WI Alexander Hamilton Steals New York Electoral Votes in 1800?

Anaxagoras

Banned
During the 1800 Presidential Election, Jefferson brought Aaron Burr onto the ticket as his VP candidate because he was expected to bring New York (and its 12 priceless electoral votes) into Democratic-Republican column. After the votes had been tallied, Burr had done his job and won New York.

Alexander Hamilton then tried to persuade John Jay to rewrite the state's electoral rules and essentially rerun the election with gerrymandering districts, thus placing New York in the Federalist column. Had this ploy succeeded, Adams would have been reelected President with 77 votes to Jefferson's 61.

IOTL, John Jay refused to have anything to do with the scheme. But what if Hamilton had been able to persuade him to go through with it?
 
I think once word of this got out, you'd see riots in the streets. At a minimum, supporters of Burr would mix it up with those of Hamilton. This could lead to violence becoming more commonplace in U.S. politics, something similar to what happened in the Weimar republic. It might be the party with the toughest thugs that win.
 
Like some of AH's ideas, this was a non-starter and Governor John Jay deep sixed it just by ingnoring it. There probably was not any support in the Federalist Party for changing the rules after the election and AH didn't bring up the idea again.
This is a great example of how a man with an idea every minute is bound to come up with really bad ones every so often.
 
If it happened (or even attempted done) we'd probably see (specially if it comes to some violence) more strict electoral laws disallowing gerrymandering, with strict definitions about how electoral districts work and are arranged, or even abandon them counting on a statewide basis, with districts demoted to simple tally stations which would call in the numbers to a central counting office ... another road it could take would be to abandon 'first-past-the-post' for appointing Electoral Votes, giving them out roughly proportional, just as voting in most of Europe is done nowadays
 
Top