The election of 1800 was insane and made it so we had to re-write the Constitution so it could never happen again. I'll break down the villains in the story and how they forced drastic actions to be taken to prevent future foolishness from happening. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/hellwqrld. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hello everyone, Poker and Politics here. | |
| Today we're going to give a history lesson, and that history lesson is about the election of 1800, which is one of the funniest events in American history that nobody ever talks about. | |
| I've talked about this to many of my friends, and it's always Horrifying to them, and it's hilarious in a way. | |
| I hope it's because of the way I tell the story, but... Anyhow, the election of 1800 is a rematch of the first contested election in American history between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. | |
| They went at it in 1796. | |
| Adams won, Jefferson became vice president, because back then The Vice Presidency was a runner-up award. | |
| It was the, oh well, you didn't quite win the Presidency, but guess what? | |
| You get to have a terrible job, and maybe if the President dies, you get something worthwhile out of it. | |
| And Jefferson and Adams did not see eye to eye about anything at that point. | |
| So Jefferson really didn't play a big part in the Adams administration except to get ready to run against him and beat him in the rematch so that he could be the president, which is all that matters because the vice presidency again sucks. | |
| So what happens is Now people are figuring out the system. | |
| And the system again is the person with the most electoral votes becomes president, the person with the second most electoral votes becomes vice president. | |
| And nobody wants what happened last time to happen again. | |
| They don't want the opposition getting a vice president into office and then something happens to the president and they take over and that would suck. | |
| So now the actually formed parties, the Federalist Party of Adams and the Democrat-Republican Party of Jefferson, have concocted plans to game the Electoral College. | |
| And those plans are simple. | |
| Each side has a sort of stalking horse candidate as a second option, and the plan is simply all the electors of each party will vote unanimously for their candidate for president, but one elector for the parties will throw their vote away so that when the votes are tabulated, Their unanimous pick will become president, and their person who lost one vote will become vice president. | |
| So basically, everyone on the Federalist side is going to vote for Adams, and then one person's not going to vote for Charles Pickney, and on the other side, everyone is going to vote for Jefferson, and one person is not going to vote for Aaron Burr. | |
| So whichever side wins will have a fully set up ticket between their candidate for president that is obvious being Adams and Jefferson and their candidate for vice president who is obvious which is Pickney and Burr. | |
| So the Democrat-Republicans Have the best of it and it is looking very likely that their ticket will prevail. | |
| Now a little aside here is that the reason why they're going to win is because the three-fifths compromise is going to give Jefferson and Burr more delegates than they should be getting Because it inflates the population or the electoral college power of the South due to slavery. | |
| So in a fair fight where no three-fifths compromise was used and blacks are not counted in the census because they are not citizens, because they have no rights, because slavery is fucking evil, Adams would have won. | |
| But, because we caved to slavery until we had to have a brutal war to get rid of it, Jefferson and Burr get the majority of the Electoral College votes. | |
| Now, again, this was supposed to be very simple. | |
| Everyone votes for Jefferson. | |
| One person doesn't vote for Burr. | |
| So, Lenny... You know Lenny. | |
| He's a guy. | |
| Lenny is told, you vote for your neighbor down the street, you vote for some other congressperson, you vote for George Washington, you vote for whoever you want for the second option, but you vote Jefferson 1, not Burr 2. | |
| That is your only job, Lenny. | |
| And Lenny, because he's Lenny, is whoring and drinking and generally making all the other electors of the Democrat-Republican Party very unhappy in his presence because he is a debased, depraved human being, forgets his task and just writes down Aaron Burr like everybody else. | |
| So when they crack open the votes and they count them, They're like, well, now we have a tie for first between Jefferson and Burr. | |
| Lovely. | |
| Now, this has happened. | |
| Everyone's really mad at Lenny. | |
| Lenny's like, well, what did you expect me to do? | |
| I was one with Jefferson and Burr like you told me to. | |
| Assholes. | |
| And he goes off and finds himself another prostitute because that's Lenny. | |
| That's his job. | |
| And now the Democrat Republicans, they go to Aaron Burr and they're like, yo Burr, uh, thanks for rigging the New York delegation to go with us instead of the Federalists, as they were probably going to do before we brought you on the ticket because you're strong in New York and you were able to pull some shit to help us out. | |
| But come on Aaron, you know as well as we do that we all wanted Jefferson to be president. | |
| So, um, let's just fucking get on with this and you, uh, drop out. | |
| You become vice president and Jefferson gets to be president as per the plan. | |
| And Burr's just like, fuck all of you. | |
| I have equal claim to the presidency as Jefferson. | |
| I got the exact number of electoral votes as he did. | |
| The presidency is mine as much as it is his I will let the House of Representatives make that decision because fuck all y'all I want to be president Jefferson can suck my dick and It's at this point that everyone's just like wow God fucking damn it Aaron Burr you stupid piece of shit and Now The House of Representatives kind of hates everybody because the House of Representatives, as it stands, is Federalist. | |
| And they kind of want to fuck Jefferson over and put in Burr. | |
| And the states that are run by the Democrat-Republicans are trying to get Jefferson in, who's their guy. | |
| So you have this massive gridlock between the fuck Jefferson states and the let's do what we're actually supposed to be fucking doing here states and we have this giant knockdown drag out fight where ballot after ballot is cast and tied and cast and tied because they just neither side is willing to give an inch on this | |
| And people go to Jefferson and they tell him like look man we just want you to cut a deal here and if you just abide by these things We'll, you know, kind of just let you be president. | |
| And Jefferson's like, fuck all y'all. | |
| I want the presidency to be mine without preconditions, without bullshit, without any kind of crap. | |
| I just want to run the country as per the dictates of my conscience and my judgment. | |
| So this A horrible debate rages on and then finally after 36 ballots there is a breakthrough and Jefferson finally wins the presidency and Burr is consigned to the vice presidency and that is what happens. | |
| And a lot of this came about due to the machinations of Alexander Hamilton, who hated Jefferson and Burr most, but just thought that Burr was just a colossal piece of shit. | |
| And was just like, you know what? | |
| Fuck Burr. | |
| I can't allow this to happen because he's a really terrible human being. | |
| Hamilton is rewarded for this by being murdered by Burke shortly thereafter in a duel because the two of them just really hated each other and that's what happened there. | |
| And so after this happens they eventually the the people in the government look at what happened and went like well we can't have this fucking happen again because that led to some really dicey shit and thanks to Lenny the fucking moron we had to change the constitution and create the 12th amendment | |
| So that the Electoral College separately voted for the president and the vice president and that is what has led to the thing that we nowadays call the ticket as it were. | |
| So that is why we have the situation where the nominee for president then | |
| picks somebody to be their vice president and then when we have an | |
| election we are voting the ultra technical nature of an American | |
| presidential election is you are not voting you're not voting for Donald | |
| Trump or Joe Biden to become the president when you cast your ballot. | |
| What you are doing is casting a ballot for electors to go to an electoral college and then cast their votes to make that person the president. | |
| So that is how this works. | |
| And that all happened because Lenny fucked up the vote. | |
| And then after Lenny fucked up the vote, Aaron Burr had to be a colossal dick and refused to step aside on behalf of normalcy, decency, and just not being a horrible human being. | |
| And then everyone looked at that and goes, well, we can't let another piece of shit like Aaron Burr come down the pike and screw up our government, so we're gonna fix this. | |
| And also, by the way, fuck you Lenny, you stupid bastard. | |
| So that is your little history update, as it were, of the election of 1800, aka the election so controversial, stupid, and terrible that it literally forced us to change the Constitution so it could never happen again. | |
| I'll be back tomorrow night with a regular podcast, probably talk about the Democratic Convention, our continuing slide into Hellworld, and we'll probably be more of the way through the stupid Shadowgate video. |