history of close elections. host: richard norton smith from george mason university. he is an author and a presidential historian. we are talking about election day, particularly when it comes to close elections. is there a history? guest: there is a history of just about everything and it is a particularly colorful one. going back to the beginning, there is arguably a flaw in the constitution. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] they did not foresee the rise of organized political parties. indeed, they dreaded the process. and so, in 1800, of every state in the electoral college had two votes. one was to be cast for president in the other four vice president. by 1800, the federal lists around the john adams had to come here and organized to the point that there were recognizable as political parties.