🔴 Wow: The election of George Washington was weirder than you think

The election of George Washington was weirder than you think
The first U.S. presidential election in 1789 had none of the features Americans associate with elections today: no campaigning for the office, no political parties or conventions, no primary elections. Election Day was in January rather than November. The Electoral College was taken seriously rather than being treated as a formality. This was the only election in which a state was disqualified from participating. And there was only one issue at stake: whether the Constitution itself should be scrapped.

The final results of the election were that George Washington received 69 electoral votes and John Adams 34, making them president and vice president, respectively. John Adams should have received at least 49 votes, but many of the electors who wanted to vote for him voted for other people instead because of a scheme that Alexander Hamilton helped create. So instead of Adams receiving 71% of the electoral vote as he would have, he only received 49%.