson and Aaron Burr got the same number of electoral votes and the election had to be sent to the House of Representatives, a new election system was needed. So the 12th amendment provided that parties would nominate a pres. and vice-pres. to run together and win or lose on a single ticket.

Answer 2

The amendment, which applied to elections beginning in 1804, did not change the composition of the Electoral College. Rather, it amended the process whereby the Electoral College, or in some cases the House of Representatives, chooses the President.

Under the Twelfth Amendment, electors must cast distinct votes for President and Vice President, instead of two votes for President. No Elector may cast votes for Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates who both inhabit the same state as the Elector. It is, however, possible for an Elector to cast his votes for candidates from the same state, if that state is different from the Elector's.

The Twelfth Amendment explicitly precluded from being Vice President those ineligible to be President: people under thirty-five years of age, those who have not inhabited the United States for at least fourteen years, and those who are not natural-born citizens. It is unclear if the Twenty-second Amendment's term-limiting provisions prevent two-term Presidents from becoming Vice Presidents (see that article for a fuller discussion).

A majority of electoral votes is still required for one to be deemed elected President or Vice President. When nobody has a majority, the House of Representatives, voting by states and with the same quorum requirements as under Article II, chooses a President. The Twelfth Amendment allows the House to consider no more than three candidates, compared to five under the original constitution.

The Senate, similarly, may choose the Vice President if no candidate has received a majority of electoral votes. Its choice is limited to those with the "two highest numbers" of electoral votes. (If multiple individuals are tied for second place, the Senate may consider all of them, in addition to the individual with the greatest number of votes.) The Twelfth Amendment introduced a quorum requirement of two-thirds for the conduct of balloting. Furthermore, the Twelfth Amendment provides that the votes of a majority of Senators are required to arrive at a choice; In the case of a 50/50 tie the President of the Senate, the sitting Vice President, will cast the deciding vote.

In order to prevent deadlocks from keeping the nation leaderless, the Twelfth Amendment provided that if the House could not choose a President before March 4 (at that time the first day of a Presidential term), the individual elected Vice President would act as President until one could be chosen by the House. The Twentieth Amendment changed the date for the commencement of Presidential terms to January 20 and permits Congress to direct, through legislation, which officer should act as President if both houses of Congress are deadlocked.

Answer 3

Compare the text of the original Article II -- it is a long paragraph and very similar in wordring to the 12th.

The main differences at a glance seem to be the manner in which a winner is chosen if nobody has a clear majority, and certain rules relating to the VP.

But the only way to get a full list is to go line by line.