I've done several episodes on close and interesting U.S. presidential elections throughout history.

Mainly they were there to put current events into perspective so you can realize that the controversies of today are really not all that new.

However, there was one election that might be considered the

closest and the most interesting in history, but the lessons for today are much

less simply because they changed the rules after the election and there was never

one like it again. So in that spirit, let's learn more about the presidential election of 1800

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Hi, I'm Ellie. And I'm Lisa. And we're the host of Sweet Bitter, a podcast all about

Sappho. So tell me, Ellie, why do I need to know about Sappho? She was the first

woman writer we hear from in the Western world and the first lyric poet and in my

opinion one of the best lyric poets of all time.

Oof no bias there at all.

No not at all.

You may have also seen the meme Safo and her friend circulating the internet that is a reference to the erasure of Safo's identity as a woman who loved other women in her time.

She is also where the word sappic and lesbian originate from.

Find Sweet Bitter, a Sappho podcast wherever you get your podcast. We can't wait to see you there. There were a whole bunch of things about the election of 1800 which were unique.

The biggest of which is that it was the first and only time in US history that a sitting president ran against a sitting vice president.

Incoming president John Adams was the nominee of the Federalist Party and his opponent

was the sitting vice president Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic Republican Party.

The reason why we had a situation where the President and Vice President were members of

different political parties had to do with a quirk of how the Constitution was originally

written.

The original selection process was that the Electoral College would deliberate and vote for

...