More stuff I never knew................................ or, the Framers swing and miss

     "In 1796, Hamilton made a bolder move against Adams, a harbinger of the intraparty conflict that would break out among Federalists in 1800.  He tried to manipulate the Electoral College system to deprive Adams of the presidency and get his own favored Federalist Thomas Pickney, elected to the position instead.  Hamilton's scheme took advantage of the complex and sometimes seemingly perverse mechanics of the original electoral system.
     "In their conception of the Electoral College, the Framers foresaw an elite group of well-qualified electors exercising their collective judgment in picking the best-qualified President and Vice President from an open field of leading figures across the country.  Through this process, the Framers hoped to avoid both the formation of national political parties, which were never mentioned in the Constitution, and the development of coordinated partisan voting.

-Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous
Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign