<P> While the Democratic - Republicans were well organized at the state and local levels, the Federalists were disorganized and suffered a bitter split between their two major leaders, President Adams and Alexander Hamilton . The jockeying for electoral votes, regional divisions, and the propaganda smear campaigns created by both parties made the election recognizably modern . </P> <P> The election exposed one of the flaws in the original Constitution of the United States . Members of the Electoral College were authorized by the original Constitution to vote for two names for President, theoretically one for the preferred President and one for the preferred Vice President but in fact counted up into the same ballot, enabling the possibility that a vice presidential candidate could be elected President . (The two - vote ballot was created in order to try to maximize the possibility that one candidate received votes from a majority of the electors nationwide; the drafters of the Constitution had not anticipated the rise of organized political parties, which made it much easier to attain a nationwide majority .) The candidate with the most electoral votes would become President and the candidate with the second most would become Vice President . The Democratic - Republicans had planned for one of the electors to abstain from casting his second vote for Aaron Burr, which would have led to Jefferson receiving one electoral vote more than Burr, making Jefferson President and Burr Vice President . The plan, however, was mishandled . Each elector who voted for Jefferson also voted for Burr, resulting in a tied electoral vote . The election was then put into the hands of the outgoing House of Representatives, which, after 35 votes in which neither Jefferson nor Burr obtained a majority, elected Jefferson on the 36th ballot . </P> <P> To rectify the flaw in the original presidential election mechanism, the Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, was added to the United States Constitution . It called for electors to make a distinct choice between their selections for President and Vice President . </P> <P> The result of this election was affected by the three - fifths clause of the United States Constitution, by which slaves were counted as three - fifths of a person for the purpose of Congressional apportionment . Historians such as Garry Wills, Leonard L. Richards, and William W. Freehling have written that had slaves not been counted at all, Adams would have won the electoral vote . Jefferson was subsequently criticized as having won "the temple of Liberty on the shoulders of slaves". Akhil Reed Amar, a law and political science professor at Yale, argued that the election was a turning point in American history and claimed that "in a direct election system, the South would have lost every time ." </P>

Who won the election of 1800 and how