James Madison to Thomas Jefferson (January 14, 1824)

Montpellier, Jany 14, 1824.

An appeal from an abortive ballot in the first meeting of the Electors to a reassembling of them, a part of the several plans, has something plausible, and, in comparison with the existing arrangement, might not be inadmissible. But it is not free from material objections. It relinquishes, particularly, the policy of the Constitution in allowing as little time as possible for the Electors to be known and tampered with. And beside the opportunities for intrigue furnished by the interval between the first and second meeting, the danger of having one electoral body played off against another, by artful misrepresentations rapidly transmitted, a danger not to be avoided, would be at least doubled.