Electors chosen by legislatures and they meet

WI the founding fathers, fearing the rise of a popular vote for President, had written different rules for the electoral college.

1) The state legislatures (possibly only the upper houses thereof) choose electors.

2) That electors meet in the Federal capital. If there is no 1 top vote getter who has more than half the total number of electors (rememberin that in the early days electors voted for 2 with the guy coming second being VP.) There could be up to 2-3 weeks of ballotining until probably the Senate chose the President.


How much of an impact would this have had on 1800?

If the result on the first ballot was roughly as in OTL; Jefferson and Burr equal 1st with 73 votes each) would lots of Federalist electors have given votes for Burr?
 

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WI the founding fathers, fearing the rise of a popular vote for President, had written different rules for the electoral college.

1) The state legislatures (possibly only the upper houses thereof) choose electors.

2) That electors meet in the Federal capital. If there is no 1 top vote getter who has more than half the total number of electors (rememberin that in the early days electors voted for 2 with the guy coming second being VP.) There could be up to 2-3 weeks of ballotining until probably the Senate chose the President.


How much of an impact would this have had on 1800?

If the result on the first ballot was roughly as in OTL; Jefferson and Burr equal 1st with 73 votes each) would lots of Federalist electors have given votes for Burr?

The Founding Fathers didn't want the presidential electors to meet in one place because they didn't want anyone to be able to stampede them into making a rash decision. In a day when communication and travel were difficult, having the electors meet in their separate states insured that they acted independently of each other.

The reason 1800 happened is that none of the Democrat electors remembered to vote for someone other than Burr so Burr and Jefferson would not end up in a tie. I don’t know if the Federalist electors could have made any difference in a single round of balloting. If they still wanted Adams to win, they could not have afforded to try to slap Jefferson.

Since the idea of running mates wasn’t around in 1800, I doubt that Jefferson and Burr were all that chummy with each other. If the presidential electors themselves got a second round of balloting, I could see both Jefferson and Burr trying to get Adams’ electors to support them so they could stab the other one in the back.

BTW: Nebraska’s legislature doesn’t have an upper house as such since it is unicameral.
 
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