ABSTRACT
The lowest percentage of popular vote to translate into an electoral majority was in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln won with less than 40 percent of the votes cast in a four-way race. As the Constitution set up the system, the voters would elect their state legislature and the legislature would select a delegation of leading citizens as electors. The Constitution also provides that if the Electoral College doesn’t produce a majority, the president is chosen by the House of Representatives, with each state’s House delegation casting one vote. The idea was to elect a majority of electors who could combine to produce an electoral victory for a Whig. But Democratic candidate Martin Van Buren, running all by his lonesome, captured a popular and electoral majority. A little glitch in this country’s Electoral College system almost cost the young republic the services of one of its greatest presidents in the hotly contested election of 1800.
