Talk:Ticket balance

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

I'm pretty sure that some of the historical information here is wrong. While John Adams did become George Washington's vice president, they did not run on the same ticket. Until the passage of the 12th Amendment (1804), each elector actually cast two votes, one for each candidate; the second finisher would be vice president. John Adams just happened to be the second strongest candidate during Washington's elections. The concept of a running mate emerged in Adams' term, in which each party (Federalist and Democratic-Republican) would run two candidates and, unless a mistake occurred as in the 1800 election, arrange for one elector to vote against the perceived vice presidential candidate.

I'm not convinced the article says that the two did run together. Merely that the country/electors balanced the ticked even before the candidates/parties themselves were actively doing it and that the concept can be tracked to the first election. Perhaps a change of wording is in order. --Aranae 01:56, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Or is this term only actually used in the USA?--NicholasJones 19:15, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Teddy Roosevelt as "most dynamic president in history" seems like a matter of opinion to me. -- Coneslayer 05:33, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

I agree that a rewording may be in order for the sake of clarity. In the early days of America, the political process was quite different than it is today. Washington and Adams did not run on the same ticket but "balancing the ticket" was clearly a consideration in the process. In this election, there were no tickets in the modern sense, nor did anyone actually “run for President”, but there was a clear divide concerning who was to be President and who was to be Vice-President and Washington was at the top of every informal ticket. That Washington was to be President was a forgone conclusion. The office was essentially designed with him in mind. No one actually preferred anyone else over Washington for the office. The only question was who would become Vice-President. In 1789, twelve men received at least one electoral vote, but Washington and Adams were the only two who cracked the double digits. Adams seems to have been the clear choice of New Englanders who wanted a fellow northerner to represent northern interests in the executive branch.

Also remember that at the time, no candidate actually actively campaigned for major political office nor would anyone for over a quarter century. To have actively sought political power in America at the time would have been seen as perilously presumptuous. The threat of a coup d'état or dictatorship was in the back of everyone's mind in the early days of the republic. Pushing for personal power was seen as a dangerous and potentially destabilizing force and someone who did so openly was viewed with great suspicion.

The XII amendment was passed because of two successive major blunders in the electoral college. In 1796 Jefferson, Adams's political enemy, became Adams's Vice-President by virtue of finishing second in the presidential election (the constitutional framers had not taken into account the advent of opposing political parties). Adams distrusted Jefferson and Jefferson actively undermined Adams during the administration. By 1800, the Democratic Republican would field the first “ticket” of Jefferson and New Yorker Aaron Burr.

In 1800, Democratic-Republicans won the most electors. They devised a scheme where all but one of their electors would cast one vote for Jefferson and one for Burr while a single elector would cast both votes for Jefferson insuring that Jefferson would receive the most electoral votes and become President while Burr would get the second most and become Vice-President. The lone elector apparently screwed up and cast one vote for each causing a tie in the electoral college. This threw the election into the House of Representatives. Burr was expected to quietly bow out allowing Jefferson to assume the Presidency but Burr hesitated, apparently hoping to gain political advantage. The House eventually gave the Presidency to Jefferson but it was decided that from thence forward, the President and Vice-President should be elected on the same ticket.

As far as I can tell, the term is only used (in this sense at least) in the United States.

--Great Scott 17:25, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Should Delaware be considered a Southern state for the purposes of this article? If so, 2008, 2012, and 2020 could be included on the Democratic ticket-balancing list (Joe Biden). While Delaware was always a slave state, it also sided with the union; but then, so did Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Maryland, all of which are usually considered Southern states.Augusthorsesdroppings10 (talk) 18:26, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I think this exposes the mess in trying to rigidly define regions especially across great stretches of history. "The South" at times can mean just the ex Confederacy or it can mean the states that still had slavery after a particular point or it can mean some statistical agency definition or it can even mean the "Solid South", another term not always consistent (the ex Confederacy for sure, probably Kentucky and Oklahoma but Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and West Virgninia all have somewhat different political histories - the Solid South article is a total mess with the tables and maps not in agreement on which states are included). Some regions changed in their definition over time which just adds to the confusion. And some regions may be defined one way statistically but another culturally and/or politically - do modern Democrat candidates from Delaware or Virginia really get viewed by Southern voters as one of their own?

For that matter even some of the home states are potentially a mess. Unless someone was a sitting or recent elected politician in or for a state, the "home state" of a candidate can often be unclear - the various generals, businessmen, federal cabinet secretaries and the like often did not have clearly defined home states (e.g. who was it who said the answer to Grant's home state was "Appomattox"?) and it seems dubious to assert there was a ticket balance if they weren't so clearly identified with a particular region. Timrollpickering (talk) 11:17, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

This page appears to have been the subject of vandalism in recent months from one editor whose goal is to remove content rather than take a few minutes to find reliable sources. In the future please discuss before deleting half an article without input from any other editors. –Aaronw1109 ^{(talk) (contribs)} 07:11, 28 February 2025 (UTC)